Asian Diamonds in the Rough
Oldboy: In Saw II they mentioned a movie where a guy was locked up for 15 years in the same room, I'm pretty sure he was talking about this movie. An average guy gets drunk and wakes up inside a room where he has to stay for 15 years. Once he is released he searches for his captor and soon realizes the 15 years of imprisonment wasn't the worst part of his situation.
Uzumaki: Based on a manga (Japanese comic book) written by a dentist named Junji Ito. A small town in Japan is in the grips of madness stemming from things that are spiral shaped. This is truly one of the most unsettling movies I've ever seen, but it hardly even does the manga justice. It's also an easy read compared to many manga comic books, which read right to left, this one goes left to right so it's pretty much like any other comic book. I think the only thing creepier than a comic book written by a dentist is one made by clowns... *shutter*
Twilight Zone
There are a lot of Twilight Zones that are great my 4 favorite episodes are actually available on two DVD's Volume 2 and Volume 29.
Time Enough at Last: This was parodied on Family Guy, a man who's only dream is to be able to read all day are constantly thwarted by his wife and boss who are fed up with him shirking his responsibilities to read. This forces him to sneak into the vault of the bank he works for to read on his lunch break, during which nuclear holocaust occurs. Being the last man on earth he finally has time to read all of his books.
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: A Twilight Zone classic, this features William Shatner before he was on Star Trek. It was remade for the Twilight Zone Movie as well as being parodied on one of The Simpson's Tree House of Horror segments. It features a man who had such an intense nervous breakdown on an airplane that it had to make a forced landing. After a long psychiatric treatment he is deemed sane enough to fly home. I would like to not spoil it, but there is a gremlin on the wing and that's the gist of it; the rest is just about Shatner craziness.
A Nice Place to Visit: A tough thug dies and is approached by an angelic person who can give him everything he ever wants; all he has to do is wish for it. He realizes that the thrill is gone when he can wish for anything he wants. He also realizes that even if he were to wish things to be by chance at any time he could just wish for things to be better again. It is a simple idea but it gets my psychological and existential gears turning. This was briefly parodied on Futurama.
A Penny for your Thoughts: I have a sneaking suspicion that Jim Carrey's Stanley Ipkiss character from The Mask is loosely based on this; but according to Carrey it was based on his father. Anyway, a guy flips a coin into a tray when purchasing a news paper and it lands on the coin's edge, suddenly can read people's minds. One of the few sort of funny Twilight Zones, starring Dick York (one of the Darrens from Bewitched).
American Movies
Sleepaway Camp: This was kind of eclipsed by more popular slasher serieses like Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th; the movie isn't the greatest, but it has a very strange twist and the very last scene actually gave me a new image for my nightmares.
European
Thriller a Cruel Picture: One of my favorite things about this movie is that the Swedish director Bo A. Vibenius made a film that had been considered a failure, so he tried to make a more commercial movie and this is what he came up with. It's basically a porno with a revenge sub-plot; oh yeah and there is a real corpse that gets it's eye cut out (according to popular legend). Tarantino used this as part of his inspiration for Kill Bill specifically a nod to the girl with an eye patch that matches her clothes... It's worth seeing if you can find it; I wouldn't watch it with your girlfriend though.
Donkey Punch: This is the first movie that I thought was weird because it was exactly what the title said it would be. I remember the chick at the Blockbuster glared at me, "Is this movie about..." "Yes... yes it is; I don't know what I was expecting" I said.
Takashi Miike
Now in order to rate the films of director Takashi Miike, I have to start by saying that these are all WAY worse than anything you will see in the United States. By worse I don't just mean violent; I'm talking disturbing, depraved, repulsive; these films are considered war crimes in some places. So be warned if you decide to watch them. I've rated them in my own rating system because these would all be NC-17 and then some if they were in the US.
Tame for Miike's Films but still way Worse than Anything You've Ever Seen
Full Metal Yakuza: This is one of Miike's earlier films, it's like the japanese version of Robocop. It's not one of the best ones by Miike, but probably one of the few you could show in a U.S. theater.
Audition: A man decides to hold an audition for the perfect wife alongside a friend who is casting for a movie, in order to not seem so melancholy in front of his teenage son. If you were curious what Misery would have been like with a hot Asian woman... and instead of having an obsession with authors she has more of an obsession with collecting people's body parts, then rent this. The worst part of this movie is that it seems totally normal for the first 3/4 of the movie... but then you are on a roller-coaster ride that you have absolutely no control over. You can find this movie at the top of nearly every website's "Most Disturbing Films" list.
You won't be able to Finish these Movies
Ichi the Killer: A Yakuza film (Japanese mafia movies that are filled with over the top violence and bizarre plots) in which a feared Yakuza muscle named Kakihara (who would make an awesome Halloween costume, but would require tons of make-up) loses his boss Anjo and scours the slums of Tokyo for any sign of him. Kakihara is a sadist and masochist, but saying he's some S&M fetish guy would reaaaalllllyyy be missing the mark. No whips, leather, and nipple clamps for this guy; his interests are more along the line of cutting his own tongue out and sticking giant needles deep in his ear. And as far as sadism, he makes Pinhead from Hellraiser look like Rip Taylor. The police send out the only person capable of killing Kakihara; Ichi, a gross perversion of a superhero who is brainwashed to the point of total warped madness, this coupled with many crippling emotional problems he makes me look like Rip Taylor. Don't say I didn't warn you!
Happiness of the Katakuris: If you've ever seen that South Park where they get the porno tape instead of The Lord of the Rings and they tell Token to watch it and he seems all pale and distant and says he doesn't want to play anymore. This is exactly what happened after seeing this movie as an adult.
You will not be able to Unsee the things you See in this Movie
Visitor Q: A typical family next door... if the mother and daughter are both prostitutes and the dad... Okay just look at the keywords for this movie, it's basically EVERYTHING you can't show in a movie in the United States:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290329/keywords
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