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Ed (1996)
The High Concept: Monkey plays baseball.
The Weird: Jesus, where to start? Poor old Matt LeBlanc scuttles his big-screen prospects by starring as Jack “Deuce” Cooper, a hot-shot baseball pitcher who finds himself teaming up with, er, a chimp. Part of a horrific trend of animal-sportsmen movies that Hollywood churns out from time to time. See Air Bud for more details.
How To Make It Weirder: Flushed with Ed’s success, the team makes another raid on the animal kingdom, signing up a panda to play at first base.
Little Man (2006)
The High Concept: A midget pretends to be a baby to rob a vulnerable couple.
The Weird: In what world would an adult male ever be able to pass himself off as an infant? Midget or not, he still has the face of a man in his thirties! This is so utterly, utterly bizarre it’s almost worth watching to verify that it actually exists. However, the crucial word in that sentence is “almost”…
How To Make It Weirder: Not possible. Featuring Tracy Morgan, this could be one of Tracy Jordan’s spoof movies on 30 Rock . Although even Black Cop / White Cop seems more plausible than Little Man …
Naked Fear (2008)
The High Concept: A serial killer strips his victims naked before hunting them.
The Weird: How cynical can you get? This half-baked thriller is basically an excuse to have star Danielle De Luca run around with her kit off for an hour or so, with all manner of ludicrous plot points thrown in to ensure she stays that way. At one point she finds a shirt, only to cut her feet moments later, forcing her to use it as a bandage. Exploitative nonsense.
How To Make It Weirder: By having her find an abandoned set of stockings and suspenders, thigh-high boots and some make-up. But no bra or knickers, naturally.
Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977)
The High Concept: The adventures of a man-eating bed.
The Weird: A man-eating bed? However did that come about? Well, it’s quite the story actually. Once upon a time, there was a demon, who took the form of a tree. And then a breeze (yes, actually). Having spotted a woman he had fallen in love with, the demon took human form and wooed her into bed with him. However, during a bout of frenzied love-making, the poor woman died, causing the demon’s eyes to bleed all over the bed. From that day onward, the bed was possessed with an evil spirit, and ate everyone who ever lay on it. THIS IS ACTUALLY A MOVIE!
How To Make It Weirder: By accessorizing the bed with a faulty electric blanket. That way, it could fry its victims before digesting them…
Dial: Help (1988)
The High Concept: A spiritually possessed phone line stalks a hot model.
The Weird: *Sigh* Here we go again…Charlotte Lewis stars as successful model Jenny Cooper, who discovers her phone line has been possessed by the spirit of a dead telephone operator. Cue numerous hokey scenes in which various people are groped, tripped and garrotted by rogue telephone cords. It makes 976-Evil look like a documentary.
How To Make It Weirder: Scrap the dead operator angle, and just make the villains a race of killer phones. There’s no point trying to set up a convoluted backstory for something this daft!
Trees (2001)
The High Concept: Three men hunt down a man-eating tree.
The Weird: Yes, we know it’s a spoof of Jaws (complete with “we’re gonna need a bigger axe”-style quippage) but even so, it still goes down as a pretty weird concept. We’ve seen malicious trees in the past (Sam Raimi, take a bow) but not many that go as far as eating their victims whole. Quick, get the strimmer!
How To Make It Weirder: By surrounding it with other cannibalistic plants. A flesh-eating bush perhaps…
Teeth (2008)
The High Concept: A teenage girl has teeth in her vagina.
The Weird: A body-horror nightmare guaranteed to have all the blokes in the audience crossing their legs, Teeth tells the tale of a teenage girl whose vagina takes severe action whenever it feels threatened. Cue an unusually high number of attempted rapes, and an equally high number of severed members. Ouch.
How To Make It Weirder: Maybe if she didn’t have any teeth in her mouth? It’s a struggle to make this much weirder than it already is…
Shark In Venice (2008)
The High Concept: A man-eating shark munches on tourists in Venice.
The Weird: An absolute mess of a plot involving random shark attacks, missing treasure, shady mafiosos and a gurning Stephen Baldwin. The explanation for the shark’s presence is muddled at best, but who cares about that when a perma-twitching Baldwin is turning things up to eleven?
How To Make It Weirder: By having the treasure guarded by a giant octopus. Why should the sharks have all the fun?
The Lift (1983)
The High-Concept: A homicidal elevator terrorises its passengers.
The Weird: A simple elevator is the latest inanimate object to go off the rails in this daft ‘80s romp about a murderous lift. The explanation concerns some guff about experiments on microchips, but the real fun is to be found in the various ways the lift finds to off its victims…
How To Make It Weirder: By having the lift travel down to the bowels of hell. Although we’re sure that’s probably been done somewhere else…
The Thing With Two Heads (1972)
How To Make It Weirder: Stick a third head on there. Maybe a Chinese man with a comically poor grasp of English? That old bigot won’t like it one bit…
