Remnants of a Disaster

"Touring makes you crazy," Frank Zappa says, explaining that the idea for this film came to him while the Mothers of Invention were touring. The story, interspersed with performances by the Mothers and the Royal Symphony Orchestra, is a tale of life on the road. The band members' main concerns are the search for groupies and the desire to get paid.

A surreal and disturbing distillation of Western Civilization, Necropolis is the unhinged vision of Italian director Franco Brocani. Pierre Clémenti is Attila the Hun, naked and on horseback, while Warhol superstar Viva is a drunken and abusive Countess Bathory. A pop pastiche for the psychedelic generation, Necropolis features a soundtrack by Gavin Bryars.

A surreal look at the schizophrenia of a group of girls in a therapy session.

Semi-autobiographical story of Conrad Rooks, who travels to France to undergo a drug-withdrawal cure. Flashbacks to the beginings of psychedelia in San Fran. Though initially confusing, as Rooks blends drug-illusion with reality, and cuts color with black-and-white and monochrome tinted shots, "Chappaqua" is conventionally constructed with a beginning, middle, and end.

First time father Henry Spencer tries to survive his industrial environment, his angry girlfriend, and the unbearable screams of his newly born mutant child.

After a catastrophic global war, a young filmmaker awakens in the carnage and seeks refuge in the only other survivor: an eccentric, ideologically opposed figure of the United States military. Together, they brave the toxic landscape in search of safety... and answers.

During the Civil War in 17th-Century England, a small group of deserters flee from a raging battle through an overgrown field. They are captured by an alchemist, who forces the group to aid him in his search to find a hidden treasure that he believes is buried in the field. Crossing a vast mushroom circle, which provides their first meal, the group quickly descend into a chaos of arguments, fighting and paranoia, and, as it becomes clear that the treasure might be something other than gold, they slowly become victim to the terrifying energies trapped inside the field.

The Committee, starring Paul Jones of Manfred Mann fame, is a unique document of Britain in the 1960s. After a very successful run in London’s West End in 1968, viewings of this controversial movie have been few and far between. Stunning black and white camera work by Ian Wilson brings to life this “chilling fable” by Max Steuer, a lecturer (now Reader Emeritus) at the London School of Economics. Avoiding easy answers, The Committee uses a surreal murder to explore the tension and conflict between bureaucracy on one side, and individual freedom on the other. Many films, such as Total Recall, Fahrenheit 451 and Camus’ The Stranger, see the state as ignorant and repressive, and pass over the inevitable weaknesses lying deep in individuals. Drawing on the ideas of R.D. Laing, a psychologically hip state faces an all too human protagonist.

Catherine, a nun with a unique form of narcolepsy, attempts to lose herself in the worlds of religion, adolescent fantasy, and finally masochistic devotion to a man. Her husband, a plastic surgeon, has evolved from a yeti-like creature to accommodate her masochism with increasingly extreme and bizarre rituals. With an experimental and ground-breaking format, The Three Trials incorporates surreal narrative, music video, and abstract imagery. The viewer is left to interpret what is real, what is dream, and what is false narrative in this feverish, pitch-black comedy with a smorgasbord of sexual fetishes.

Renee wakes up one morning in the middle of the desert with blood on her hands. She cannot remember why she is there, how she got there or with whom she came. Her quest to uncover forgotten events leads her on a journey of discovery where reality and memory collide and people are not what they seem.

In a surreal universe where bananas fire laser beams and soup cans are used as grenades, a wacky cast of gangsters are thrown into a deadly game to battle it out over a mystical longboard in this trippy take on the Tarantino crime genre.

Julie, a teen who died from a PCP overdose in the early '70s, searches from beyond the grave for her younger brother Bob, who now in the '90s is an obese watch seller suffering with sucrose intolerance.

The world has ended. All that is left behind are individual beauty cults, groups of girls seeking safety and identity in numbers. Basing their bond on hair color and giving themselves strangely evocative gang names, the blond Phayrays (King Kong), the brunette Satanas (Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!), and the wicked, redheaded Tempests (as in Storm, the stripper) are constantly battling the brutish cavemen roaming the afterworld ruins and looking for potential dye job converts. Only one group tries to incorporate all follicle factions. They are the Superstarlets.

A tall, skinny boy obsessed with traffic cones, a lesbian Adam and Eve, a wise bearded man, and the self-proclaimed King of the Sea all wander about the surreal landscape of GLAMARUS, watched over by a man who lives in a television set.

The Tenant continuously fails to escape his deadly apartment under five minute time limit as his blood-thirsty neighbor threatens to break in and exterminate him.

Twenty years after modern civilization has been destroyed, Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie, a 14-year-old girl, out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both must traverse the United States and depend on each other for survival.

Deadliest Warrior was a television program in which information on historical or modern warriors and their weapons are used to determine which of them is the "deadliest" based upon tests performed during each episode. The show was characterized by its use of data compiled in creating a dramatization of the warriors' battle to the death. The show ran for three seasons.

Nikita will stop at nothing to expose and destroy Division, the secret U.S. agency who trained her as a spy and assassin.

Harsh Realm is a science fiction television series about humans trapped inside a virtual reality simulation.

Contest in which teams fight each other in virtual reruns of the world's greatest battles.

The surreal life of Salad Fingers, an unknown creature living in an apocalyptic wasteland.

Two bored groundskeepers, Mordecai (a six-foot-tall blue jay) and Rigby (a hyperactive raccoon) are best friends who spend their days trying to entertain themselves by any means necessary, much to the displeasure of their boss. Their everyday pursuits often lead to things spiraling out of control and into the surreal.

In the distant future, two groups of soldiers battle for control of the least desirable piece of real estate in the known universe: a box canyon in the middle of nowhere.

One part Anthony Burch, one part Ashly Burch, three parts Papa Burch, four parts video games and two parts surreal humor for one Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'? Let cool for ten minutes after baking. Makes three servings.

I Survived a Zombie Apocalypse is a horror-themed game show set in the future after a nationwide epidemic has transformed most of the country's population into ravenous zombies. The contestants have to survive in the Monroe Shopping Village and need to work together to secure their makeshift base as they try and avoid any contact with the flesh-eaters. Anybody still “alive” after seven days is then rescued and sent to a tropical quarantine zone as a reward.

Helmed by the easily distracted Dr. Roberts, a psychotherapeutic facility treats patients with troubling dreams. Roberts employs a team of incompetent scientists to help analyze and record those thoughts plaguing the doctor's patients.

Two strangers are drawn to a mysterious pharmaceutical trial that will, they're assured, with no complications or side-effects whatsoever, solve all of their problems, permanently. Things do not go as planned.

Tim and Eric present a grotesquely surreal anthology of discarded sketches, found footage, musical numbers, and 3D animation.

At a boutique health-and-wellness resort that promises healing and transformation, nine stressed city dwellers try to get on a path to a better way of living. Watching over them during this 10-day retreat is the resort's director, Masha, a woman on a mission to reinvigorate their tired minds and bodies. However, these nine "perfect" strangers have no idea what is about to hit them.

Traversing trippy worlds inside his universe simulator, Clancy the space caster explores existential questions about life, death and everything in between.