Something Weird

Something Weird
H.G. Lewis
1967 – color
Genre – horror (for lack of any better description)

If you’re watching a film and you happen to notice that it has some weird, almost atonal music to it. You may just be watching a H.G. Lewis film. He had a tendency to do the music for his own films, but the only problem is that he wasn’t really all that musically inclined. Most notorious of his work is the timpani drum music that he did for blood feast, but in a close second is the oddball echo music that is done for Something Weird (SWV’s namesake). Despite the music, the one thing you could almost always expect from Lewis was a good exploitation flick. He was a master, especially when he was working with his long time partner David Friedman. Granted he isn’t working with Friedman on Something Weird, but it’s still one helluva flick.

Cronin Mitchell is an electrical engineer, but in a freak accident his face is burned beyond recognition. By some freak chance, remembering that back in the sixties any little thing could set off some super power, he gains incredible psychic powers. However, due to his deformity he takes a job as a masked fortune reader. One day he gets a visit from a woman named Ellen who offers him an amazing offer. Be her lover and she’ll restore his “beautiful face’. See Ellen is a witch and an ugly one at that and she wants nothing more than to be loved. The unfortunate thing is that everyone else can see her as a beautiful woman, poor Mitch is stuck seeing the witch.

Mitch is asked to help solve a series of grisly murders, you know because he’s a “sensitive”. Apparently, unlike in the “real world”, this small Midwest City requires proof of his abilities. I mean, who cares if there’s a killer they could be catching? He guesses countless flash cards and even levitates; he even manages to get a ghost to stop haunting the local church. While all this is going on Dr. Alex Jordan is observing Mitchell, he observes so much that he falls in love with Ellen. Yeah, poor guy. Between some oddly placed drug use and weird events they somehow manage to discover who was committing all the murders. Just not fast enough to save Mitch from being murdered himself. With Mitchell out of the picture Jordan is free to pursue Ellen and soon discovers that maybe he shouldn’t have.

Something Weird is a lot of fun. It’s so insane on so many levels that the name is amazingly apt. It also makes a lot of sense why this would be the title to inspire the name of the company. Amazing!

Enjoy it sickos

5 out of 5