Movie, May I? An Alternate Hyperreal Calendar

April showers brings May flowers, but who has time to go outside when there’s so many movies to watch? As we gear up for our packed summer schedule, the good folks at Hyperreal Film Club have come together to find even more movies for you to add to your watchlist. Those with a troubling appetite for human flesh can dine happy; those craving schlocky ninja action can put away their katanas. It’s all here, no need to ask mother for permission.

Ravenous—Trouble Every Day

Ravenous combines the subgenres of cannibal horror and revisionist Western to spin its macabre tale of American soldiers jacked up on human stew, conquering the West in a farce of bloody expansionism. The French also love a good cannibal yarn, and Claire Denis’ moody shocker Trouble Every Day is one of the country’s nastier such offerings.*

The film follows an American doctor, played by the embodiment of indie sleaze, Vincent Gallo, visiting France on honeymoon with his wife. The couple are deeply in love, but something seems mysteriously out of sync in their relationship. Meanwhile, an older French doctor attempts to imprison his own wife by boarding her up in their house because she keeps trying to eat dudes while fucking them.

The level of craft in Trouble Every Day intensifies its B-movie shock moments to an uncomfortable degree. (By B-movie shock moments, I mean this film will redefine the euphemism “eating out” for you.) French film icon Béatrice Dalle commits to her role as the feral cannibal woman in a way that seems modeled on those not-for-kids nature documentaries where you see the lions eviscerate the zebra. The haunting death-jazz score by Tindersticks saturates the sordid goings-on with lurid melancholy.

Following up her austere masterpiece Beau Travail with a gory horror film that became emblematic of the New French Extremity movement was a bold choice for Denis, one critics of the day did not appreciate. Nevertheless, the auteur cemented her place as one of the foremost image-makers in modern cinema, veering from the sunbaked beauty of her prior film into a hypnotic nightmare realm of anti-social decay.

* Notable runner-up: auto-cannibalism capitalism satire In My Skin.

Blood Feast—The Undertaker and His Pals

If Herschel Gordon Lewis’s crimson-colored classic leaves you craving more, help yourself to a second serving of cannibal kitsch with The Undertaker and His Pals. As the title suggests, we follow a local mortician and his buds at the diner next door—after chopping up girls with names like Sally Lamb, our undertaker makes bank on the funeral and the greasy spoon finds its next daily special. Leg of Lamb, anyone? Released among the first wave of films ripping off (sorry, “inspired by”) HGL’s iconic gorefest, Undertaker differentiates itself from the store-brand ‘60s gutspiller with a true surfeit of buffoonery. Punny names, a bizarre fixation on motorcycle gangs, at least one slip-on-a-skateboard gag, and a titular performance more John Waters than Phantasm. Best of all? It's only an hour long.

Death Becomes Her—Sick of Myself

Did you love seeing Meryl’s head on backwards but want to see more realistic body horror? Do you like your dark comedies pitch-black? Are you looking for social commentary on vanity in the digital age? For fans of Death Becomes Her that want to diversify their international film archive, I highly recommend 2022’s Norwegian satire Sick of Myself, the latest feature from Kristoffer Borgli.

One half of a pair of narcissists, Signe (Kristine Kujath Thorp) is desperate to divert attention from her rising artist boyfriend Thomas (Eirik Sæther) onto herself. Driven by resentment, she sets out on a mission to disfigure herself, intentionally causing a severe skin disease by way of black-market pills. As her appearance morphs to match her grotesque behavior, Borgli dips us in and out of her fantasies; the line between farce and fact grows hazy, inducing a delusion for the audience that matches Signe’s warped perception of reality.

While we never grow to pity Signe, we can at least understand her, just as we can understand Madeline and Helen’s desperation to return to their youthful beauty, and “by any means necessary” is no hyperbole in either film. All three women are grasping at relevance and chasing validation. They want to be perceived, admired, loved. They see those closest to them receive attention and success and interpret it as a threat, and their recourse is to roll the dice on an extreme solution with no regard for the gravity of their choice. Both films serve as a cautionary tale, warning against the hamartia of vanity by mocking those who fall subject to it. And just like Death Becomes Her, Sick of Myself is incredibly funny, serving just as many LOLs as it does gasps.

Drive—M.A.N.T.I.S.

There’s something about small screen DTV action flicks that just hits different. It feels like a liminal space playground, a medium where the stakes (and budget) aren’t quite high enough to demand the grand-scale storytelling and starpower that makes or breaks a theatrical run. Drive has got room to breathe, room to play, room to let its protagonists goof around in the car or at the diner because it's cheaper to film than another action sequence, and we end up with an incredibly friendly, lived-in movie as a result.

In one of our many brief pandemic pivots that we flipped on when we couldn’t run live shows, Tanner, Jenni, and I made 13 (plus multiple lost entries) episodes of a podcast we called Straight to Video where we talked about some of our favorite movies that didn’t have a traditional theatrical run. Amongst the DCOMS and Ewok adventures was a real gem and reportedly the first Black primetime superhero tale: M.A.N.T.I.S.

We’ve got lots of parallels here, most forward being the human-mech hybrid enabling ultra-powered crime fighting, but most importantly these flicks are DTV brethren. Carl Lumbly, soft spoken but DADDY inventor of the Mechanically Augmented Neuro Transmitter Interception System, would be right at home bopping along with Toby and Malik. So next time you’re feeling overwhelmed by the grandiosity of it all, just remember—sometimes you have to think small.

New York Ninja—Ninja Terminator

New York Ninja may have been shelved in 1984 and saved in 2021, but what if someone wanted an incoherent plot, rich production lore, and absurd sequences that didn't take 37 years to ferment? That's where Godfrey Ho's Ninja Terminator front flips into frame. Released in 1986, this lo-fi ninja flick has snappier choreography, more nonsensical characters, a laughably bad dub, and Richard Harrison. Who's Richard Harrison? He's the man Godfrey Ho edited into 19 "Ninja" titled movies from 1986-88. The kicker? Godfrey Ho never shot a single specific scene for those 19 movies; instead he pooled a vault of films and reusable scenes that could be arranged and dubbed to fit a narrative in post. So... when you think about it, you're not only getting one bonkers ninja action feature, you're technically getting somewhere between 1-19. In this movie's cobbled plot, Richard Harrison steals a magic idol from a power-hungry crime lord named Tiger Chen, then teams up with Jaguar Wong to take down the Tiger Dynasty. Between this and New York Ninja, there's an abundance of unintentionally hilarious moments, over the top action, and a testament to the power of re-editing all throughout.

Heat—Mikey and Nicky

There’s more to Heat than just Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, but the movie’s not not just about them, either. They only share two scenes together, but their raw, animal chemistry becomes a microcosm of the whole film. Two dudes at war with each other, unable to do anything else and uninterested in doing anything else. Are they fighting or fucking? Why not both?

But what if, to butcher an idiom, you built the whole plane out of the black box? What if you built a whole movie out of two guys, sometimes friends, sometimes foes, whose complicated histories and natural chemistry implied a whole tormented history? Well, you’d probably get Mikey and Nicky, one of the best possible examples of the “guys being dudes (sad)” genre. Like Pacino and De Niro, John Cassavetes and Peter Falk were longtime friends in real life, although they’d worked together in many more movies than the former pair. Cassavtetes and Falk’s easy working chemistry and the complicated friendship they shared behind the camera combines to make one of the richest portraits of longtime male friendship in cinema history.

The Legend of Billie Jean—Norma Rae

In my own cinematic universe, I have often given Billie Jean Davy an older sister. Her name is Norma Rae Wilson. Instead of spending her free time in the waters off the coast of Texas, Norma Rae cools off hopping in creek beds in North Carolina. She earns her keep working in a textile mill, where her boss thinks she only causes trouble. Billie Jean’s rebellious spirit and dedication to fighting for justice were inspired by her sister’s constant effort to make her work environment a safer place to be. Norma Rae is the sister grounded in reality, as opposed to Billie Jean’s anthemic and fantastical approach to fighting for the cause. Both women understand that they must speak loudly in order for men to look past their pretty faces and listen to their bold words.

Based on the true story of Crystal Lee Sutton, Martin Ritt’s Norma Rae was a critical success, gaining Sally Field her first Academy Award. Norma Rae recognizes how dangerous the mill she works in is, and after meeting with a union rep, realizes that she and the other workers must unionize in order to protect themselves. Sally Field's small stature and girl-next-door looks make a perfect disguise for her powerhouse performance. She plays Norma Rae as fierce and unyielding, standing up to the men who assault her and the bigots that assume she’s “fallen into the wrong crowd” when her fight to unionize becomes intersectional. Though this film doesn’t have The Legend of Billie Jean’s same pizazz, wacky color palette, or soundtrack full of '80s bangers, Norma Rae packs the same divine feminine punch that inspires young women to remember that our voices deserve to be heard and our battles are worth fighting.