So, you've just awoken to an atmosphere of harrowing emptiness. Your bed isn't really your bed anymore, it has become a monument to suffering, held together with a mortar of sickly loathing. Last night's cans, which seemed so sympathetic to begin with, soon turned into the villainous double vodkas that you so greedily threw down your neck as you crooked over the bar like sweaty, drunken buzzard. The guarantee you made to your friends that you'd only be going 'for a cheeky one' may as well be floating in the toilet along with the other broken promises that worked away at your stomach lining. And though you began the night as the jovial pied piper, leading your party to fantastic realms that were naught but phantoms of your ego, you now find yourself so completely alone.
At first you'll trick yourself into believing that a poorly constructed chicken roll and a can of coke is the perfect gesture of reconciliation that your body needs if it will ever take you back, but you're wrong. You played right into the deli woman's insidious hands when you accepted the crusty fold of surrealist art she placed for you with her eyes so callously narrowed and her tongue flicking like the devil's tail. But no, you assure yourself that the cup of tea you've prepared will right all the wrongs you've done unto yourself. Again, my sticky child of pain, you are so very mistaken.
This sorrowgarden that you've sewn for yourself will not yield to your gluttonous consumption, even those merciful tablets can only do so much. The passing of time and heroic endurance are the only keys to beating this, so it is that you much choose your time wisely. Even those who have tampered too daringly with their brains will know that direct sunlight and fraternity of any kind are both out of the question today. Your eyes will not allow for reading, your hands will not allow for games, your brain will not allow for thought, and your straw-like mindset will not allow for even the slightest of emotional turbulence. You need a movie.
Something easy.
Something that isn't Holy Mountain.
Something that isn't Holy Mountain or El Topo.
Something that isn't Holy Mountain, El Topo, or Salo.
Unfortunately, you can't be 100% sure as to what movie will be feather soft enough for your atrociously battered morale. Oh sure, it might have Adam Sandler in it, but even Adam Sandler's excessive shouting can be enough to send you into a state of non-return. That's not on the cards for today, what you want is Winnie The Pooh on valium. Feather soft.
While I could steer you towards some fuzzy and affectionate motion pictures that would see you through to the very end of this tormenting encounter with regret, I'd much rather steer you away from some films that I, myself, have had the absolute calamity of sitting through while deep within the depths of a sore head and a tattered soul.
What do I always say?
I'm the only one that cares about you. I'm looking out for your best interests.
Before I begin, I have to mention that only one of these films was chosen on the basis of being shamelessly bad (It's Hustle & Flow, obviously.), and that I really do like the majority of them, but in those dire moments of anxiety and profuse sweating, they did all but help me to regain the humanity I'd so foolishly offered up to the lord of cans. Proceed.
The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)
I'm kicking this off with what I'd consider to be the mother of all surreal horror, which means that it's also ten tonnes of fucking plague to your mind, hungover or not. The Abominable Dr. Phibes inhabits a very strange place on the horror spectrum because it could have been the camp 70's horror that it was obviously intended to be, but with the brilliant and ever scowling Vincent Price taking the role of Phibes, it became one of the most disturbing and intricate horror films of its time. It lures you in with the promise of early 70's goofiness and thinly veiled playfulness, but from the headache-inducing opening sequence to its cold, empty ending, The Abominable Dr. Phibes is not a movie you want to stick on after spilling your serotonin bucket all over the chipper.
The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007)
It takes a very exceptional kind of film to upset me to the core and knock me off centre, The Poughkeepsie Tapes did just that, and it left me like a quivering and pathetic mass of jelly with no hope for a better tomorrow. While I'd rather offer my dick up to a mountain lion than sit through another found-footage film, this one really is special, so very nasty, and must be avoided at all costs if you aren't mentally prepared for it. If a film about a bind/torture/killer with a tendency to videotape his chilling exploits isn't the kind of shocker you'd rather steer clear of while nursing a porter head, then your heart is made of iron and your will of stone. This one really shit on my soul, and I was still under alcohol's reassuring spell at the time.
Visitor Q (2001)
If I had it my way, those that sully the name of Takashi Miike would be ritually humiliated, decapitated, and buried at the crossroads for the ghouls to feed on. However, sometimes Takashi Miike is too good. Visitor Q, when placed side by side with Miike's other works, comes off as the 'real piece of work' of the gang. It's the kind of ride you want to jump off mid-way, expelling a spiteful quantity of bodily fluids all the way until you pancake yourself to solid ground. This is a film that was designed specifically to bewilder, confuse, and repulse you, and that's before you've even necked a pint.
The Gestapo's Last Orgy (1977)
For all that is good and wholesome, do not even run a search on this film if you are feeling in any way perceptive to the ills of mankind. You will not find the answers here.
Hustle & Flow (2005)
Never mind the fact that this very easily one of the worst films I've ever sat through, this film does everything in its power to make you reject its characters and its plot before you even know who anyone is or what's going on. I wish I could rewind this on VHS just so I could hate it backwards. The central characters are mostly detestable MTV cribs poster children that feed a ho-hum story line that crawls toward an uninspired ending with absolutely no pay-off. I wouldn't recommend this film to someone with a clear head, and if you were thinking straight and happened to enjoy this film, your mother doubtlessly huffed glue while heavily pregnant with you.
The House By The Cemetery (1981)
In my opinion, this is one of Fulci's most disappointing horrors and one of those films that probably found itself buried in the dust left behind by the explosive The Beyond which was released in the same year. However, it's not the movie's quality that will have you pulling your hair out. This film features, easily, the most annoying horror movie kid of all time. Terrible dubbing, when coupled with a little boy who's face is far too punchable for his age, is a bitter cocktail for disaster. If you manage to watch this one with a sullied head on your shoulders, you've the patience of a saint.
Northville Cemetery Massacre (1976)
I don't know about you, but I experience these powerful bouts of attachment during my hangovers, be it to food, liquids, my blanket, or sometimes people. I feel that I need to project this fancied beauty onto these things so that I may spark up a light at the end of the tunnel, or at least squint hard enough to imagine one. Northville Cemetery Massacre is one of my all time favourite biker films with some of the most memorable characters you could ask for. That's why I've added NCM to the list...all of those characters, they're taken from you. Almost every member of that motley crew full of rebels and merrymakers is tragically ripped from existence, leaving you bleak, empty, and reaching for the bottle once again.
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