Disembodied Reviews - William Kersten

Forgive the laziness, but imagine the goth love child of David Lynch, Paizs' Crime Wave, Cronenberg, and a dash of Alex Cox. And it's glorious.

Like Crime Wave, the cinematography of Disembodied utilizes a tight aspect ratio and color saturation and lighting evocative of 50s cinema. This allows the stop-motion and special effects, both make-up and creature practicals, to pulse and ooze right off the screen.

But possibly the best part of this screening was having the lead, Anastasia Woolverton, in attendance. She gave a short but adorable intro, and then pointed out that her kids' were in the audience, seated behind me. At the first appearance of one of the spectacular throbbing slimy effects, when her character looks down at the fleshy mass lovingly, I heard her whisper to her daughter, "That's how I look at you."

Does a night at the movies get any better?

chrichez

Watched by chrichez 09 Jan 2025

i want to preface this with i was a few miles south.of california fires when i watched this movie. it took me a few hours of starting and stopping to really complete it while the smell of smoke was in my room and ash on my car. the experience around me affected how i watched the movie.

it felt like an original story line. the film didn't feel like there were plot holes or drastic cuts. many of the sounds made me uncomfortable. the movie had a lot of texture. alien, wet, humanistic, gross. people changed in a specific way that was made complete with the addition of other characters without being over-explanatory. i love the two friends who had drastic personalities - one overly dry while the other a bubbly person both looking for friendship.

i couldnt see certain portions of the movie because of the VHS rip i watched. im happy vinegar syndrome released it in 4k (which i havent bought, but hope to)

Melissa

★★★ Watched by Melissa 12 Jan 2025

A sci-fi/body horror film following a goth girl who is something more than human in the best way. The set design feels like a grimy place where you don’t want to be at or touch because you’ll get a staph infection or worse.

franstregaespretensioso11

★★★★½  Watched by franstregaespretensioso11 12 Jan 2025

Connie Sproutz you will always be famous

Grimsarchive

★★★★  Watched by Grimsarchive 11 Jan 2025

This movie was great from start to finish, I can’t believe more people don’t know about this. This sci fi horror movie is really an underrated gem that should be more appreciated. Definitely give this movie a chance you won’t be disappointed.

jacob_morales

★★½ Watched by jacob_morales 11 Jan 2025

Goopy

Shelby

★★★★  Watched by Shelby 10 Jan 2025

Very satisfying! Props, set design, practical effects, lo-fi soundtrack all made with great care. The 16 mm film looks beautiful.

And, of course, it was very goofy. Splat!

swellzombie

★★★★½  Watched by swellzombie 07 Jan 2025

I needed this movie in the 90s! I would have kept loving it since then. At least it's gone across my eyes now.

It's so textured and sticky! Legit gnarly nightmare bathroom shit. Sweaty walls. Gemstone collection before it was cool. But then there's pre-steampunk like tech that is awesome and you want to twist some knobs.

All the characters are indy comic parodies of real people. Random things are uttered that fit the chaotic wonky soundtrack. This movie is nothing but 90s! Not in a derogatory way either. It's what I was looking for then.

Assignments

★★★★½  Watched by Assignments 05 Jan 2025

About as close to a midpoint between the works of Robert Bresson and Frank Henenlotter as one is likely to find. Images that are both necessary and gross.

Moose

★★★★★  Watched by Moose 04 Jan 2025

Yonic was a word I learned while watching this movie 👌

Waldo

★★★★★  Watched by Waldo 05 Jan 2025

This was a fantastic blend of rhe genres. Body horror mash with science fiction and the result blew me away. A woman rents a crappy apartment to have privacy for her body to go through its most horrific mutations floating through space and time and shit. Loved it.

DonOmegaMedia

★★★  Watched by DonOmegaMedia 02 Jan 2025

"Disembodied" is a strange, low-budget sci-fi horror and dark comedy. It's a little gross in a couple of scenes, but it's got a certain charm to it. Don't read too much about it beforehand. Just watch it first.

Andrew

★★★★½  Watched by Andrew 01 Jan 2025

Oh, this is my jam.

Rosemary Campbell

★★★★  Watched by Rosemary Campbell 01 Jan 2025

if my hot goth gf wants to turn me into goo or a weird little vulva-slug that’s chill but I’ll be god damned if she’s gonna bring potting soil into the bed

Bleeding Skull

★★★★  Rewatched by Bleeding Skull 01 Jan 2025 8

Just sharing this to commemorate the day that DISEMBODIED—our first 4K UHD release and fifth overall as an OCN/Vinegar Syndrome partner label—went up for pre-order. We first discovered this lovely body horror acid trip while writing our second book, BLEEDING SKULL! A 1990s TRASH-HORROR ODYSSEY, and it instantly became an all-time favorite. We're ecstatic to release a new 4K restoration of the original, uncut version of DISEMBODIED on disc for the first time ever—complete with a science lab full of extras and multiple versions of the film.

Get the 4K UHD + Blu-ray combo here:

vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage-partner-labels/products/disembodied

Madelyn

Watched by Madelyn 20 Dec 2024

hate it when the dick n balls crawls into my brain jar

redvelvetcorridor

★★★★½  Watched by redvelvetcorridor 01 Dec 2024

It wouldn't have been intellectually honest of me to give it 5 stars but that's how much I enjoyed it! A B-movie proud to be such, with original visuals and a lovely atmosphere, depicting female friendship in an ironic and much more plausible way than many Hollywood productions.The soundtrack (composed by the director himself) is also on point. Coralie Fargeat should have taken notes ✍️

RayAllenIII

★★★ Watched by RayAllenIII 24 Sep 2024

Amazing texture and sense of place. Love the special effects in this movie.

rian ashlin

★★★½  Watched by rian ashlin 28 Oct 2024

Disembodied and stuck in a jar of milk and shine, the brain of Connie Sproutz is no longer an employee of Plasmaster, but rather the witness to a body run amok planting diabolical seeds like potatoes. Manifest from the liminal space tween Eraserhead, Basket Case, and From Beyond.

UrsaInferior

★★★★ Watched by UrsaInferior 24 Oct 2024

Disembodied is strange, off kilter and apparently an ode to Henenlotter that has more heart and extracts a rich existentialism from a story about an alien parasite mutating its human host. Anything that's not cloaked in shadow is grimy and scuzzy, every surface covered in textures and growth that simple maintenance would prevent, like this is all happening to people mostly forgotten on the fringes of a society slowing unraveling. Also fairly obtuse in its storytelling, especially on a mechanical level, which makes me as curious to piece things together as it befuddles me a bit; almost demanding an eventual rewatch from me.

How do you even begin to hold onto yourself as you constantly shed pieces of the person you used to be? How much do you need to lose before you're no longer yourself? Does it all make you want to entrust the kindest person you know with the care of your consciousness so you can retreat to the desert to shed your peeling flesh and become something beautiful that no longer hurts people?

Peter H

Watched by Peter H 18 Oct 2024

A fascinating, sui generis oddity, with elements of body horror, science fiction, comedy, feminism, coming of age, metaphysics, and more. Kind of surprised this was directed by a man (judging by the name) because it has themes I usually associate with female filmmakers: female friendships, humanizing depiction of sex work, overly persistent men. Oh, and there's vagina imagery *everywhere.* Plus the protagonist is just a great character. Honestly not sure what to say about this one. It feels like the kind of thing that's going to be lodged in my head for a long time, despite (or because of) my inability to fully understand it.

Topi Borg

★★★  Added by Topi Borg 20 Oct 2024

This is a film that lives in the details. The set, costume, and props perfectly serve a cinematic acid trip, one where very little happens but much is communicated. It’s just never clear what exactly is being communicated. Loved the acid squirt.

Christopher Olvis

★★★ Watched by Christopher Olvis 18 Oct 2024

... or the brain is history!

trent wayne

★★★★★ Watched by trent wayne 04 Oct 2024

damn peaked too early this October, ain’t nothing topping this

S.T.

★★★★★ Watched by S.T. 03 Oct 2024

this is a really beautiful earnest weird movie that feels like an FMV game and features a sex worker named Trixie Turner. five star banger

cayce

★★★★1⁄2 Watched by cayce 02 Oct 2024 2

Hell of an independent production, for what must have been a tiny budget this is bursting with artistic vision -- diabolical biological transmogrifications, brains in jars, amazing names (Dr. Sigmund Sylvanus!),

Lynchian focus on electricity, alien geology, some great cleaning lady acting... The hotel sets honestly look fantastic and the effects work really well, the whole thing is just incredibly impressive and super cool. Loved it!!

Watched by Blair Hoyle 24 Sep 2024

It’s always nice to see the bad motherfuckers Bleeding Skull! at Fantastic Fest because you know they’ll deliver a fascinating genre movie at this genre film festival. But I digress...

Disembodied is a weird, thoroughly midwestern sci-fi-horror film about potatoes, a creepy hotel, and a brain... Shot on grainy 16mm, the 4K restoration looks great. If you think you’ll dig this, you will. I viewed this film via theatrical screening as part of Fantastic Fest 2024.

Watched by ron 24 Sep 2024

incredibly ambitious effort that delivers the goods. a crazy amalgam of retro b-sci-fi and body horror, peppered with just the right amount of left field camp and humor. loved it.

★★★1⁄2 Watched by kza_wu 16 Sep 2024

Lynchian. Cronenbergian. Bur....tonian? Look, those are easy names to throw out there, but they definitely fit. This film confidently wears its influences on its sleeve and that's not a bad thing. It's a low budget, DIY, surreal descent into some kind of fucked up nightmare. What happens I couldn't quite tell you, but I was never bored and was intrigued by what was onscreen. Definitely for the weirdos. DIG IT.

★★★★★ Watched by swimming_hole 14 Sep 2024

Live laugh eat brain like pussy.

★★★1⁄2 Rewatched by bloodseeress 14 Sep 2024

Perfect movie for a girls day.

★★★★ Watched by adie 12 Sep 2024

Connie you’re an absolute freak and I love you!!

★★★ Watched by k_warhaus 31 Aug 2024

Gross!!! A fkng nightmare. Strangely empowered female friendship

amber

★★★½  Watched by amber 31 Aug 2024 4

i love connie so much and i feel really bad for her. having a face penis AND a stomach vagina is just too much. thanks again to skylar for another banger recommendation (and for the link to it)!

seriously though, connie was so weird and wonderful and really kept this so good to watch for me. i just love how awkward she's allowed to be; it gives her such a naturally sympathetic air and humanises her so much, so quickly. i think i naturally identify with a nerdy, gothy, socially inadequate lesbian (i know shes one of us...) and it was a treat to have a character like this on screen. plus, the low budget charm shines with some really good body horror effects, and the surreal dreamscapes were seriously well done too. i enjoyed the vibes here a lot, and the main character really kept everything together here for me.

crypt0fblood

★★★★★  Watched by crypt0fblood 28 Jul 2024

I think I can do a double feature of Disembodied and Eraserhead. The theme being FREAKS LIVING TOGETHER IN A BUILDING

I LOVE the little bits of other worldly space images and alien landscapes, it definitely made the film stand out even more for me.

nick

★★★★ Watched by nick 24 Jul 2024

feels like you found it on the side of the road. goop is beautiful.

hunkybunny

★★★★  Watched by hunkybunny 21 Jul 2024

I LOVE MOVIES I LOVE FILMS  I love my mad scientist goth gf who dreams of alien volcanoes while her brain sleeps in a jar, I love her parasitic alien cystic acne that shoots spores and her other GF Trixie who wants to run a bakery because there’s “a lot of dough in it”

PhillyFilmFan

★★★½ Watched by PhillyFilmFan 17 Jun 2024

I can't believe this was made in the late 90s, it totally looked like an early 80s movie (but i guess 16mm will do that). Great body horror with lots of disgusting practical effects.

roswick

★★½ Watched by roswick 18 Jun 2024

A goth chick dreamscape that’s so low budget it’s almost a student art film. The special effects are so good yet so little I would say it’s a tease yet also the only draw to the film. Minimal awkward dialogue which gives it Lynch like vibes while enhancing the dream like execution exclaimed with random scenes of space with clay.

v

★★★★ Watched by v 18 Jun 2024

david lynch science fair fever dream

sofie_palomino

★★★★★ Watched by sofie_palomino 17 Jun 2024

I feel so… blessed to have seen this blind. Girlz Rock type flick. I beg you dear reader, SEE THIS MOVIE. Look up nothing about it.

You can’t be scared if you’re the scariest thing in the room…

Aaron

★★★½ Watched by Aaron 17 Jun 2024

low-budget body horror full of appropriately gooey practical effects, trippy dream/nightmare logic, and a campy sense of humor (a sex worker character named “Trixie Turner—get it?; a creepy hotel manager with a fixation on educational films; a cleaning lady who looks like a Lucille Ball impersonator and at one point smokes the largest cigar I’ve ever seen). Deserves more of a cult following than it has

scooterblues

★★½ Watched by scooterblues 17 Jun 2024

Ok….doesn’t this happen to every girl…

comedyunism

★★★ Watched by comedyunism 17 Jun 2024

For the fake newspaper article at the end they only replaced the headline and left the rest of the text as the original article. The article begins, “Despite rising tensions with the Palestinians, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu…”

Truly insane choice

avexre

★★★★½ Watched by avexre 17 Jun 2024

A daring and bold story of the struggles of single motherhood and the strength in solidarity between women.

N3V3RW00RLD

★★★★★ Watched by N3V3RW00RLD 05 May 2024  4

splendorous color

arresting visuals

sickly textures and sensations

she who be the mother of eternal wound, previvor of ooze and the flesh it births

reborn as children of sores and blood and puss

there is literally nothing I hate more than people going through my shit while I'm gone real talk

had to stop eating so I could watch this, that never happens, this movie had me physically/emotionally shaken in 100 different ways

"yes they have lots of potatoes there"

ppppaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrraaaaaaaaasiiiiiiiiiittttttttttteeeeeeeesssss

oh my god its gone

ITS GONE

"shes a disease, a germ that must be isolated studied classified and stamped out for the good of society" <---- fuck that shit, go eat brains and spawn in the desert, she is of this earth, it is the humans who are wrong as usual except Trixie god bless her <3<3<3

not joking maybe the best movie I've ever seen

☥ skylar ☥

★★★★★ Rewatched by ☥ skylar ☥ 30 Apr 2024 3

basically the perfect movie! it’s such a damn shame that it’s so rare to find any horror/sci-fi movies with morally grey, awkward female scientists, let alone one baring a giant pus spewing parasitic growth, she even carries around and cares for her own brain in a jar! connie sproutz is my ideal protagonist and everything about this movie speaks to me from the beautiful props, intricate low budget set designs and of course the stop motion sequences

Dobejee

★★★★½ Watched by Dobejee 27 Mar 2024

Amazing, has that early Lynch grimey fantasticism that no one ever seems to be able to replicate.

jomzjomzjomz

★★★ Watched by jomzjomzjomz 23 Mar 2024

Space volcanoes, acid acne, dirt pussies, and confusion. What a way to spend some minutes of time.

manister

★★★ Watched by manister 19 Mar 2024

wonderful looking film!! a very sleepy piece

Sam Szabo

★★★★½ Watched by Sam Szabo 11 Mar 2024

Filthy gorgeous. What a picture!!

ColeGr

★★ Watched by ColeGr 10 Mar 2024

10/10 in my heart and worth a watch, so so fun and disorienting

Lily

★★★½ Watched by Lily 10 Mar 2024

Fun horror, delighted

AvantEmoji

★★★★½ Watched by AvantEmoji 10 Mar 2024

One of those horror movies elevated by going in as oblivious as possible — not just cause that opening jump scare made me Hank Hill “BWAHHH” out of my seat but DISEMBODIED has some of the most singular grotesque creativity I’ve seen in a minute. Shock and awe mixed in with genuine wonder here, love to see it.

Body horror beyond one’s wildest nightmares and imaginations. A noble science expedition gone wrong, leaving our enigmatic antiheroine Connie Sproutz in a state of truly putrid transformation enduring a process where (and take a deep breath here) birthing and excreting become one. It’s nasty!!!

Projecting between two settings: an inhospitable cesspool of a motel and cosmic infernal dreamscape create an unforgettable world for this particularly disgusting evil to play around in. Practical effects and 16mm cinematography makes this one of the most beautiful gross out pictures — a true union in no budget filmmaking and weird fiction.

Daisy Thursday

★★★★ Watched by Daisy Thursday 09 Mar 2024

So strange and had so much going for it. Able to blend Henelotter, John Waters and Charles Band into its own super unique and surprisingly cozy vibe

Joins napoleon dynamite in the legacy of weird people from Idaho movies

manister

★★★ Watched by manister 19 Mar 2024

wonderful looking film!! a very sleepy piece

Jean

★★★★ Watched by Jean 06 Mar 2024

So by the time the evil doctor pulled out the electrovibrator wand I kind of knew what wavelength this was on, but I still burst out laughing at the revelation that the yonic peephole that connects Connie and Trixie's room is covered by lace on Trixie's side. Truly every design choice was thought through.

Iván Cabrera

★★★★ Watched by Iván Cabrera 05 Mar 2024

Granos cosmicos, patatas, y asesinatos, lo tiene todo.

paisleyculottes

★★★★★ Watched by paisleyculottes 05 Mar 2024

If you have ever longed for a collaboration between Douglas Sirk and Frank Henenlotter that gives you disgusting body horror in a filthy hotel from a feminine lady perspective, THE DISEMBODIED is the movie for you. It has space potatoes, parasites, pulsating facial growths, flannel nightgowns, tap dancing, PBS looking visions of outer space worlds, women helping women, a Joni Ruth White type maid with a kerchief, and a creepy night clerk who wants everyone to watch old science class movies with him. In addition to all these aesthetic and cultural riches this movie has the best karate moves since DOLEMITE, AND it passes the Bechdel Test. Wherever Anastasia Woolverton is, I hope she's still doing the damn thing.

noopy_noopz

★★★★★ Rewatched by noopy_noopz 02 Mar 2024

great movie wish i was watching it at spectacle with my buds tho 💔

Spookychu

★★★½ Watched by Spookychu 27 Feb 2024

The closest thing we'll ever get to a David Cronenberg and H. P. Lovecraft collaboration. This is true independent horror cinema. Hollywood would never greenlight this haha

Andy Ashby

★★★ Watched by Andy Ashby 27 Feb 2024

Weird one. Good enough to keep me til the end. Fun characters.

cgreg714

★★★½ Watched by cgreg714 26 Feb 2024

A perfect example of doing so much with so very, very little. I would love to see a making-of or interview with the director about this, because it punches way above it's cinematic weight class and really has no reason to do so, other than the obvious love that the creators had for this bizarre film about skin conditions, filthy bathrooms, karate chop Colonel Sanders, and a questionable amount of tubers.

Connie Sproutz isn't the hero we deserve, but instead the one we so desperately need.

Wilian Moreira

★★★½ Watched by Wilian Moreira 24 Feb 2024

Wholesome splatter tale of sorority, acceptance and self-discovery. Also a lot of goo and pussy-brain aliens.

kirsty

★★★½ Watched by kirsty 23 Feb 2024

some really great moments of gross & gore!!

Thee Satanik Declane

Watched by Thee Satanik Declane 18 Jan 2024

A great pastiche, in that it's about 90% The Real Deal and just a proper arty horror film, with only the odd moment that recalls Coleman Francis or Ed Wood. Feels alarmingly, palpably empty, in a way few films dare to. And also weirdly touching.

One of my pet hates is when people compare stuff to David Lynch, forgetting that Lynch is a major artist with a distinctive style and specific themes that recur throughout all his work, simply because it's a little strange and offbeat. This is a rare case where a Lynch comparison is justified; high, high praise.

Ainzeh

★★★★ Watched by Ainzeh 17 Jan 2024

This movie was on the AGFA trailer bonus movie, and I just had to watch it. It was fucking amazing! It felt like Eraserhead meets... I don't know, she looks like the girl from Casper. It was messed up. Brilliant low budget movie.

Chadman

Watched by Chadman 18 Nov 2023

"Deviant. Psychotic. Demented." the poster promises. You know what? I'll agree. Its got a lot of Hennenlotter in it's DNA, but that's not a bad thing. And unlike something that may just feel like a rip-off, Disembodied just takes the New York maverick's work as a jumping off point thematically. It crafts its own thing and it crafts it with love.

Disembodied isn't perfect by any stretch, but there is a lot of charm to this weird little flick.

Recommended

Myrmeleo

★★★★★ Added by Myrmeleo 6 Jan 2024

One of my favorite movies. Sweet, kindhearted film about the most normal girl of all time.

Brent Starkey

★★★½ Watched by Brent Starkey 06 Jan 2024

I wanted to check this out because of the Henenlotter comparisons, but I got more of a David Lynch vibe. Low budget, not nearly as good Lynch.. but done with the right amount of energy. Small cast and weird as shite, so I liked it. You might not..

Drew G

★★★½ Watched by Drew G 04 Jan 2024

Body horror and melt movies really appeal to me, so I thought this was great!

Disembodied reminded me of Frank Henenlotter’s work (especially Brain Damage, due to the dilapidated motel setting/brain creatures that take over the mind/eccentric, sometimes creepy characters) and early David Cronenberg, except this is even more low-budget.

Low-budget, but not low effort! It’s hard to tell what’s going on sometimes, and I’m still confused, but I rolled with it and appreciated the dream-like quality it had.

Spencer

★★★★ Watched by Spencer 05 Jan 2024  2

I just threw this on, wasn’t expecting it to be such a banger!!!!

fluffyappa

★★★½ Watched by fluffyappa 27 Dec 2023

Very reminiscent of those older sci-fi, “mad scientist” films, except a lot more dreamy. Definitely a fun watch

BootlegBronson

★★★½ Watched by BootlegBronson 19 Dec 2023

Bizarro weirdness on a shoestring!

This serves up mad science, a brain in a jar, bodily mutations, and hallucinations – and even some lovely stop-motion animation.

It's pretty groovy – rough around the edges, but clearly a labour of love, and its offbeat sensibilities are impossible to resist if you're on its mutant wavelength.

The filmmaker sez he drew inspiration from Dementia and Basket Case. To my taste, it falls a bit short of the scuzzy imperfect perfection of those movies – it doesn't have their lightning-in-a-bottle quality – but I dug it a lot.

Wouldn't hesitate to recommend.

D Edward

★★★½ Watched by D Edward 18 Dec 2023 3

I think “Lynchian” is a term thrown around far too often when discussing movies that are dreamy or surreal, but in this instance, I do believe it is an appropriate descriptor. It is dreamy and strange as all hell, yes, but it’s the way this essentially is a 50’s b-movie dipped in acid that really does it. At the same time, reducing this movie to a comparison like that doesn’t do it justice. There are few things like it. The stop motion effects are awesome and you get some gross body horror as well. There’s not much music here. Often, you’re watching this strange world in droning silence and again, I think of Lynch’s industrial world in Eraserhead. This has to be taking place in the same fictional city. Maybe even the same building!

I don’t know if I truly loved the experience because it doesn’t have the satisfying payoff you’d want after such a lackadaisically paced story, but it is so fascinating I didn’t mind that much.

night_shift

★★★½ Watched by night_shift 14 Dec 2023 3

What a strange, surreal little movie.

Connie checks in a grimy hotel with some strange luggage: her brain in a jar and a variety of other random things. She suppresses bizarre claymation dreams of volcanos and space and potatoes, while making friends with her neighbor Trixie. Meanwhile, a scientist guy is after her as it seems she's taken off with something they want. Oh, and she dissolves people with a pulsating giant pimple on her face and then... eats the brain? Turns the brain into a weird brain she keeps? Not sure, but I liked it a lot.

Genuinely sunk it's hooks into me. I couldn't tell you what half of what happens meant, but it was an interesting watch. Anastasia Woolverton playing Connie and Hannah Nease playing Trixie were pretty good. Only credit for both of them, but I guess how do you go from this to basically anything else.

I put this one off for so long because every time I saw the poster I was not feeling like watching trash, but like... this wasn't trash? It was very low budget, but some of the gore effects were pretty good (in particular the last melting scene) and there were a lot of interesting uses of claymation/stopmotion.

repulsed_

★★★★ Watched by repulsed_ 08 Dec 2023

Unlikely I would have watched this because of it being from the late 90's. It's just a time where you want to avoid the majority of stuff like this — a time that continues to today. Good thing the podcast Unsung Horrors did an episode on it so I knew it couldn't be garbage, or it'd be good garbage. It definitely worked out because it's a absolute gem. Also, I'd have missed one bitchin' karate chop.

Eileen

Watched by Eileen 05 Dec 2023

But I will still be myself… won’t I?

saltyessentials

★★★★½ Rewatched by saltyessentials 18 Nov 2023

Enjoyably Good

Blake Douglas

Watched by Blake Douglas 17 Nov 2023

Clearly Henenlotter inspired but very comfortable being it’s own thing. Oddly, it felt like a rather warm horror film. Maybe I’m just comforted by ooze.

Jack

★★★½ Watched by Jack 15 Nov 2023

Like having a hallucinogenic episode while looking at the backs of a few different Frank Henenlotter movies on DVD. The movie itself actually pulsates

dogfacedboy

★★★★★ Watched by dogfacedboy 12 Nov 2023  8

Brains in jars, severed arms, spurting face growths, vagina monsters and stop motion animation, Disembodied knew the way right to my heart.

1950s alien Sci-Fi with as made by the Quay Brothers and Frank Henenlotter, it's weird, it's funny, it's goopy and it's amazing.

Also, it manages to have a prostitute named Trixie Turner without that, or the character being terrible.

I want to know more about the Night Manager's collection of educational films!

Thank you Lexxx for the recommendation!

Five brains in jars out of five 🧠🫙

Malignant wishes it was this cool.

Lexxx

★★★★★ Watched by Lexxx 11 Nov 2023

I would take care of your brain in a jar Connie!!! I loved this hazy, slimy, alien fever dream. Connie Sproutz and Trixie were adorable characters. Connie’s hotel room reminded me of the apartment in the game Silent Hill 4: The Room. The stop motion parts also made me really happy, along with Connie’s various cat eye glasses

TheSuplexorcist

★★★ Watched by TheSuplexorcist 11 Nov 2023

A huge WTF film, heavily inspired by henninlotters basket case and brain damage but also cronenbergs videodrome, a lot of body horror, puss, slime, melts and splatters, bad claymation but incredible dream sequences, confusing but very interesting

b_merc

★★★ Watched by b_merc 07 Nov 2023

What a weird, goopy, cheap, lovely little film

Racool89

★★★★½ Watched by Racool89 03 Nov 2023

A perfect dream box. I just wish it was longer.

emersonray

★★★★½ Watched by emersonray 31 Oct 2023

Increasingly easy to let movies off the hook for not being image based semi-conscious experiences in our increasingly image-based society but then something like this comes along to shock you back into remembering the whole point is in the actual act of putting pictures side by side.

Dylan Dawson

★★★½ Watched by Dylan Dawson 30 Oct 2023

Brain Damage meets Eraserhead meets Under the Skin meets the dollar store. My shit to the max.

Dee

★★★★ Watched by Dee 29 Oct 2023

you just don't get any better than this! goosebumps on acid with some of the grossest practical effects i've ever seen!

dawnweiner

Watched by dawnweiner 29 Oct 2023

Felt like Cronenberg doing an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark. Obsessed. Stellar character names across the board, special shout out to Sigmund Sylvanus.

Ed Leer

★★★★ Watched by Ed Leer 23 Oct 2023

What a truly original, inventive and weird little film. The handmade qualities only add to the overall original tone of dark and strange mixed with a goofy kind of humor. Lead actress crushes it. A nuanced performance grounding some of the more oddball elements.

screendream

★★★½ Watched by screendream 23 Oct 2023

This literally rocks.

Cute homage to 59-60s scientific sci-fi pulps plus goopy 90s special fx and stop motion brain parasites. Some surprisingly stylish space-scape visuals for Connie’s alien dream sequences that had me looking in the credits for who did the set design.

Astonishingly campy acting, but it totally works for this one. Feels like a bunch of friends getting together to shoot a film afterhours and I dig that.

SergioMelville

★★★½ Added by SergioMelville 23 Oct 2023

I live for discovering stuff like this.

Lynch Vibes + Henenlotter Vibes + Cronenberg Vibes + Quay Brother Vibes = An easy thumbs up

Tiffany

Watched by Tiffany 20 Oct 2023

As an adult acne-haver, this really hit home.

Brad Hanson

★★½ Watched by Brad Hanson 23 Oct 2023

50's pulp sci-fi weirdness but shot in 1998 and finished in 2016... bizarre stuff.

Sebastian

Watched by Sebastian 22 Oct 2023

Indie horror movies used to have such chutzpah. Also love how it throws exposition to the wayside in favor of strange, memorable imagery. Stop motion alien slugs are the key to my heart ❤️

ChamBliss

★★★★ Watched by ChamBliss 23 Oct 2023

Awesomely creative, no budget experimental horror that wears its influences (Henenlotter, Cronenberg) on its sleeve but still feels like its own fresh perspective. Filled with tons of cool and gross imagery done with stop motion animation and other DIY effects. Disembodied is a well made and efficient gem, and always feels weird enough to be interesting.

laird

Watched by laird 20 Oct 2023

Yonic Youth

Dok

★★★½ Watched by Dok 18 Oct 2023

Wearing the brain that she keeps in a jar by the door

Who is it foooooor

Genuine mood and glimmers of Cronenberg and Lynch in addition to the low budget charm. People are basically big globs of stuff that just go around doing things arbitrarily and it's nice to be reminded of that sometimes.

Insanity42

★★★ Watched by Insanity42 15 Oct 2023

Colonel Sanders pursues an alien parasite.

Dogfood Williams Blood Café

★★★★ Rewatched by Dogfood Williams Blood Café 15 Oct 2023

the un-lesbianized But I'm A Cheerleader for sci-fi nerds, gore hounds and Gumby fans. Desperately needs a tribbing scene.

Matt

★★★★ Watched by Matt 14 Oct 2023

Drifter/mad scientist/goth girl Connie Sproutz has a facial care problem: extraterrestrial spores that look like vagina dentata potatoes (sometimes popping as deadly zits!); she also happens to keep her brain in a jar on the nightstand.

Vincent Price's spirit was alive and well in 1998. Every bit the bananas, low budget filmmaking I was hoping for, complete with surprisingly good goopy props, claymation space visuals and $cientology volcano imagery. Also, INCREDIBLE spy music when a scientist that looks like Colonel Sanders snoops around. Maybe the oddest bechdel pass ever made

The vhsrip I watched had previews for various other horror movies that had porno acting and seemingly a four-figure budget. It made me wistful for video stores where I surely would have rented masterpieces like this from the same shelf as Faces of Death

Review by Annie Choi  June 2023 from Bleeding Skull

In college, I lived in a co-op, which is basically a boardinghouse where each resident does five hours of chores a week. Once I walked into the kitchen for a snack and a housemate was there quietly eating a bagel. Hours later, he knocked on my bedroom door. He stared at me, his eyes wild and dark.

“WHY DID YOU PUT ACID IN MY FUCKING BAGEL?”

Turns out, he had eaten a bagel and started tripping. He saw things, mostly bad things. Nefarious visions of unspeakable acts. He got paranoid. He got scared. He blamed me because I was the last person seen near his bagel. I explained, “No, dude, if I had acid, I would put it in my own bagel. Thank you very much.”

Here’s the truth: I don’t totally like bagels. It’s too much . . . bagel. But if it had acid in it, I’d probably eat it.

The point is that sometimes bad drugs happen to good people, and then they lose their minds and blame bagels and the people who sort of like them. Acid is not for everyone. I’ve seen people really enjoy themselves on a trip and roll around in a pile of leaves and stare at their hands in absolute wonder: Why do fingers only bend in one direction? But I’ve also seen acid destroy people’s brains where they’re never quite the same again. So, you need a certain kind of mental constitution to handle hallucinogens—an ability to understand that reality will be on hiatus for the next 12 hours and maybe you’ll see the Grim Reaper, but it might also just be a bathrobe.

Disembodied is a 90-minute hallucinogenic adventure, and, like acid, you need a certain mental wherewithal to watch it. But it’s well worth trying.

A girl checks into the Grand Hotel, which is neither of those things. There’s disintegrating furniture, moth-eaten carpet, broken light bulbs, and a flurry of flies. The bathroom is truly the dirtiest you’ve ever seen, even worse than the one at the bus stop where someone had smeared shit all over the stall door. The bathtub is crusty and black, and the tiles are covered in furry mold that you could use to knit a blanket for someone you hate. You get a horrifying feeling that inside the mildewed walls, there’s a bustling metropolis of cockroaches. You can almost hear their hard candy shells clatter against each other. This place is less of a fleabag motel and more of an open sewer that happens to have rooms.

The front desk clerk looks like the undead; he’s pale with dark, sunken eyes. He wears a threadbare shirt with yellowed armpits, and that might be the cleanest thing in the whole joint. He offers Connie a room. Connie is exactly 76% goth. Her black hair hangs over her pasty face and she shuffles around silently. Through a giant hole in her wall, Connie spies on her neighbor, who is entertaining a john. Connie settles into her new home. She unpacks her clothes, organizes her rock collection, and places potions on the table. Then she puts her brain on the table. It’s in a gurgling tank. “God, I need some coffee.” She pours coffee into her brain. She instantly feels chipper.

At night, Connie terrorizes people in the neighborhood. She turns them into slime and eats them. Then, as she sleeps, a monstrous, penis-like deformity on her face oozes spores, which look like starfish made out of Play-Doh. Her filthy bathtub is filled with algal blooms and alien organisms that look like severed vaginas. Symbolism is at work here, though it’s unclear what the symbols mean in the context of the film.

Disembodied is less about plot and more about the experience. Nothing really happens in this movie and even if it did, it’d be secondary to the mood. This film plunges you into a surreal, haunting world and keeps you there for 90 mesmerizing minutes. It’s dark and dirty, claustrophobic and grotesque, hypnotic and inescapable. This is not a movie with explosive gore or violent twists. This is not a movie with histrionic characters and outrageous dialogue. In fact, there’s hardly any dialogue at all. Or music. This is a film that’s eerily silent and most of what you hear is the sound of your own breath and the occasional low whisper out of Connie’s mouth.

The film offers dreamy imagery of erupting volcanoes and toasting marshmallows. We see alien lifeforms that bubble and ooze and crawl across the floor. We see stop-motion animations of a carrot hitting a potato. We also see a rock with an eyeball. There’s a mysterious budding flower, a tap-dancing sequence, potions that move on their own, and a scene where Connie changes out of her drab black garb and puts on a Technicolor dress. It’s unclear what any of it means, but it doesn’t matter. Like an acid trip, it’s best to accept it all without questions and escape into a trance, one where you’re rarely bored even when you literally see a goth fall asleep in a chair.

Director William Kersten mixes the gritty darkness of David Cronenberg, the foreboding uneasiness of David Lynch, and the surreal production design of Tim Burton (when he was good). Disembodied is equal parts horror and experimental art, but it never feels pretentious. This is a film that lives in the details. The set, costume, and props perfectly serve a cinematic acid trip, one where very little happens but much is communicated. It’s just never clear what exactly is being communicated. Describing Disembodied is like describing your acid trip to someone; words fail the actual experience.

For the record, I did not put acid in my housemate’s bagel.

Also for the record, the Blu-ray edition of the film has been updated with new digital effects and music and I highly recommend watching the original VHS or DVD. You know what to do.

Bonnie Bell

★★★★★ Watched by Bonnie Bell 02 Apr 2023

Cinema for weirdo girls!!!!!! cinema for girls who like the taste of blood in their mouths!!!!!!! cinema for girls who don't sleep!!!!!!! cinema for girls who slip into corners and fade away before anyone can spot them!!!!!! cinema for misunderstood ladies

AcaTHEJUDGE

★★★★½ Watched by AcaTHEJUDGE 26 Sep 2023

the pussy motif is real prevalent & I love it

ascalaphid

★★★½ Watched by ascalaphid 22 Sep 2023

fascinating and goopy little artifact that wears its influences--henenlotter, cronenberg, svankmajer, probably richard elfman--on its sleeve. i'm still stunned that a low-budget movie made in 1998 with this title and poster and premise was shot on real film and not video or shitty digital. god bless.

Dogfood Williams Blood Café

★★★★ Watched by Dogfood Williams Blood Café 21 Sep 2023  1

Immediately impressed. Looks and feels halfway between Basketcase and Eraserhead but tastes like Love God. Proof that animators are superior filmmakers.

Bruno Weber

★★★★½ Watched by Bruno Weber 01 Sep 2023

Como é possível esse ser um dos filmes mais bonitos que eu já vi?

Sério, foi uma das experiências visuais mais belas que eu já tive com o audiovisual.

Isso.

Isso aqui!

BrokenVhs

★★★★ Watched by BrokenVhs 29 Aug 2023

Eraserhead meets Brain Damage. My kind of movie.

Hollywood Nights 🎞️

★★★½ Watched by Hollywood Nights 🎞️ 25 Aug 2023

“Stuck in a sewer but got big plans for the future”

I’m convinced this takes place in the same cinematic universe as Brain Damage, Demons & Tammy and the T-Rex.

You call that living ? Being trapped in a pulpy nodule of undifferentiated cells?

Give me my brain!

specterM91

★★★★ Watched by specterM91 25 Aug 2023

What you'd get if you told a computer to make a Henenlotter movie. (Complimentary)

All the slimy, chunky, meaty bits you'd expect from body horror and splatter greats like the aforementioned Henenlotter or the Cronenberg duo or Lamberson are here but they're paired with these striking, vibrant vignettes of cosmic nonsense that really gives the whole thing a flavor of its own.

Fantastic effects, an interesting cast, a unique setup; insane to think I'd never even heard of this one until like six hours ago.

Tromaslut

★★★★ Watched by Tromaslut 22 Aug 2023

I rewatch this movie at least once a month..like a low budget homage to Eraserhead

Adam Amrani

★★★½ Watched by Adam Amrani 20 Aug 2023

I have to rewatch this a lot of times. This reminds me of Damian Lees "Food of the Gods II" for some reason - it might be the music. Dismebodied feels really ambiguous in it's time but has a sort of 1980s early horror tone going for it that I can't quite pinpoint on first watch. If anything, it makes me nostalgic for super low-budget effects that aren't quite schlock, but are endearing. The cut-scene art is downright beautiful and simple. The weird little creatures are dream-like and the dialogue and script? is fantastic.

Add a little bit of Antibirth and a little bit of the claymation scenes of Heavenly Creatures and a bit of vision of Crimes of the Future and just run it through file degradation software and you might pop out with a movie that looks something like this.

"You call that living? Being trapped in a pulpy nodule of undifferentiated cells" - this resonated with me hard.

Sex Ray Spex ⚡

★★★★★ Watched by Sex Ray Spex ⚡ 13 Aug 2023

“Lies, lies, adults forbid them and yet they tell so many. I feel ugly, like I'm a bad person, and yet I'd like to be loved." My favorite monster films boil down to this sentiment from Elena Ferrante. Disembodied is a bright ode to b-movie monsters, kind-hearted freaks, and all that is monstrous within us.

Disembodied does an interesting thing by splitting its protagonist into a holy trinity. What we get in the way of verbal explanation is from Doctor Sigmund Sylvanus: There is a Connie Sproutz, the host. She loved science, and most of all was a faithful employee. Then there is the parasite known as Connie, a ravenous monster. He suggests all who are consumed by the parasite are reborn, living forever trapped in their minds as brains without bodies. Connie herself presents a third option of a new Connie that was born after her infection, an alien parasite but not reducible to it. Dr. Sigmund Sylvanus is the voice of reason, of society, that sees no option but to exterminate her. We have, perhaps, every reason to agree.

Despite her status as a murderous monster, the film encourages us to see her as weak and vulnerable. Enter the atomic American Southwest, last stop. A young girl arrives alone at a skid row motel, menaced by a leering clerk. She’s got nothing but her two suitcases and a leather jacket. The world is disgusting and violent, Connie is quiet and unassuming. We see her commit only one murder of an innocent, and the thrust of it occurs off-camera. Disembodied suggests a maternal relationship between host and parasite, as Connie tends to her brain-beings so diligently. Quirky moments like her potato obsession and method of coffee intake do even more to endear her.

Within her new self, Connie sees radical possibility, self-knowledge is an end in itself. She has found a way to “dampen” the parasite, and she is as ecstatic about her scientific work as ever. Perhaps Connie, the host sees a potential in her monstrosity that others cannot. Lacking in other stimulation, Connie’s mind bursts forth with hypnagogic sleep manifestations and patterns. She dreams of bursting forth, of the infinite space within a mind. These dream sequences are extraordinarily beautiful and feel true to my experience of those electric impulses behind the mind. And even though her brain-babies are trapped, it is suggested that eventually they too begin to grow.

What changes things for Connie is Trixie, the sex worker next door who lives in a candy-painted world so unlike Connie’s. Trixie offers friendship simply because they’re both stuck in the same rat hole, and she does not run away in horror from Connie’s face. She doesn’t care what Connie did in the past and saves her life. The alien parasite that is Connie experiences human compassion for the first time, and it changes things. I won’t give anything away, but the ending is a truly tragic gesture of acceptance and resignation.

And all of the above is done in the most beautiful 16mm colors, greens so deep I want to live in them.

I loved this film so much that I took a temporary break from watching movies. I wanted to linger in its feeling before it was replaced by something else. I felt so deeply seen by Connie in ways I can't even place.

austin

★★★½ Watched by austin 13 Aug 2023

SOV horror that just so happened to be shot on 16mm, lending its DIY textures a very one-of-a-kind flourish and its characters an unexpectedly tender amount of care. connie sproutz is the she/they queen i can imagine taking a lot of inspo after 🖤

Craig

★★★★½ Watched by Craig 06 Aug 2023

God, I need some coffee.

[pours directly onto brain]

clavendr

★★★½ Watched by clavendr 05 Aug 2023

Love a movie with a goth girl lead!!

This was shockingly good for a low-budget art horror venture. It reminded me of Dr. Caligari (Sayadian) with a 90's edge and impressively gross visual effects. Also some great claymation, animation and set design. The story is quite bizarre and acid comes up multiple times yet it retains its consistency and never veers off too unhinged. Incredibly creative and well executed little weirdo movie.

curtymcdervs

★★★½ Watched by curtymcdervs 05 Aug 2023

A delightfully nasty Henenlotter-does-Eraserhead good time. Volcanoes, oozing boils, potatoes with eyes, obnoxiously large cigars, educational film reels, brains in jars and a whole lot more. It’s incredible that this film seemingly hasn’t found its audience yet, I think most genre fans would have a field day with it.

FakeVoorhees

★★★½ Watched by FakeVoorhees 03 Aug 2023 2

Phallic cheek tumors, giant stomach vaginas, alienated brains... What in the Henenlotter did I just watch?

Jake Fisher

★★★½ Watched by Jake Fisher 04 Aug 2023

So usually this is not my type of film but this one was actually pretty damn good. Definitely half arthouse but the other half was a story that kept me interested. Also helps that this was an hour and 15 minutes. Everybody should listen to Unsung Horrors.

RobertButtons

★★★½ Watched by RobertButtons 01 Aug 2023

The most 1958 movie made in 1998. Loved the lead in this one. Some nice stop motion and space scapes as well. A fun 75 minutes!

Francisco Ochoa

★★★½ Watched by Francisco Ochoa 27 Jul 2023

Watched on Tubi tv. Enjoyed the goo here.

Discovered this when it was talked about on the Unsung Horrors Podcast w/ Annie Choi from Bleeding Skull!

Lance Schibi

★★★★ Rewatched by Lance Schibi 21 Jul 2023

I 🫀 Disembodied. Listen to us chat about this creative beast of a film w/ guest Annie Choi of Bleeding Skull! on our podcast (please disregard the shitty mix on my mic as best you can). I also shared some information directly from director William Kersten after emailing back & forth. Bill is a sweetheart! Be sure to check out his more recent stop motion animation shorts on his site. 🧠

Erica

★★★½ Rewatched by Erica 22 Jul 2023

It’s timeless but also so very 90s. Put your brain in a jar and listen to a full review on Unsung Horrors with Annie Choi from Bleeding Skull:

mdcmdcmdc

★★★★★ Watched by mdcmdcmdc 24 Jul 2023

David Lynch presents Guy Maddin’s Rabid feat. Basket Case

jo

Watched by jo 20 Jul 2023

How to describe this movie? Bizarre. Gross. Unique. It was awesome.

Adam Hursey

★★★★½ Watched by Adam Hursey 19 Jul 2023

To be covered on an upcoming episode of the Unsung Horrors podcast.

So I went in for a sleep study last night. I've been on a CPAP machine for about 5 years now. But I've lost around 60 pounds in the last couple of years (and kept (most) of it off thank you very much), so I was hopeful that maybe I don't need it anymore. Not that strapping a mask to my face and fighting with a hose all night long isn't a joy.

Anywho, it was a terrible experience. I might have slept about 2 hours total. It really wasn't all of the wires that were strapped to me (again, I have a black belt in nocturnal hose fighting). It was the constant voice telling me to move or adjust something or breathe through my nose (I'm a major nasal spray addict--once that wore off, it was Katy bar the door time). Plus, this mattress was the worst thing I've ever slept on. And the pillows were a joke. I mean, how much money y'all charging insurance companies? Y'all need some Serta BeautyRest Black Label edition mattresses in these rooms. And whatever the political neutral version of MyPillow is.

All of this exposition (there is more exposition in this review than the entire run time of Disembodied) to say that I think my sleep deprivation played a role in how much I enjoyed this film! It hooked me from the beginning, and I feel like I am just the right amount of loopy to just let the film happen without questioning anything.

Disembodied tells the story of Connie, a woman/scientist/inventor who rents a terrible room in the basement, sharing the space with the boiler. But Connie has a secret. She has a spore-oozing sore on her face that liquifies those around her so she can feed on them for due to the parasite that inhabits her body. Oh yeah, and she keeps her brain in a jar on the side table.

That's a brief synopsis of what thrusts this film into motion. Along the way, we are treated to a cavalcade of interesting side characters, especially Connie's neighbor Trixie and "The Cleaning Lady".

A late 90s mind-melter, it would be easy to compare Disembodied to something like Eraserhead or Brain Damage, classics of goopy, body horror madness. I also felt some strong Dr. Caligari vibes, but maybe because I just watched that one fairly recently. Yet somehow, Disembodied feels like its own totally original force. It has to been seen--words cannot describe the joys the film has to offer. Just don't try to watch it in a sober, lucid state.

ljennif

★★★ Watched by ljennif 08 Jul 2023

That's ho you start a movie.

There's a pulsating vagina heart, and a vagina shaped hole in the wall and a hooker eating a cherry pir and I think there's theme here.

If you understand this you've done a lot of drugs.

I was hoping Connie and Trixie would become the new Thelma and Louise.

I have no idea what was going on but I was entertained by the nonsense.

notyourcowgirl

★★★★ Watched by notyourcowgirl 26 Jun 2023

“You know, you’re a lot smarter than your average dope. You’ve got brains.” Uhhh… yes 🧠 🧠🧠🧠

This is a world of Frank Henenlotter and David Lynch! I see a bit of elements from Basket Case, Brain Damage, and Eraserhead. I definitely fell asleep the first time around because of the dreamlike state throughout the whole movie. The vibrant colors kept me awake and the disgusting sounds were. Blergh 😖 strange and slimy body horror, I loved it!

James

★★★★ Watched by James 26 Jun 2023

This whips ass. Basket Case meets Eraserhead with just a dash of Color Me Blood Red and sprinkle in some surprisingly well done stop-motion animation and sci-fi miniatures. Released in 1998 but could have been filmed at any point between 1976 and today. Why is everything shaped like a vagina tho?

sayj

Watched by sayj 26 Jun 2023

dare i say it... lynchian

kat nelson

★★★★ Watched by kat nelson 24 Jun 2023

some of the grossest practicals i’ve seen in a while 🤌

XaviSanchezPons

★★★★ Watched by XaviSanchezPons 24 Jun 2023

Me acabo de enamorar hasta las trancas de esta película que está hecha del material que están hechos los sueños del terror/sci-fi de bajo presupuesto que importa. Una peli realmente hipnagógica, llena de imágenes sugerentes lo-fi y muy Henenlotter, que en su último tramo funciona como un precedente de Under the Skin (el final es exactamente el mismo, muy fuerte, pero cierto).

vampirevomit

★★★★★ Watched by vampirevomit 21 Jun 2023

This is every flavor I want in a late 90s scifi/horror flick.

It hits just the right level of odd fever dream of the era(you know what I mean) and then it's all mixed with an Ed Wood movie.

Bleeding Skull

Rewatched by Bleeding Skull 20 Jun 2023

This film offers dreamy imagery of erupting volcanoes and toasting marshmallows. We see alien lifeforms that bubble and ooze and crawl across the floor. We see stop-motion animations of a carrot hitting a potato. We also see a rock with an eyeball. There’s a mysterious budding flower, a tap-dancing sequence, potions that move on their own, and a scene where Connie changes out of her drab black garb and puts on a Technicolor dress. It’s unclear what any of it means, but it doesn’t matter. Like an acid trip, it’s best to accept it all without questions and escape into a trance, one where you’re rarely bored even when you literally see a goth fall asleep in a chair. Director William Kersten mixes the gritty darkness of David Cronenberg, the foreboding uneasiness of David Lynch, and the surreal production design of Tim Burton (when he was good). DISEMBODIED is equal parts horror and experimental art, but it never feels pretentious. This is a film that lives in the details. The set, costume, and props perfectly serve a cinematic acid trip, one where very little happens but much is communicated. It’s just never clear what exactly is being communicated. Describing DISEMBODIED is like describing your acid trip to someone; words fail the actual experience.

pimpdoll

★★★★★ Watched by pimpdoll 18 Jun 2023

need me a bad bitch like this

☥ skylar ☥

★★★★★ Watched by ☥ skylar ☥ 15 Jun 2023

so glad i finally got around to watching this. from the scuzzy rundown hotel setting to the body horror this ticks many boxes for me. there’s a severe lack of female mad scientist characters and this movie filled a hole in my heart!! i absolutely adore connie, what a great protagonist she is. trixie is so cute and funny too i loved her friendship with connie <3 and the stop motion scenes??? this movie fucking rocked!

J_Fleischhacker

Watched by J_Fleischhacker 04 Jun 2023

Une sympathique vue de body horror à très bas budget. L'histoire est un peu boboche, mais le film dégage quand même une ambiance crasse à souhait. Les effets spéciaux ont un gros rôle là-dedans.

Charles Pieper

★★★ Watched by Charles Pieper 05 Jun 2023

A wild mix of Henenlotter, Cronenberg, and Lynch, all filtered through the sun bleached mood of late 90s Nevada. Very hand made, very rough, very silly and enjoyable!

Herschel Gillis

★★★★★ Rewatched by Herschel Gillis 24 May 2023

A mix of Frank Henenlotter, Tim Burton, Lovecraft, and 50s scifi B movies.  Infinitely comforting and rewatchable.  A completely unique film.  The sort of film that reinforces my love of cinema.  Pure magic

cenobite_

Watched by cenobite_ 23 May 2023

Half-dreamt worm charmer that feels like watching a painting wink at you

Jordan H

★★★★★ Watched by Jordan H 21 May 2023

Giving my brain fluids regularly with an electrical charge 12 volts D.C. for one hour every Monday morning—pure and perfect holy transmission from half dream state netherworld, not awake not asleep just content and cozy and warm; just so thankful to have something like this—from light years away psychedelic astral projection volcano all the way to Nevada black mold basement utility closet bedroom and if being trapped in a pulpy nodule of undifferentiated cells ain’t living then I don’t want to live.

deadlyhabit

★★½ Watched by deadlyhabit 12 May 2023

What...

Morgan

★★★★★ Rewatched by Morgan 09 May 2023

Low-keyed multilayered dream horror for spectrum-dwelling Henenlotter girlies. I'm so glad this movie exists.

mdfmdf

★★★★ Watched by mdfmdf 05 May 2023

Walking to the desert to bury my gross little mouth

"Please keep this brain safe"

Herschel Gillis

★★★★★ Watched by Herschel Gillis 02 May 2023

If you don’t like this movie, I’m sorry, but I don’t trust you

Corey Corcoran

★★★★ Watched by Corey Corcoran 16 Apr 2023

“You’re a lot smarter than your average dope.”

This feels like an adaptation of a lost Charles Burns’ comic. Good stuff.

ngmi

★★★½ Watched by ngmi 10 Apr 2023

Quiet film. Strange. Watched with zaid.

Whatisthiswint

★★★½ Watched by Whatisthiswint 30 Mar 2023

God I need some coffee

Guillermo Tato

★★★★½ Watched by Guillermo Tato 22 Mar 2023

“Disembodied” es un delicioso ejemplo de cine underground de los noventa, muy cercano a películas como “Pi”. Pero en la película de William Kersten todo tiene un tono mucho más Trama pero a la vez extremadamente onírico. Una propuesta única que es la hija no reconocida de David Lynch y David Cronenberg. Con estos referentes y un cuidado trabajo visual y de tono es muy difícil que “Disembodied” no sea una película única. Tremendamente imperfecta en muchos aspectos pero con una honestidad y una capacidad de abrazar lo extraño realmente hermosa. Una película única, olvidada, de las que merece la pena visitar y recordar que el cine pequeño puede ser extremadamente mágico y único.

---

"Disembodied" is a delightful example of underground cinema of the nineties, very close to films like "Pi". But in William Kersten's film everything has a much more plotted but at the same time extremely dreamlike tone. A unique proposal that is the unrecognized daughter of David Lynch and David Cronenberg. With these references and a careful visual and tonal work it is very difficult for "Disembodied" not to be a unique film. Tremendously imperfect in many ways but with an honesty and an ability to embrace the strange that is truly beautiful. A unique, overlooked film, one of those worth visiting and remembering that small cinema can be extremely magical and unique.

Mike

★★★★ Watched by Mike 17 Mar 2023

impeccable 1990s low budget movie energy with this body horror from william kersten. a friendly sex worker neighbor at the shitty motel named trixie turner? forget about it. it also definitely has a vision and even if the execution was slightly off, it was entertaining throughout. george randolph as the determined Doctor Sigmund Sylvanus was operating on a different plane than everyone else. loved the 1950s b movie performance he gave.

the music felt like i was watching a cable original movie and it was a very pleasant viewing experience (there is a lot of silly gore).

Michael R. Muller

★★★★★ Watched by Michael R. Muller 14 Mar 2023

This is really something special here, folks.

Nasty ass body horror, claymation, quaint 90s computer visual effects, and a maid who dresses like Lucille Ball and smokes these like 2 foot long cigars.

Connie is this goth girl who dresses like Corey Feldman and she has to hide out at a hotel so she can give birth to pulsating flesh potato babies. It all feels like Eraserhead if it was a late-90s indie flick and I mean that in the best way possible.

Worth mentioning one of the characters in this movie is a guy who tries to pick up the ladies by offering to show them an educational film on electrons.

hiddenspeakers

★★★★ Watched by hiddenspeakers 12 Mar 2023

Wish I could drink coffee through my brain.

videoscum

Watched by videoscum 28 Feb 2023

Hi-yah!

Miedox

★★★½ Watched by Miedox 14 Feb 2023

So, um, imagine if Frank Henenlotter and David Lynch somehow teamed up to make a microbudget late-90s version of a 50s throwback sci-fi alien possession film. Disembodied is so damn hypnotically weird that it's hard to look away from the sheer randomness.

molly🐶

★★½ Watched by molly🐶 08 Feb 2023

Not a film I can say I really fully "get" (if there is anything to get, even), but one I can appreciate in a lot of ways regardless. I don't particularly understand why anything in this movie happened, or even what exactly happened in general, but the gore effects are great, and the atmosphere of it all suits...whatever the rest of it is. I'm almost inclined to call it a feminist growing-up sort of answer to the parental fears of Eraserhead from everything I can gleam from this, but that feels honestly weird to say about a film directed by a man with no *blatant* social commentary that I picked up on. Regardless, I had a good, grimy time with this.

kelseytabbert

★★★★★ Rewatched by kelseytabbert 04 Feb 2023

This is my kind of queer cinema.

natalie

★★★★½ Watched by natalie 31 Jan 2023

she’s just like me fr

samu3lk

★★★★★ Watched by samu3lk 22 Jan 2023

IT NEVER MISSES

El_Chubbycabra

★★★★ Watched by El_Chubbycabra 21 Jan 2023

I saw a freind who's opinion I value greatly and share very similar taste with had watched this and liked it.So,I read the synopsis...then I read it again,to make sure I had read it right.Then I read it AGAIN,then I watched it.

A very odd,entertaining, shall I say unique little film.I say "little" because it obviously had the kind of budget where the craft service table,if there was one,consisted of Ramen noodles,baloney sandwiches and Kool Aid.That being said,I did really like it.Going back to the synopsis,what you read is what you get,plot-wise.Apart from that,the single main character is engaging ,empathetic well performed and the supporting players are stereotypical without being boring.Decent effects and a fairly random but,as I said,entertaining plot.

It was made in 1998,which is when the network ended it,but I think this one was tailor-made for TNT's 100% WEIRD! Give it a shot,it's only an hour and 15 minutes so you got nothing to lose.

Ben Gallegos

★★★★★ Watched by Ben Gallegos 17 Jan 2023

I'm almost certain that the parasite in this is what inspired the face fetus in Terror Phone. Oh! And it was fucking great.

Alienkeyes

★★★★ Watched by Alienkeyes 14 Jan 2023

This has a nice gross grimey vibe and a bizarre premise that is wonderfully executed. The dream sequences are weirdly beautiful and all of the actors deliver pretty solid performances and the story is insane. Definitely worth watching.

S̷ ̷Y̷ ̷S̷ ̷T̷ ̷E̷ ̷M̷ ̷T̷ ̷E̷ ̷R̷ ̷R̷ ̷O̷ ̷R̷

★★★★½ Watched by S̷ ̷Y̷ ̷S̷ ̷T̷ ̷E̷ ̷M̷ ̷T̷ ̷E̷ ̷R̷ ̷R̷ ̷O̷ ̷R̷ 13 Dec 2022

This is the kind of outsider art I want injected into my veins on the daily. Singular, unique and uncompromising weirdo vision that is simulatenously so bad it's good and art house horror. Very reminiscent of Eraserhead though apparently inspired by a different film called Dementia. Oh and the director composed all the music for this movie and it's excellent.

j_nge

★★★★ Watched by j_nge 10 Dec 2022

A girl recommended in a cafe recommend this to me after a short chat and genuinely no one has ever pegged my taste as quickly or effectively. I really loved this film.

While they are not really alike both Disembodied and Death Bed (1977) have the same heart and commitment to a concept.

While at times a little silly and janky you can definitely see the care and earnestness with wich this film was made by everyone involved. I actually also thought the effects were really well done (even though some of them were clearly made from playdo). As a whole it's actually quite a heartwarming story about a weird girl making a friend.

Yu can get this film for €2.99 on Gumroad so definitely go check it out.

Kersten still seems to be producing work so I'm very excited to see some of his other stuff.

ELECTRICWIZARDx

★★★½ Watched by ELECTRICWIZARDx 06 Nov 2022

Cronenberg ode precursory-COTF Basket Case worship, transplanting the sleaze Hotel and dingey backstreets into a desert now hosting care routines to disembodied ET brain thru wire'n'potato electro-shock liquid chem and coffee methods, extending past the fleshy mass through the ether into the corporeal. Beholden the 90s cheapo windows '98 fx as hosts to dreams that must be kept from entering the world like pulsating grim from vaginal stomach wounds, lest they change the fabric and produce dripping stalagmites and stalagtites in hotel closets so awful they'd actually make them better looking. Rapist electromagnet film weilding proprietor and the sinister boiler in the sickly green basement rooms are not to be feared, not with the existence of the depth of the dark on the outskirts and the clay sentient globules and murdering dream-volcano-motif-shadowing growths on our aptly named leading alien/lady hybrid, ejaculating acid and melting faces; something done probably thousands of times before on this eternal run from Plasmaster corps' scientist-cum-investigator who has the weakest and funniest "hi-yah" in motion picture history and loses fights to chirpy dreamer prostitutes, yet will not stop the pursuit, even as he wanders out and unknowingly sits on the cocoon of too-far-gone out yonder in the windy barrens.

TonyCanoli

★★★ Added by TonyCanoli 4 Nov 2022

Brain damage at home

Matfield

★★★ Watched by Matfield 03 Nov 2022

I'm not quite sure what was going on here but I like the goopy bits.

Freddy73

★★ Watched by Freddy73 04 Nov 2022

That was a long ass cigar!

saltyessentials

★★★★½ Watched by saltyessentials 31 Oct 2022

Enjoyably Good

jc1

★★★★ Rewatched by jc1 31 Oct 2022

The ICC Super Scary Movie Challenge 2022

31/31 A Horror Film You Love, But Don't Think Enough People Watch

Barely known but endlessly creative. You've got stop motion animation, body horror, oppressive damp rooms, surreal landscapes and space fantasies and a crazy scientist who delivers the most unexpected karate chop in all of cinema. Check it out.

Michael Carroll

★★★★½ Watched by Michael Carroll 14 Oct 2022

Some absolutely beautiful images, a great movie to fall into and out of sleep to. Watch at 3am.

Darrell Swainston

★★★★ Watched by Darrell Swainston 13 Oct 2022

A captivating low-budget Cosmic Eraserhead both freaky and funny in equal measure.

jimmyoc

★★★★★ Watched by jimmyoc 12 Oct 2022

Film #7 of The Halloween Marathon 2022

The Colour Out Of Basket Case.

If Belial was a hidden face penis of alien origin rather than an angry ex-conjoined twin, you’d be someway to understanding this. Disembodied takes us on a trash Cinema odyssey, populated by similarly seedy characters in a hotel - including a mad scientist that looks like Colonel Sanders and a peeping Tom who meets a grisly end - and occasional surreal flights of fantasy involving stop motion alien worlds and multiple vaginas. Largely dialogue free, Disembodied eschews diegetic sounds for several periods, leaving only a parodic grandiose soundtrack that mimics silent film and serves to heighten its strange, ethereal nature.

Ali👻

Watched by Ali👻 08 Oct 2022

Certified queer freak horror banger

💀 ᴄɪɴᴇᴍᴀ ᴇxᴄʀᴇᴛᴀ 💀

★★★ Watched by 💀 ᴄɪɴᴇᴍᴀ ᴇxᴄʀᴇᴛᴀ 💀 01 Oct 2022

YourNeighbor

★★★★ Watched by YourNeighbor 22 Sep 2022

it's cheap but the vision is there and for that you have to admire the artistic value of it. i'm da plasmaster baby

Jon Hillman

★★★ Watched by Jon Hillman 16 Sep 2022

I have to admit that I don't know what was going on.

John

★★★ Watched by John 24 Aug 2022

extra-terrestrial acne 🤮

BenBoyte

★★★★★ Watched by BenBoyte 06 Jul 2022

Eraserhead 2

cortney 🧷

★★ Watched by cortney 🧷 06 Jul 2022

The director clearly loves Eraserhead. Somehow this movie makes even less sense though.

This should have been called Potatohead 🥔 🧠

Alixandraw 🦇🕸️

★★★½ Watched by Alixandraw 🦇🕸️ 05 Jun 2022 2

Phallic and yonic body horror and gore. Scummy hotel atmosphere. Bechdel test pass. Yes please.

Patrick Wright

★★½ Watched by Patrick Wright 04 Jun 2022

Joins the rare ranks of Love God as anither grimy weirdo-ass hotel-set movie heavily inspired by the films of Frank Hennenlotter. I didn’t like this one nearly as much though. It’s got the right scuzzy 16-mm vibes, there’s just something about it that never quite clicked with its disparate elements. Not that Love God functioned as an entirely coherent narrative but at least it all fit together to me.

TheMenuButton

★★★½ Watched by TheMenuButton 03 Jun 2022

It's so sincere, so committed, so on the right wavelength. Movies were invented for people to be able to make movies like this. I don't like to say Lynchian but here I mean in the production and sound design.

Justin LaLiberty

★★★★ Watched by Justin LaLiberty 03 Jun 2022 1

what if Guy Maddin made a Frank Henenlotter movie with a $250 budget and some of the best visuals you've ever seen? truly an interdimensional experience and one of the more concentrated blasts of art-horror that I've seen in a long time; might be the only time I've properly witnessed *acting*

Evan Pulgino

★★★★ Watched by Evan Pulgino 31 May 2022

I want to be trapped into a pulpy nodule of undifferentiated cells!

Charming, funny, grimy, low-budget, weird AF, and extra gooey. Also this movie had lots of extra vaginal births before Alex Garland thought they were cool.

Poor some coffee directly into your brain, pull out your favorite educational shorts, count your potatoes, and go along for the ride.

Emalie

★★★★ Watched by Emalie 29 May 2022

Eraserhead meets Basket Case with a touch of Quay Bros. in this grimy weirdo low-budget gem about the Grand Hotel and an inventor who keeps her brain in a jar.

Ashley Wells

★★★★ Watched by Ashley Wells 29 May 2022

Incredibly charming low-fi mad scientist romp that would make a great double feature with The Stuff! I hope someday technology allows me to pour coffee directly onto my brain!

T

Watched by T 28 May 2022

Love to see stop motion twisted into this genre!

Snailor Moon

★★★★ Watched by Snailor Moon 09 Jul 2021

If Lynch and Svankmajer teamed up with Ed Wood to make a Sapphic romance between a mutant scientist and a baker/sex worker.

Big Cheese

★★ Watched by Big Cheese 16 Apr 2022

But she tap dances!

Definitely near the best body melt movies. Though the ones I’ve already seen are some impossible to beat fun movies. But this movie has a lot of charm too.

I couldn’t tell it was SOV most of the time, it looks pretty good. [Found the movie on an SOV list, but it seems to be film—watched on a laptop so missed any filmic details.] The effects are definitely done in digital software because a movie on film with this low of a budget couldn’t do these shots unless they did mixed media.

Everything is fun. Stupid funny dialogue. Stupid funny characters.

Watched while making daal.

duncerat

★★★½ Watched by duncerat 15 Apr 2022

Weirdo movie for weirdos genre displaying characteristics of Cronenberg and Waters forming an idiosyncratic, bizarre mutant pulsating with rage and venom.

Helen

★★ Watched by Helen 11 Apr 2022

Honestly, if you really wanted Eraserhead to make less sense but also be in color… this is for you.

Enjoy!

isabelle

Watched by isabelle 25 Mar 2022

movie magic

Lars Henriks

★★★★½ Watched by Lars Henriks 23 Mar 2022

This is what would happen if „Under the Skin“ and „The Love Witch“ took acid together.

No Christians Either

★★★★ Watched by No Christians Either 21 Mar 2022 3

What in the hellfuck?

Some seriously top-notch lo-fi filmmaking. Highly recommend for so many reasons, from whack practical effects, to hauntingly unique cinematography, to positive portrayals of sex workers, to gnar fucking gore. Some serious art right here and I cannot wait to rewatch it in a proper setting.

If you even mildly enjoy SOV/8mm/16mm trash, this is a must see!

Jude

★★★★ Watched by Jude 18 Mar 2022

just about everything you could want out of a movie, or as i like to call them, "a flick". just bursting with creativity and joy. made my damn day

skeettherich

★★★½ Watched by skeettherich 18 Mar 2022

I'm still getting over this movie. Absolutely love how it starts out being incredibly bizarre, then halfway in Dr. Exposition comes along and randomly announces that she's part alien.

queenjimmybimmy

★★★★ Watched by queenjimmybimmy 18 Mar 2022

Wooooahhhh! This was a lot of fun! Goopy, gory, and low-budget (was getting After Last Season flashbacks in the middle!), with a lot of heart to boot. Connie getting really angry that all Trixie knows about Idaho is potatoes is the most I’ve related to a movie since Napoleon Dymamite lmaoo. I ❤️ the brain chomping, arm sawing, scientific genius hero!

SickeningGore

★★★½ Added by SickeningGore 9 Mar 2022

An extraterrestrial has made its home in Connie's head, causing slimy mutations, visions of alien landscapes, and her to house her actual brain in a jar. She moves into a grimy hotel and begins dissolving/consuming people with melty gore effects to then birth them into alien-like clams, meanwhile a scientist on her trail. A truly unusual oddity with strange body horror, weird characters, and a setting that reminded me of Basket Case/Slime City/Brain Damage. Never has a movie from 98' felt so 88' and I can totally see Vinegar Syndrome picking this up.

Patty

★★★★½ Watched by Patty 24 Feb 2022

There she is, my 2016 in an eggshell. Alive, mutant, just to be needed, using every last word available to transmit what was being transmuted day’s inn and nights out. Heartstrings can be plucked and repotted, repeatedly. I’ll be damned if that ending didn’t make me cry. Tears of: Don’t give up now, we’re proud of who you are. You know it’s never been easy. MOVIE MAGIC!

Magill Foote

★★★½ Added by Magill Foote 22 Feb 2022

A grungy, low-budget mashup of Basket Case and Eraserhead vibes that feels like it was made in the late 70s but is somehow from 1998. Short and sweet, full of fun effects and surreality. I had a great time with this one.

Eeevil

★★★★ Added by Eeevil 21 Feb 2022

I need to know more about the potatoes!

Digital Press

★★★½ Watched by Digital Press 20 Feb 2022

This one is in a league of its own, though if I had to guess, I’d say it’s inspired by two parts David Lynch and one part Frank Henenloter. It’s got a similar indie/grunge vibe to Basket Case, but separates itself from too much comparison by delving into futuristic concept-art dream sequences. The stark imagery and droning hum that pervades the background is very Eraserhead. Whatever the case, it’s… different.

A strange woman takes a room in the most run-down hotel you’ve ever seen. She’s got all kinds of strange science equipment and collects rocks and potatoes. She’s also got some crazy stuff going on with her body. I won’t spoil it, but you’ll be wondering if she’s a monster, an alien, maybe even a mad scientist.

The supporting cast is equally colorful, from the creepy hotel manager with a passion for 16mm educational films to the prostitute next door, to the scientist who’s tracking her activity, this is a mystery for the ages.

I’m kinda surprised this isn’t talked about more often. It seems like it would have no problem getting a loyal cult following. It is wild!

cult_rain

★★★½ Watched by cult_rain 20 Feb 2022

Lots of awesome and nasty effects here, well worth the watch

orcpussy

★★★★★ Rewatched by orcpussy 13 Feb 2022

essence

Byron Miller

★★★½ Watched by Byron Miller 08 Feb 2022

Beautifully dirty production design meets no budget grimy surrealist body horror. Awesome movie. Thank you Bleeding Skull for recommending it!

hauntface

★★★½ Watched by hauntface 30 Jan 2022

What a gem, it’s sleazy, dirty, Ott, with great stomach churning practical effects.

I can’t believe this was made 1998!

I will have to watch it again soon.

Lexi

★★★★ Watched by Lexi 21 Jan 2022

This was exactly what I wanted tonight. Omnipresent filth and grime, dripping meatscapes, claymation monstrosities, Tanguy dreamlands, psychedelic nebulae, nonsensical parodies of 1950s educational films. Writer-director William Kersten shares many of Cronenberg's bodily fixations, but without his philosophical ones, which means that everything here is a horrible mouth-vagina and there's no particular reason for it. That's okay, though, because Disembodied is a movie that operates on vibes, not on discourse. In fact, long stretches have no dialogue at all, just Kersten's lush Bartókian score. (Apparently the original music was done with a Korg; Kersten redid the entire thing in 2002, using the then-new Vienna Symphonic Library, and it sounds startlingly good given the technology of the period.)

The setting — a dilapidated hotel full of weirdos, complete with a peephole hidden behind a painting — brought to mind Paul Bartel's Private Parts. Here, though, the protagonist is no naïve runaway; she's a taciturn gothic witch-scientist who could out-weird anyone in Bartel's movie. The movie is also, perhaps, an antecedent to Danny Perez's glorious Antibirth, which is also about a woman on the margins of society whose body is undergoing a hideous transformation. But that's enough comparisons, because Disembodied is really a singular vision, from its vast alien volcanoes to its dancing bottles of mysterious colored liquids. It's also, incidentally, one of the few horror movies I've seen that portrays sex workers in an unequivocally positive light; that's surprising enough when it happens now, let alone in the 90s. Thanks to all of you whose reviews pointed me in this direction!

Aliza

★★★★ Watched by Aliza 11 Jan 2022

so creative and fun!! exactly the kind of movie I want to make

cryptofgloom

★★★★½ Watched by cryptofgloom 11 Jan 2022

"Give me my brain!"

No way of explaining just how out of this world Disembodied is. You have to take the acid spitting tumor trip through the cosmos of a filth plastered hotel and to the void the stars are suspended in to glowing ember pink and purple lands filled with neon sludge and burning ethereal imagery of Fantastic Planet heights all by yourself to truly grasp the weirdness.

Extraterrestrial goop pods that house parasitic beings are born through the open gashes in Connie's body, plopping in a pool of slime and blood at her feet over and over again and thats not even the most bizarre part. The whole thing is a surreal shot to the brain and much like the brain Connie keeps jarred up in her luggage it has you feeling suspended and floating through a twisted reality of horror meets sci-fi that after watching makes perfect sense why so many call it "Lynchian".

William Kersten went all in on this, making the best thing he could with the budget he had and it looks fucking phenomenal. Pure passion behind everything here and unreal looking effects in the form of hideous face mutation, cosmic trips, victims turned to puddles of mush, arm amputation and a bonkers story that transforms into a crazier and crazier entity the more it goes on.

orcpussy

★★★★★ Watched by orcpussy 09 Jan 2022

shes just like me..

Bowie

★★★½ Watched by Bowie 30 Dec 2021

An obviously reverent and unique 50s' sci-fi homage with the alien as protagonist. So dedicated to replicating the contours of its inspirations that it feels slow at 75 minutes. Nonetheless, highly recommenced watching if like me you watched The Brain That Wouldn't Die episode of MST3K so many times that you begin to admire the actual film and become resentful of the riffs.

CDY93

★★★★★ Watched by CDY93 19 Dec 2021

A perfect movie thank you so much

Wu

★★★★ Watched by Wu 18 Dec 2021

Perplexing and truly alien film about a cool anti cop bimbo sex worker and her goth gf having potato babies

Morgan

★★★★★ Watched by Morgan 14 Dec 2021

This is the kind of shit that keeps me enthusiastic about film; the knowledge that somewhere, out there in the wastes, movies like Disembodied simply exist in the same universe as I. Methodical banger of lo-fi goopy body horror weirdness which, appropriately, feels completely disembodied from anything I've ever seen. Really powerful vibes throughout; something like camp sci-fi Cronenberg filmed inside an Oingo Boingo music video. Even by that metric I cannot stress enough how strange and singular and incredible this experience comes across. Sad this is Woolverton's only screen credit, because she's batting one-fucking-thousand with a leather-decked, bug-eyed performance for all the disaffected goth queers of the world. What an odd and fantastic movie. Wow. Wow wow wow!!!

Ryan DeWerth

★★★ Watched by Ryan DeWerth 27 Nov 2021

Had no idea when starting this that it would be so similar to a story I’m working on. Enough details are changed and the tone is different enough where I wasn’t bummed about the concept already existing, but it definitely made for an interesting watch!

Also had no idea this was from 1998 until just now. Totally looks like it could be straight outta the early 70s.

The plot was a little too ambiguous but the wonderful practical fx and that low-budget ambition made up for any criticisms I may have for it. And at only 78 minutes, it’s easy enough to just push through any of the slower parts that don’t work as well.

STFish

★★★★★ Added by STFish 31 Oct 2021

this is one of the dreamiest, coziest movies i've ever seen and trixie is my best friend.

samu3lk

★★★★★ Added by samu3lk 31 Oct 2021

Absolute banger every time I watch it. 5/5 every goddamn time.

David Muenchrath

★★★ Watched by David Muenchrath 31 Oct 2021

An interesting throwback to the films of the 1950s. It’s worth checking out if you enjoy the fringes of cinema.

krhhmg

★★★½ Watched by krhhmg 24 Oct 2021

Slow paced but utterly insane sov gem. From the first few seconds until the end, this flick takes you through a series of grimy and sometimes downright revolting scenery which gets more and more outlandish as it progresses.

Minor spoilers ahead

- a creepy receptionist looking one moment like frankenstein's monster and then like his assistant igor. As if that wasn't enough, his doings add nothing to the plot, at all.

- cone-shaped protruding cysts in the face which blast slimy goo on innocent bystanders

- half a bathtub filled with.. i didn't quite get what they are, offsprings maybe? Either way they look nasty!

- a half-crazed scientist torturing a brain in a jar with electric shocks

- a john reaching through a peeking hole in the hotel's walls and getting his arm sawed off cleanly

There's more, but i believe this list should be reason enough to give it a shot

Steve P

★★★½ Watched by Steve P 20 Oct 2021

Eraserhead of the late 90s with a heaping helping of body horror on the side.

Cameron Maitland

Watched by Cameron Maitland 20 Oct 2021

Feels like a cursed film but in a good way. I'm glad this is the film that got me and welcome the weird goopy volcano death.

Justin Decloux

★★★★ Watched by Justin Decloux 17 Oct 2021

I also have my brain in a jar on my desk.

johnconn

★★★ Watched by johnconn 17 Oct 2021

This movie had me at "acid spitting face tumor."

Philip Decloux

★★★★ Watched by Philip Decloux 17 Oct 2021

By the power vested in me, I hereby bestow upon 1998's Disembodied, the descriptor "Lynchian". Few films have worked harder to deserve it.

A.J. Kishta

★★★★★ Watched by A.J. Kishta 17 Oct 2021

I've been watching movies for twenty hours straight at this point, and I'm so tired that I don't think I can articulate a single thought about this one other than I think it's great.

SamSpear

Watched by SamSpear 17 Oct 2021

Cronenberg-lynchian mix (not as a buzzword, clearly what this movie was trying to riff on), pretty great, mucky hallways, a lot of excretions.. lot of stuff with dick and pussy and stuff like that yeah yeah yeah this was kind of awesome.

J B

Watched by J B 17 Oct 2021

Horror Movie Mind Melter (?/x)

Dozed off through the last few movies, but woke up in time for this lovely oddball. Full-on mind melt territory.

twogreatships

★★★★ Watched by twogreatships 17 Oct 2021

Goopy, paranoid and dreamlike. I can't believe this film was made in 98, it captures an incredibly specific aloof 70s horror style (which I can't quite put my finger on) perfectly.

BDA_

Watched by BDA_ 17 Oct 2021

24 Hour Horror Movie Mind Melter

tfw your acne is so bad it kills people

Koschei the Deathless

★★★★ Watched by Koschei the Deathless 17 Oct 2021

A loose Corman film template with obvious echoes of Yuzna, Henenlotter, Lynch, Cronenberg, Svankmajer, and Waters in its details. Very low-budget but sublimely disgusting in its design, and infinitely endearing. For my own two cents on my favourite design choices, I like how the sickly hotel rooms all look like sets from famous CBBC game show 'Trapped'; this film just really taps into my ideal mucky aesthetic.

I've been reliably informed that the cracking writing is very Motern-Like, which now… more

reality dog

★★★★★ Watched by reality dog 16 Oct 2021

Words cannot convey how much this movie rules. Made for paranoid mutants.

Klon

★★★★★ Watched by Klon 11 Oct 2021

This was exactly the kind of movie I was dying to see in 1998 - unpredictable and indescribable and attempting to create its own homemade language. Up there with Frank Grow and John Michael McCarthy when it comes to underground filmmaking from this era. The MIB character and sci-fi laboratory effects recalled Corman’s Not of This Earth without a campy throwback tone. This is aware enough of its limitations in production elements like sets and effects; stop motion blobs, bloody stumps, and threadbare hotel rooms seem to highlight those limitations. It’s also unconcerned with holding the audience’s hand through narrative checkpoints, stops in the story to have a quick dance or a dream sequence are much more welcome than dull expository dialogue.

greatbigfatguy

★★★ Watched by greatbigfatguy 09 Oct 2021

girl melts people with acid and keeps her own brain in a jar, the classic cliche. amateur actors, low quality film, but silly and weird enough to actually be kinda cool. the effects arent good, but theyre stuff like brains crawling out of tummies and pus volcanos, so its fine? also the cgi is kinda boss? a film of many contrasts.

bee

★★★★ Watched by bee 06 Oct 2021

i saw a japanese trailer for this movie during the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema J-Horror Blood Bath Double Feature a few years ago, it was entirely in japanese so i had absolutely no idea what it’s title was (the only english text was “killer virgin” lmao)  and i spent weeks trying to find out ANYTHING about what this movie could’ve been. after lots of searching, i finally found its title and the Brinkvision blu-ray shop for Disembodied. i wanted to watch this SO BAD!!!!!! the japanese trailer made this seem so weird, almost liminal.

now that it’s finally available to stream on tubitv i can gladly say……. THIS WAS ✨EVERYTHING I HOPED IT WOULD BE✨

this flick is loaded with charm. it’s so fucking weird bro!!!! the effects are great given the budget and time it was originally filmed. you can feel the love and inspiration every second of the run time. i honestly have no idea why this isn’t up in the ranks with so many other camp classics of its same speed. like seriously why doesn’t anyone talk about Disembodied!!!! this shit was awesome and for its short run time it’s absolutely worth a watch.

please go watch this fucked up pu$$y monster alien movie !

Lance Schibi

★★★½ Watched by Lance Schibi 15 Aug 2021

Strangely part Eraserhead, some Brain Damage, and maybe a bit of Barton Fink with some Bad Taste & Rabid sprinkled on top, Disembodied is a fucking trip with so much going for it. I know throwing out comparisons like this can annoy some but Disembodied has a lot of my favorite things melted in. It definitely deserves more eyes on it. It seems to posses an almost diabolical intelligence, and does a damn good job at putting your brain to work. Better than being in a jar, right?

futurian

★★★★ Watched by futurian 30 Jul 2021

I need to know more about this movie!  Where is the behind the scenes clips!?

Coyote Fugly

★★★★ Watched by Coyote Fugly 22 Jul 2021

One of those genre-savvy works from the heart that really nails the technicals so you can lowkey wonder how its all put together while enjoying the ride. I am not a fan of deliberate horror comedies as a general rule—overt winking is gauche, people—but this manages to ride the fine line and comes out on top. The sets and props are works of art, honestly.

Once again, the fleshapoids need not atone for their sins...

kaylyn

Watched by kaylyn 06 Jul 2021

I really dug this one! It's totally overlooked!

Jacob Stutts

Watched by Jacob Stutts 06 Jul 2021

The fact that both the practical and computer generated effects in the parts shot on film look so amazing really highlights the fact that the strangely modern interstitial shots of space and such just don’t mesh with the material all that well. Overall though it’s hard not to admire; the mix of ‘70s and ‘90s styles is super charming, and the set design is so grimy you can practically smell it.

Strong Knotz

★★★★★ Watched by Strong Knotz 29 Jun 2021

Absolute banger. Forget about Mandy-- this is the psychedelic nightmare world I want to live in. If Brett Piper and Sarah Jacobson fell down the K-hole with a 16mm Bolex in one hand and a copy of Jung in the other, the result would probably smell a lot like Disembodied. Pure ambitious energy from start to finish. Even when it slows down in the later scenes that focus more on the Russ Tamblyn/George Buck Flower hybrid Dr. Sigmund Sylvanus, there is an amiability to the ambling that could charm the monocle off of Mr. Peanut. An irreverent blend of monster movie, hangout flick, gross-out comedy, and too many other amazing things to try and further convince you to watch. POTATO POWER!

Andy Baughman

Watched by Andy Baughman 09 Jun 2021

Interested in seeing the earlier cut but this is the “real deal”….

William “Max” Womack

★★★★ Watched by William “Max” Womack 02 Jun 2021  1

100 Movies Over Summer Break - Movie #32

Finally some good fucking food.

If you like Eraserhead or if you're like me and you LOVE Eraserhead, this is for you. This is basically Eraserhead meets Basket Case and I loved it! Some incredible atmosphere, some fun characters, some general weirdness and a hell of a lot of passion went into this.

I'm only giving it four stars because I started to get kind of bored with the film and its comedy element was lacking in my opinion, but if I had made this movie I would feel so proud and accomplished. This is a weirdo surrealist call-back to another era of horror done perfectly well and I'm absolutely prepared to like it more upon second watch.

If you consider yourself a fan of weird surrealist body horror and you haven't seen it yet, check it out.

samu3lk

★★★★★ Added by samu3lk 5 Jun 2021

One of my all time favorite movies. No-budget horror, weird dreamy atmosphere, bizarre images. I've seen this movie dozens of times and it's always a delight to me. The BluRay remaster is great, but I wish there was an option to listen to it with the original score.

kumquatdeath

★★★ Watched by kumquatdeath 01 Jun 2021

So, after a marathon of Eraserhead, The Brain that Wouldn't Die, Basket Case, 2001 and a Georgia O'Keefe retrospective, a man read a Mad Magazine, got drunk on potato vodka and said "egads, I've got it!"

Recommend?

MarkusMidnight

★★★★ Added by MarkusMidnight 31 May 2021

"Would you girls like to watch a movie on electrochemical induction?"

kasarin

★★★★ Watched by kasarin 22 May 2021

Wednesday Adams gets some weird hobbies as she gets older!

This movie is a love story to 50s brain in a jar sci-fi/horror, John Watters's school of scene chewing acting, and Frank Hettenlotter's vision of sleaze.

It is goofy as sin and an absolute blast.

Tyler Hendrix

★★★ Rewatched by Tyler Hendrix 16 May 2021

HIEEEEE-yA!!!

Scrambled Face

★★★½ Watched by Scrambled Face 22 Apr 2021

Part of Halfway to Hoop-tober 2021

This is the kind of thing that keeps me indebted to all you dedicated Letterboxd trash diggers, another one I would never have heard about if it weren't for a flurry of enthusiastic reviews on my feed. This Reno-lensed 16mm sci-fi/horror tale from writer, director and composer William Kersten follows furtive scientist Connie (Anastasia Woolverton) as she checks into a fleapit hotel and commences spawning toothy globules from an alarming orifice in her abdomen. Eventually, the whole wild story of Connie, the acid-spewing facial growth hiding behind her hair veil and the jarred brain she tends with a strange electrical rig is unveiled. However, Kersten teases out the details as Connie goes about her mysterious business in the crumbling, cardboard-walled hotel, befriending her chatty sex worker neighbor (Hannah Nease) and awkwardly dealing with the gross, invasive clerk (editor and SFX artist James Diederichsen), all the while evading a rumpled scientist (George Randolph) from a shady corporation. Disembodied's currently circulated version is a remastered director's cut with added footage, music and effects, but I imagine the original late '90s release was striking enough to have stood out in any era. While capably building an immersive little mythos of its own, its DNA shows traces of bizarre movie mainstays like Corman (the plot), Henenlotter (the setting), Cronenberg (the rubbery aberrations) and Lynch (the pacing), plus a vague sense of kitschy Americana in the overall design that kinda reminds me of both Waters and the Coens. I don't want to spoil anything else, but I promise there's both slippery practical gore and some real sketchy CGI to boost the sci-fi elements. As someone who tends to ignore a lot of horror made in the late '90s, I'm thankful to have been alerted about Disembodied, and hope to spread the word to anyone who appreciates regional, DIY stuff made with a clear weirdo vision and the drive to see it through.

nathaxnne [hiatus]

★★★★★ Watched by nathaxnne [hiatus] 23 Apr 2021  10

There are movies that you know you are going to love within the first few minutes of the film. Disembodied is such a film. It starts out totally amazing then only gets better from there. Disembodied is a kind film, a caring film, a film that loves you and hates cops of any kind. Disembodied knows that you are a damaged freak who will never be able to function in day-to-day society but you are totally brilliant at like five things that only you care about and that being good at is entirely consubstantial with being a damaged freak who will never be able to function in day-to-day society but the awesome and amazing thing about being that but like persisting in being that actually alters the world. your presence, your movement in this world alters it, makes it more like you. if you are aware of this you can attempt to mitigate or counter the stuff in you that if the world was more that way would hurt people and make it bad for them to live under but you can also try to show the world things it has never seen before if you were not in it and may never see again after you pass from this life. no matter how fucked up or hurt or wounded or deformed or injured or not-right you are there is something in this world that loves you and that something is a someone, by virtue of it loving you, it must be, and by loving in return you complete the circuit you let the other know that yes, they are a person even if they don't always feel like a person just a collection of things in a junk drawer, a child's shadowbox hurriedly unpacked, a haunted house, a swarm, an infestation, a vent colony, a constellation. like constellations we become through naming, through being seen and being named. unlike what we know of constellations we can see and name ourselves even if if takes us a very long time. we can see and name you, even if the name we use is your name the name that you give us to call you by. once you are seen and named by another and that another answers to your call and turns its awareness to yours, and knows you, and does not run or vomit or panic, these are the conditions under which we can be known. if we can be known we can be loved, by others, by ourselves, by our own names, even if they are unpronounceable in all human tongues. love is that which moves the sun and other stars and all of that which orbits and trails in their courses, which pulls them to them with bonds of love and affection and desired closeness sometimes so close as to be inside and this is calming and this is soothing and it is homelike even if you never thought you would have a home even if you thought you would just drift through endless space forever, half-dreaming, what you are finds purchase in another, finds a place to be, to become, and what you were you never have to be again because now you have the space to flower outward in an endless unfolding of calm radiant joy, in ecstatic trance, in the flow of dreams overflowing a bathroom, an apartment, a hotel room, a dry ancient seabed floor, a continent, a planet whose name you know and who knows you in return. what you are spirals outward and in this spiral movement parts of you are lost and erode into dust and this dust gets into the cracks and the small places of a world so small and fine as to be unseen effectively an invisible action and this dust finally there in its place of momentary rest sleeps to unfurl what you are contains all of what you can be given the right circumstances the proper alignment the opening of the gates and everything now covered in iterative aspect of you a gentle rain of petals that does not stop until there are tidal movements of these petals in their fulsome decay and as they dissolve they emanate the sweetest odors constantly modulating a pheromonic shower switching genes on and off in the environment, in the environment that is you a river of constant change and flux and erosion worn down until you are a dry riverbed indistinguishable from the surrounding desert and in you even in the absence of visible water new life that is you that is what you have always been but never have never been able to know except in fractured dreaming sleep will come forth and you will be as you have been and are now and further on into ceaseless becoming forever and ever a river flowing to the sea eroding the land carrying with it all that has been and all that is to come within its ever-churning body its terminus consonant with itself as above so below amen & blessed be <3 <3 <3

Wiccaburr

★★★½ Watched by Wiccaburr 29 Mar 2021

This was truly a weird ride for such a short run time.

Reminded me of some of those schlock movies in music and tone.

The characters were cheesy and corny for sure but definitely watchable entertainment. The effects wasn't huge but decent for sure. It might not hit all cylinders for many though.

Also, that maid was smoking the longest cigar I have ever seen.

Are we sure it wasn't a churro?

belial_carboni

★★★★ Watched by belial_carboni 18 Mar 2021

"The weirdest woman the earth has ever seen!"

Wow Disembodied just dismembered my brain and hurled it straight into a low budget dungeon of the deranged! I'm impressed 1998! You done good! I skipped over this one in my watchlist a lot but I'm glad I finally arrived because this is a sneaky little lofi gem. A grimy 90s nightmare that harnesses the spirit of 80s body horror and splatter films alike.

Poor Connie Sproutz has a problem. She's developed a bizarre deformity causing mutated spores to protrude out of her face! And what's causing the spores? Well it's a galactic parasite that's inhabited her skull! And there's plenty of room now because she keeps her brain in a jar on her bedside table! When a crafty little scientist discovers her deadly endeavors he embarks on a collision course with the ferocious facial reckoning of Connie's killer spores!

I really loved the psychadelic clay motion looking space visuals! Paired with the creepy piano melodies it was absolutely divine. Like if Tim Burton took too much acid in 1987 and fell asleep into most surreal nightmare. Wish there was more of those scenes!

The special FX are highly ambitious as we are treated to a wide array of goopy alien atrocities. The body horror elements were reminiscent of early Cronenberg while the dingy apartment settings and quirky characters were straight out of a Henenlotter creation. And while the influences were there Disembodied still maintained it's own unique identity.

A dissonant galactic gorefest for the ages.

youreundrarrest

★★★★ Added by youreundrarrest 14 Mar 2021

Between the splices of cosmic, and sometimes hellacious, imagery, the potatoes, the Gelatinous Mass and all the other bizarre events, it's the karate chop that stands tall.

chibitachop

Watched by chibitachop 08 Mar 2021

charming trashy thrift-store fever-dream genre melting-pot lifting elements from a wide variety enough of sources to succeed as its own quirky riff. really love the stop motion bits. if there is a version that does not have the clearly added much later music and digital effects I would have much preferred that as neither added to the movie for me altho I suppose it does add to the cumulative liminal cognitive dissonance. underneath the wooden acting and gross-out practical effects there are some interesting ideas - like one scene with the doctor listening to his own recorded notes is kind of backs its way into a fusion of The Hidden and the sunken place from Get Out that I can easily imagine an alternate vers of the movie making its entire focus.

Mazinkaiser

★★★★ Added by Mazinkaiser 5 Mar 2021

Ma'am are you trying to smoke a cigar or a churro

poppet

★★★ Watched by poppet 03 Mar 2021

my favourite thing here is the atmosphere, very disgusting and i love that. otherwise im left wanting more from the characters. it stagnates when you arent attached to anybody...and when nothing makes much sense.

they made lots of jelly things and yet opt to make the parasite itself dry clay? when it lives in her head? how would it possibly be that dry? ah, well.....i know i would have liked it all more with a romance subplot, even a doomed unhappy one. but im glad they made this and had fun ^^

scottyclell

★★★ Watched by scottyclell 19 Feb 2021

I really appreciate the exploitation of yesteryear aesthetic that is going on here - even if it pays a little too much homage at times. Think Brain Damage with a female driven cast and excessive dream scenery, and we have Disembodied. I would have preferred it focus less on these hotel room dreamscapes and more on how this being interacted in the world, but there it was still a fun and captivating little piece.

burgworks

★★★ Watched by burgworks 15 Feb 2021

My life is potato...

len0re

★★★ Watched by len0re 16 Feb 2021

It’s good,weird,really cheesy. It’s fun. I love the stop motion in it. It’s low budget but I like the effects. Some of the dialogue is really funny. I would recommend this movie. I think it has its charm for sure.

Boxer_Santaros

Watched by Boxer_Santaros 15 Feb 2021 3

Has major sov energy despite clearly being shot on film and more generally being very very nice to look at, win win! Definitely belongs in the ''omg, he/she is literally me!'' canon, and I guarantee that whatever assholes won best actor and actress in 1998 did not give nearly the performance Anastasia Woolverton does here, even if half her look and mannerisms are literally just swiped directly from ''Dementia''AKA''Daughter of Horror'' (an underrated all time great, watch it!).

Something_Weird

★★½ Watched by Something_Weird 12 Feb 2021

Not quite sure what I just watched lol had a bit of a basket case and eraserhead feel to it minus the charm and humor found in a henenlotter film. Worth checking out out of you want a strange and unusual midnight movie

Evan “Kaizō Haya-shill” Pincus

★★★★ Watched by Evan “Kaizō Haya-shill” Pincus 28 Jan 2021

The director says his primary points of reference for this were Basket Case & Daughter of Horror - two of my favorite oddball American indie horror pictures! This are obvious influences shouted out rather directly in the film, but it’s spiked with desert-rat weirdness and is equally informed by the filmmaker’s love of the Quay bros - endlessly charming combo. Do not know what the deal with the directors cut I watched is - switches from 4:3 to 16:9 for new VFX sequences occasionally (which are fine and just as full of personality as the rest of the movie), but apparently much of the score is new as well, and I found that to be an overly bombastic weak link; not a disaster, but imagine this going super heavy on synth squiggles! If Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee were open (or even had a brick-and-mortar location at all) these days I’d try to see if they had an original VHS to check out ASAP, very curious what the differences are. Do love that this movie, despite sporting the dual release years of 1998 and 2016, largely feels like a transmission straight from 1982.

Seth Goodkind

★★★½ Watched by Seth Goodkind 27 Jan 2021

High concept, low budget and home-made sci-fi-horror fun that skips all the jaw-flapping filler that characterizes many films in the same ilk. While I personally think it treads a little too close to the "women's bodies are both intriguing and repulsive" (and must be dissected/exorcised) trope, it's still fun and doesnt fuck around.

Parker

★★★★★ Watched by Parker 26 Jan 2021

Absolutely delightful. Really feels like something special.

Ben Buckingham

★★★★ Watched by Ben Buckingham 26 Jan 2021

Nigh impossible to not go full Kim Newman & start listing films 2 at a time that are even tangentially related. The film invites it. This is firmly a work of homage, remixed cohesively to often mesmerising effect. It is very clear that this curio was born of a childhood drenched in 50s era scifi, trom Ed Wood on up, or down, depending on your perspective, & liberal helpings of HG Lewis. Where it goes modern weird, there is still much familiarity (not to its detriment). Hennenlotter is a clear referant, for numerous reasons (& yet one also feels that Hennenlotter may have homaged this a little himself in Bad Biology). Lynch is easily name dropped. The films it closest resembles are Liquid Sky & Xtro; if they were fused together & directed by an alternate timeline Tim Burton, whos's career tanked after Pee Wee's Big Adventure opened to an undeserved box office disaster & so he had to resort to amateur filmmaking in Reno. Cinema may have been better off, & perhaps Tim, too.

Elric Kane

★★★ Watched by Elric Kane 24 Jan 2021  2

Somewhere on the shlock spectrum of Ed Wood, HG Lewis, Private Parts, Basket Case & Slime City this film seems lost in time for ‘98 but has an odd charm that grows on you like the acid spitting tumor on the girls face.

fortypopp

★★★★ Watched by fortypopp 22 Jan 2021

such an odd accumulation of conspiracy thriller, body horror, urban grime, and hazy hangout cinema that comes closest to Drone Henenlotter (ft. a dash of Svankmajer, what with those wonderful stop-motion alien landscapes) but ultimately moves according to its own groove.

perhaps unintentional on the part of its makers but we chose to read the whole mad affair as a parable for living on the Spectrum (others here have commented on its allusions to gender dysphoria, which are equally valid); there’s something so refreshingly internal about the world that the film conjures that almost directly supports these notions. anyways, this is something very special and it’s on Amazon Prime so, as they say, get to it!

Tyler

★★★★½ Watched by Tyler 20 Jan 2021 1

masterpiece?

EricYvon

★★★★ Watched by EricYvon 19 Jan 2021

Disembodied feels like the long lost love child of Henenlotter and Paul Bartel and that’s such a beautiful thing. Where have you been all my life, Disembodied?!

Scott Kaczynski

★★★½ Watched by Scott Kaczynski 13 Jan 2021

Saw a lot of love for this movie online, so I thought I would check it out. It's very non-sensical and abstract. It's also not very well acted, but all of those things work in it's favor. This was the director's cut which adds a bunch of new animations of volcanos and starfields. It's a trippy experience. There's a lot of vagina metaphors in this thing, along with some cool violence and brain eating. Dose up and check it out.

audrey 🌑

★★★★★ Watched by audrey 🌑 11 Jan 2021  16

A conqueror worm twists and writhes through the cosmic debris of a hotel that feels more constructed than real buildings do. Down the narrow artificial hallways we find ourselves trapped in a world without words; a film probably not made by humans. No help is given to the viewer, but we can mostly orient ourselves by the genre allusions — the inevitable death trap a dingy hotel room becomes in this kind of paranoid DIY freakshow. This is something so fundamentally off-kilter that everything takes on a sort of alienating effect, like Eraserhead meets Manos or (Insert Your Choice of Abstract Regional Indie Exploit) but that’s only part of the picture. This is a journey through muddy bathwater into the most obscure recesses of the brain stored in the jar beside your bed, a vibe that is just as menacing as it is outrageous. Films never make my eyes this wide but I watched this in a total state of awe.

Algor49

★★★★½ Watched by Algor49 12 Jan 2021 4

Sometimes I worry I’ve seen all the best hidden gems, but then I watch something like this and realize there’s still more out there. This is a nasty, gooey, unsettling little horror film shot on 16mm. Seriously feels like a Frank Henenlotter/David Lynch project. Occasionally we cut away from dim moldy rooms to shots of the universe and strange alien planets. Nasty vagina creatures, a brain in a jar, stop motion effects, acidic zit pops. Falls into one of my favorite horror genres: Movies that feel like actual nightmares.

maggie siebert

★★★★★ Watched by maggie siebert 11 Jan 2021

it was when the investigator briefly muttered about having an mkultra flashback that i realized this was a fiver for sure

nornir

★★★★ Watched by nornir 10 Jan 2021

American Denpa, pre-digitized delusion, obsessions of vacuum tubes and film strips and latex. Ends in the big nowhere of the southwest, going back to ground in Roswell country, Lou Ferrigno-style. The mind literally discrete and accessible by outsiders.

pd187

★★★★★ Added by pd187 6 Jan 2021  15

"you call that living? being trapped in a pulpy nodule of undifferentiated cells??"---become dense with dreams & densities of endless transcendence~

E

★★★ Watched by E 29 Dec 2020

" Who were you Connie Sproutz ? "

Meet Connie Sproutz , she has a alien in her head and her brain in a jar. She also has a volcanic zit that spews people melting goo and she births weird pod things to soak in the tub. And that's just the beginning... there's dancing , potatoes, a hooker named "Trixie Turner" , more potatoes and outerspace volcano flashbacks.

Battyjess

★★★ Watched by Battyjess 25 Nov 2020

This movie is weird AF.....

Watch it! Watch it! 👏🏽 👏🏽👏🏽

Tyler Hendrix

Rewatched by Tyler Hendrix 17 Oct 2020

Watched the new director's cut version and enjoyed it a good bit more this time. Not sure if it was the new music & shots added, or if I was just in a better mood. David Lynch by way of Frank Henenlotter, on a much smaller budget. It's supposedly the director's attempt to thread a bunch of nightmares he had together into a story, and that's pretty much what it feels like.

Bryan Hayworth

★★★½ Watched by Bryan Hayworth 11 Oct 2019

This film was so bizarre. I am not sure if I actually loved the movie or not but I definitely enjoyed the effects throughout the film. It is a shame that lead actress Anastasia Woolverton did not continue with acting after this film.

Doctor Borpo

★★★ Watched by Doctor Borpo 02 Sep 2018

If Henenlotter directed an almost silent film, it’d be this. Utterly unique, cheap, and terrible, this film possesss an unearthly and disturbing charm that I don’t quite get but I think I love it?

Ralphus

★★ Watched by Ralphus 03 Aug 2018

Connie Sproutz has a hollowed out noggin' coz an alien is up and living in there. Her cheek boil squirts deadly goo and her stomach slit spits out vagina-shaped thingamies that she keeps in the bathtub. She keeps her brain in a jar connected to a tube amp. Oh, and she farms potatoes in pots for the 'shine she distills. Colonel Sanders, meanwhile, doesn't have a problem with Connie per se but he sure don't like no stinkin' noggin' aliens and he's out to get Connie. Disembodied is very low-budget. It looks at least a decade older than it is. But it's enjoyable in a demented kind of way.

JP Fournier

★★★ Watched by JP Fournier 07 May 2018

"all characters in this photoplay are fictitious" it says at the end of a film with a lady who grows acid filled boils on her cheek, feeds a brain in a jar, and spawns vagina shaped donut creatures that she plants in dirt. Perfect!

Review of Disembodied by Shawn Francis, DVD News Flash, May 27, 108

I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears mentioning again, I’ve been reviewing since 2012, and occasionally I’ll notice patterns in the reviews I do, as in a series of random movies with similar themes will pop up. Mind you these patterns are not planned, which is why it makes them so fun when I notice them. It appears I’m in another pattern that started with my last review of Annihilation (2018). I ended that review by saying, “Highly recommended for connoisseurs of weird cinema and/or H.P. Lovecraft fans!” Well, it appears that also applies to Disembodied. Whereas Annihilation I would describe as “big budget weirdness,” I would describe this movie as “low-budget weirdness.” Basically flip-sides of that same coin is the way I’m looking at both of these films.

Before I start the cover for the blu-ray (see below in the specs department) is deceptive. It gives one the impression at some point you’ll see a human head in a jar. Not so, what you’ll witness is a human brain in a jar. I know, I know, it’s not as gruesome, but Disembodied gets gruesome in totally different ways, just not “human head in a jar gruesome”.

For a movie made in 1998 I was a little taken aback I hadn’t heard of it. I didn’t discover its existence until I was perusing the pre-orders on Amazon, and, well, you have to admit that blu-ray cover is kind of an eye-catcher. That in turn lead me down to the description of the movie and that was pretty much the clincher. So, I hit up IMDB and educated myself on all things Disembodied. This led me to a user review by a wkerstenmusic, which was pretty easy to figure out was from the Director, William Kersten, and that in turn led me to a trailer of the movie on YouTube. I don’t know . . . there was something about that trailer that piqued my interest, so here I am writing a review on it, and here you are reading it. In a nutshell, I dug it.

Is it weird?

You betcha!

In fact you might call it uber-weird, but I like uber-weird movies, even mildly weird movies, if they strike me just the right way, and it appears Disembodied did just that.  The reason for the two release dates in the review heading is that it originally came out in 1998, but as Kerston states in his “review,“ this version is a Director’s Cut, and the date for that is listed as 2016 in the end credits. Fangoria reviewed the VHS and actually gave it a positive review, I never saw the VHS, so I don’t know what that version looked like, but Kersten states:

“A new, rich symphonic music track and special effects which were originally too complex to be produced properly will be included in this release, which will extend the stop motion animation seen in a few scenes in the original version.”

And I will say the improved effects are very well done, and the stop-motion was good too, but that symphonic music track really gave the flick scope, at times making it feel very much like a movie from the hey-day of Hollywood, and other times sounding like something Richard Band would create. If you’re not familiar with Band, check out the music for films like Re-Animator, From Beyond and The Resurrected, all of which “coincidentally” are movies based on the tales of H.P. Lovecraft.

According to Kersten his film, “. . . is inspired by traumatic dreams of the director, the 50s film “Daughter of Horror” and the great Frank Henenlotter’s “Basket Case.” I’m familiar with Basket Case (1982), though there’s also a vibe of Henenlotter’s other film, Brain Damage (1988), in it too, but I had to look up Daughter Of Horror to see what that was about. Dementia (1955) is the alternate title it goes by and IMDB describes as, “This film, with no dialogue at all, follows a psychotic young woman’s nightmarish experiences through one skid-row night.” And with that I can definitely see a “Daughter Of Horror” vibe in it.

There’s very little dialogue in the first act, and nothing’s explained until a little ways in, but I’m going to spoil that in this paragraph, so if you want to go into this cold, stop reading now, you’ve been warned! The movie only runs about an hour and fourteen minutes and has a maximum of three main characters, and two supporting ones in it. Connie Sproutz (Anastasia Woolverton) is the main character who comes to the Grand Hotel for reasons that we’ll soon see are bizarre to say the least. The only room available is in the basement, with the one she’s given being right next to a hooker by the name of Trixie Turner (Hannah Cooper; billed as Hannah Nease on IMDB). She’s actually a nice girl who befriends Connie later in the movie, but for right now she wants to be alone in this scummy apartment (Trixie’s been at the hotel longer and her room actually looks nice and clean). Don’t even ask me to describe the current state of the toilet, the furnace is in her room too. So what’s wrong with Connie? Well, she had an alien encounter (never shown) that resulted in her brain being replaced with a parasite (stop motion creation seen twice in the movie). It altered her body giving her a toothy maw in her belly and a zit on her cheek that grows and becomes part of her feeding cycle. Connie no longer eats human food, only human brains (shades of Stuart Gordon’s From Beyond (1986), a loose adaptation of Lovecraft’s story by the same name). Once she targets a victim she gets close and that zit grows into a nasty protuberance that spurts flesh eating acid all over the unlucky soul. Flesh is melted, but not the brain, once that’s exposed she chows down on it.

The next part of this “cycle” is she then “gives birth” through that maw in her belly to an organ that looks like a human heart with a vagina in the middle. These are what’s left of the poor souls she eats, their essences distilled down to these bloody organs. Still with me? She then for whatever unearthly reason puts them in water in the bathtub, but it’s not over yet. For more unearthly reasons we’ll never find out, she will at some point get the urge to put them in a flower pot and cover them with dirt. A tulip will soon grow. That’s it. An odd way to take over a planet. But here’s the kicker, Connie carries around her own brain in a jar in a case, and hooks it up to this makeshift 1920s almost Lovecraftian machine every night when she goes to sleep. Apparently this has to be done to keep the dreams her brain experiences every night from becoming reality!

This becomes part of the story because the machine isn’t quite doing its job as well as it used too and every night we get to see the crazy visuals she dreams, and how they leak into our reality, this is where you just have to go with the film and not expect logical linear storytelling to keep itself on the tracks. As I mentioned we see that parasite in her head pop out one night and slither under the bed, but it was a dream, right? Yes and no? There’s a trail of slime where it plopped down on the floor. We don’t see it again until late in the movie where it suddenly slithers out and slithers into the jar where her brain is kept. Why? Because this isn’t Kansas anymore, Dorothy.

This movie brought to mind two other H.P. Lovecraft tales; the brain in a jar and still being “alive” is very reminiscent of “The Whisperer In Darkness,” and someone coming to stay in a building and ends up having these crazy dreams is very reminiscent of “The Dreams In The Witch House” tale.

Eventually we’ll see an old-ish guy wearing a black trench coat, black fedora and sunglasses shadowing Connie’s every movie. He’s scientist/investigator, Dr. Sigmund Sylvanus and he’s been hunting Connie for three years. He knows what happened to her, and they even worked together at a company called, Plasmaster Corporation, where Connie’s role was an inventor, but we just never get any details about how she got that damn E.T. parasite in her noggin. He’s the source of all our knowledge having dictated his thoughts on tape. There’s also a very retro-science fiction vibe in this too, just check out the poster at the top of this page for a kernel of that.

The special effects artist, James Diederichsen, also has a small part as the creepy-as-hell night clerk that pesters Connie and Trixie, eventually leading to an all out physical assault/potential rape of Trixie that Connie puts a gruesome end to, a segment of the movie where we finally get to see her feeding cycle in all its gruesome glory. As I expected the movie’s end is as inexplicably bizarre as the rest of the movie. After dispatching the night clerk she heads out to the desert to as near as I can figure commit suicide by laying on the ground and unleashing her acid spewing zit upon herself, where she melts and turns into (or cocoons herself into) a rock. She also plants the regurgitated brain of the night clerk in the ground next to her.

Review from Andrew Hannon, 13horror.com, October 31, 2016

An extremely accomplished and very engaging feature, with a show stealing performance by Anastasia Woolverton.

With regards to the opening scene, I was halfway through thinking something along the lines of “What lovely scenery. I wonder where this was filmed.” I should have been braced for the jump scare, but I wasn’t. I managed a (nervous) laugh and it was the first of many more laughs to come. The look and feel of Disembodied is beautiful. In keeping with the brain-in-a-jar, parasitic-face-monster elements, there’s a kind of patented quirkiness to everything about it - the acting, the visuals, the dialogue... it’s like it’s color-coded to match with itself. The music also gets involved. It’s haunting and adds to the creepy moments immeasurably, but it even lends itself completely intrusively and unashamedly to the comedy, correlating with Connie’s arranging and re-arranging of bottles on her dresser.

Anastasia Woolverton alternates between looking like a 45 year old virgin librarian to an absolute stunner, depending on what the film demands of her. She is beyond impressive and was extremely watchable.

The writing is outlandish but extremely clever and humorous, with lovely whammies like eye-balls in potatoes followed by dialogue stating “Potatoes don’t agree with me.” Sylvanus’s important addition to the narrative confirms the well-thought out and clever premise which underpins the film, while Trixie’s yawns and yells as the explanation is being delivered keep things in line with the unique atmosphere that permeates the film.

There are some stunning visuals and effects interspersed throughout and excellently acted supporting roles from the very impressive James Diederichsen and very amusing Patricia Mathews.

This is a gem.

Review from milkhole213, IMDB, July 12, 2013

Ultra low budget Henenlotterian body-horror

12 July 2013

Disembodied is about a young woman named Connie Sproutz (Anastasia Woolverton) on the run from the Plasmaster corporation. It turns out she is some of of genetic experiment with half-human/half-extraterrestrial DNA. She has been on the run for years and our story begins with her taking refuge in a place called the Grand Hotel which may be the dumpiest/sleaziest hotel in history.

Connie has a strange growth on the side of her face which spurts a liquid that dissolves humans down to their brains which she then devours. She later gives birth to bloody blob-like things which seem to contain the essence of theses brains. This is shown in graphic detail a couple of times. She only seems to kill transients or low-life's. Her hotel has a hole in the side of the wall which is how she meets her only friend, a nice and attractive prostitute named Trixie who doesn't seem to mind how weird Connie is.

Other than the scientist the only other character who gets much screen time is the sleazy and gross hotel night clerk who keeps trying to get the girls to watch educational films on super 8 with him. He is unsuccessful and later on tries to have his way with Trixie. He notices Connie watching from the hole in the wall and reaches his arm through to grab her. The films gory highlight happens here as Connie grabs a saw out of her dresser (where she has rocks, tools and lots of other odd items stored) and proceeds to saw his arm off in the film's bloodiest scene. He even manages to make it into Connie's room, spurting blood from his stump but he ends up like so many of her other victims, dissolved down to his brain and then devoured. Connie also has strange visions of alien worlds.

Disembodied is a strange body-horror film populated with weird/sleazy characters and a vibe/setting you'd find in most Frank Henenlotter films (especially Basket Case and Brain Damage) or something like Slime City. Fans of Frank's films should seek this out but don't expect it to be as good as his films. There is no nudity, but the actress who plays Trixie is quite attractive. There are a few gore scenes and slimy creatures. The FX are decent for the budget, all practical or stop motion. The acting is fine for this type of film. Some scenes are too dark though. It runs about 78 minutes which is about the right length. Fans of stuff like Basket Case, Slime City, The Soultangler, The Deadly Spawn, etc. should seek this out.