Herschel Gordon Lewis has many claims to fame. Film historians credit him with creating the 'splatter' horror film. H.G. Lewis worked in the fringe and produced what most people derogate as 'exploitation' films. He acquired his reputation for "Blood Feast" (1963) and replicated the formula with two more gore features "Two Thousand Maniacs!" (1964) and "Color Me Blood Red" (1965).
Despite his critical cinematic recognition, H.G. Lewis has directed some potboilers. Budgeted at $35-thousand dollars, "Something Weird" looks amateurish with uneven acting and occasionally out of focus photography. These defects detract the marginal credibility it musters from its conventional, uninspired James F. Hurley screenplay that combines fairy tales with the modern day scourge of Communism. Basically, "Something Weird" makes you want to laugh rather than cringe when its melodramatics turn to antics. For example, the fairy tale witch subplot falls apart due to childish, Halloween make-up. Clocking in at 80 minutes, "Something Weird" is mercifully brief and tosses in the legitimate use of the narcotic LSD in a plot about an individual who is so severely burned in an accident that he acquires a supernatural psychic ability.
"Something Weird" opens with a crime sequence. A man whose identity is hidden strangles a beautiful young woman to death in what appears to be an alley. This serial killer of sorts will figure prominently later on in the story. Afterward, the scene shifts to a martial arts studio where an instructor comments about his student's improper exhibition of karate when breaking a board. Dr. Alex Jordan (William Brooker) has the instructor, Kim, show him the proper way.
The scene shifts to an exterior where an electrician plunges from a telephone pole to the ground with a severed power cable hanging near him. His body flops involuntarily from the electrical charge and several other men surround him. One man, Cronin Mitchell (Tony McCabe), pulls the cable away from the prostrate body, but Mitchell suffers injury when the cable gives him a jolt of electricity and knocks him down and out. An ambulance arrives and a medical crew hauls Mitchell's body off on a stretcher to the hospital.
H.G. Lewis pauses the narrative at this point to linger on a long shot of a cloudy sky and the following narration is heard. "Science knows that people contact the world around them by their five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. But many times a person reports an awareness of a happening when none of these channels could possibly be involved. This then is the sixth sense, the extra sensory perception, commonly known as ESP. The Russians for the past decade have intensified their experimentation in extra sensory perception research. They are working and experimenting on a crash program whose goal is to surpass America in the field of parapsychology. Dr. Alex Jordan, a renowned parapsychologist, is employed by a branch of the federal government for the top secret work in ESP and its relationship to American defense. This organization is determined that the United States will be the first to communicate with other planets, the first to advance in the field of ESP, and the last to perish in an all out nuclear war." With this narration, Lewis has added a modicum of significance to "Something Weird" and turned it into a Cold War thriller.
The next scene finds Mitch in a low-lighted hospital bed, suffering from the memory of the accident. Lewis then cuts to a professor's office at a nearby university where Mitchell's doctor, Dr. White, has gone to consult about Mitch's psychic ability. The professor is impressed with Mitchell. "Not doubt about it, Dr. White, Cronin Mitchells Now, it may be that his accident was the cause, I don't know. Or it may be the electrical current he was subjected to. We have several theories." Nevertheless, the skeptical Dr. White doesn't share the professor's opinion. He thinks Mitchell is a fake. "I have tested literally thousands of these psychics and he ran through my deck of ESP cards like it was child's play."
Later, Mitch proves his ability with a nurse as he guesses correctly each card she selects from a deck. She asks him about her future and then he makes a pass at her. She admonishes him for his inappropriate behavior and switches on the lights. The brightly lighted room propels him into the bathroom where he gazes at his scarred face in the mirror. "You're disgusting. No one can look at you, not even yourself" the nurse shrinks in revulsion. "A freak like you should have died!"
Eventually, Mitch makes a living where he reveals the future for $2 dollars a reading. He sports sunglasses and a dark veil so nobody can see his disfigured face. After work one day, he is surprised when the Bible of Witchcraft has materialized in his hands. Suddenly, a long gray haired crone in a yellow dress appears out of nowhere. Mitchell's scarred face disturbs him so deeply that he listens to a Faustian proposition that this witch, Ellen (Elizabeth Lee), makes that he cannot refuse. "Become my lover then you shall have your pretty face." Naturally, Mitchell agrees. The complication is Ellen looks gorgeous to everybody else except Mitchell since he can see what she really looks like—a hag. The vain Cronin Mitchell becomes a celebrated psychic. Dramatic events occur when Cronin tries to identify the schizophrenic killer in the small town of Jefferson, Wisconsin, with his psychic abilities. The government dispatches Dr. Jordan to assist the police. Jordan gives Mitchell LSD as a part of a question and answer session that he plans to have with him. Complications arise when Jordan grows enamored with the witch and deliberately lets the killer gun down Mitchell.
"Something Weird" isn't top-notch H.G. Lewis. Indeed, it may strike most people who know nothing about his prestige as unintentional, half-baked, quasi-sci-fi/horror hokum.
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