A classic. Puerile, repulsive, obscene, and wildly entertaining. Highlights: a man manipulates his southern orifice, a "woman" pleasures her son, a twosome mate with little regard for the safety of a chicken, and a drag queen eats dog feces. Director John Waters is the Ingmar Bergman of the trailer park.

Here was Federico Fellini at his most self-indulgent and surreal. Heavily-rouged and suitably garlanded men and boys copulate and party in ancient Rome, well in the throes of its full-tilt decadent phase. (See also: the ecclesiastical fashion show in FELLINI ROMA and the trippy Catholic school nightmares in JULIET OF THE SPIRITS.)

Okay, some people think Matthew Barney is a pretentious idiot, and I certainly hold it against him -- how can I not? -- that he used to play football and be a male model. He is almost disqualified on those counts alone, but his Cremaster mythology is too wild and strange to miss. (This is only a 30-minute segment from one of the five CREMASTER films.)

Nothing much happens in this film -- which in itself makes it weird by American standards. Oh, of course, there is that notorious fellatio scene with Vincent Gallo and Chloe Sevigny, but it's not about the titillation -- it's all about the loneliness. (An absolute must for melancholics.)

Maya Deren was an O.G. (original gangstress?) of the avant garde film world, making and starring in these sometimes ominous short films in the 1940's. In particular, check out "Meshes of the Afternoon," a creepy short included in the American film registry.

Essentially a plotless Marxist diatribe (sometimes quite literally) in which the thin storyline all but disintegrates by approximately the half-way point. This is Jean-Luc Godard at his most Godardian, which means that he is up to his typical audience-alienating, Brechtian hi-jinks.

Bunuel assembles a series of often absurdist vignettes, most of which point to the bankruptcy of bourgeois life. (Sample: Couples sit on toilets at the table during a dinner party and eat their food, to their biological embarrassment, in the bathroom.)

This edgy MTV2 kids show parody puts SOUTH PARK and other supposedly biting and satirical shows in the shade. Plus, it's hysterically funny, in a "I can't believe they just did/said that" way.

A fascinating documentary about man-child and outsider artist Henry Darger, whose private mythology centered on a band of frilly and moralistic girls (with penises, by the way) who fight an assortment of evil forces in an epic war.

No weird and wild list is complete without high priest of weird and wild himself, David Lynch. This Cannes Palme d'Or winning white-trash-on-the-lam epic features an Elvis wannabe, Glinda the Good Witch, and Grace Zabriskie with a gimp leg.

This cyberpunk-style Japanese film is often remembered best for its uniquely industrial version of intercourse, in which the title character's member is a giant rotating, pointy-tipped drill-like mechanism.

This is a strange and hypnotic dismemberment and reassembly of hokey commercial and promotional videos (mainly circa the 70's and 80's) into surreal montages.

The grandmommie of all 1970's blaxploitation films... includes a lesbian bar brawl and the ultimate feminist revenge: a phallus in a pickle jar. (And, no, I'm not kidding.)

No longer available, but well worth seeking out. Mary Beth Hurt plays the intriguing Jean Seberg (Godard's Breathless star, who was monitored by the FBI and who committed suicide in the late 1970's) in this one-woman (semi-fictional) biographical film. The film is comprised of nothing but Hurt addressing the camera in a studio, along with various photos of the real Seberg.

Derek Jarman's atmospheric (but, by all reasonable estimations, plotless) film includes the vocal contribution of legendary screamer Diamanda Galas and nicely captures the spirit of 1980's experimentation and "alternative" culture.

Early Fassbinder (shot in Technicolor - or a process very Technicolor-esque) about a black slave kept by a vicious, anemic-looking southern family and toyed with by a white saloon singer (played with admirable tone-deafness by Fassbinder mainstay Hannah Schygulla).

Find out what former Factory denizen and Warhol socialite Brigid Berlin (a.k.a. Brigid Polk) is up to these days. Sneak peek: She's really, REALLY into key lime pies, she creates paintings by pressing her breasts into paint and then onto a canvas, and she's mellowed out considerably (or should I say sold out?--YOU be the judge).

Even better than Volume 1, this compilation includes Anger's ritualistic masterpieces "Scorpio Rising," "Lucifer Rising," and "Invocation of My Demon Brother" (the last of which features a member of the Manson family, as well as a semi-goofy cameo by Anton LeVey, and is one of my favorite shorts of all time).

Quasi-real (in a "meta" sort of way) story of Warhol It Girl Edie Sedgwick's descent into social obscurity and severe drug addiction. Mostly sad, CIAO! MANHATTAN alludes to some serious questions about the filmmaker's responsibility. (Is it ethical--or tasteful--to depict an obviously troubled woman's freefall for entertainment? Discuss amongst yourselves.)

Mike Kuchar's underground 1960's classic is a high-camp take on the science fiction genre in which enslaved androids develop human emotions and revolt against their decadent human masters. The acting is over-the-top, the production values are nil, and the narration is effete and full-tilt melodramatic. All in all, a wonder to behold... (Disc includes two other great Kuchar shorts as well.)