The Stuff (1985)
The High Concept: A killer yoghurt threatens to take over the world.
The Weird: When a pair of miners discover a strange goo emanating from the ground, they decide to sell it as a tasty dessert. Sure, it might sound like a good idea (if you’re a nutcase), but in practice it’s a disaster, as the goo either turns diners into murderous zombies or just straight kills them. It does taste nice though.
How To Make It Weirder: The fact that the dessert turns them into zombies is too predictable. It should turn them into giant spiders. Giant spiders with buttons for eyes. Who’s with us?
Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)
The High Concept: Robin Williams wears drag.
The Weird: Daniel Hillard wants to see his kids. There’s nothing wrong with that, obviously. But in the long run, is dressing up as a Scottish pensioner, setting your false breasts on fire and making a big show of peeing standing up really the best way to go about it? No, it isn’t. He’ll be paying for their therapy for the rest of his life.
How To Make It Weirder: It would be weirder if having failed to displace Pierce Brosnan, Hillard never exposed his real identity and continued living with the family as Mrs Doubtfire for the rest of his days.
Dead Snow (2009)
The High Concept: Nazi zombies terrorize skiers.
The Weird: If there’s one guaranteed way of making a zombie more scary, it’s by dressing him up in full SS regalia. If you’re wondering what disturbs this bunch of undead fascists, it’s the disturbance of their hidden gold by some grasping teenagers. If you’re dead, does it really matter who touches your gold? Apparently it does…
How To Make It Weirder: A platoon of werewolves decked out in allied gear appear on the horizon to the strains of The White Cliffs Of Dover .
Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (1964)
The High Concept: Father Christmas is kidnapped by aliens.
The Weird: The children of Mars are bored with their lot, and having watched too much Earth TV (yeah, they must have satellite), are hungry for a big red funster of their own. Sadly, the Martian elders are too lazy to create their own festive character, so they head down to Earth to pinch Santa instead. For some reason, they also bring two small kids along for the ride. The rest, as they say, is bollocks.
How To Make It Weirder: By sending an alien replacement down to Earth, who actually turns out to do a better job than the original. Watching on from their intergalactic tellies, the Martians learn a valuable lesson that the grass isn’t always greener…
Extreme Ops (2002)
The High Concept: Extreme sportsmen take down a gang of terrorists.
The Weird: So this is where America has been going wrong. Instead of occupying Iraq and bombing the hell out of Afghanistan, they should have rounded up some gnarly dudes to get the job done for them. Extreme Ops follows five such friends shooting a commercial in Serbia, only to accidentally capture footage of a war criminal who faked his own death. Naturally he’s not happy, and the chaps soon find themselves on the run. By which we mean they plough their way through a series of ludicrously contrived situations designed to show off their skydiving, snowboarding and water-rafting skills…
How To Make It Weirder: By making the war criminal an extreme sports specialist too. A surfing warlord…why not?
Encino Man (1992)
The High Concept: Two teenagers try to introduce a caveman to modern life.
The Weird: A pair of high-school losers suddenly become hugely popular by introducing a caveman to their classmates. Why said caveman seems to be relatively unphased by proceedings is unclear…presumably it might have been a harder sell if he went feral and butchered all the other kids.
How To Make It Weirder: The caveman turns out to be just one of hundreds of his frozen brethren, who rise up and take LA by storm.
Evil Bong (2006)
The High Concept: A talking bong grants wishes that turn into nightmares.
The Weird: A mysterious bong starts speaking to various slackers, tempting them into smoking from it, before transporting them to a fantasy strip club where they’re promptly murdered. Utterly bananas, it even features a cameo from stoner hero Tommy Chong. “Who’s smoking who?” screams the tagline. Doesn’t really make sense, but never mind…
How To Make It Weirder: We would suggest an appearance by the Gingerdead Man, but it turns out director Charles Band was way ahead of us…
Chopping Mall (1986)
The High Concept: Hi-tech mall security robots go kill crazy.
The Weird: If there’s one thing that high-powered security robots hate, it’s teenagers having sex under their roof. So when a freak lightening storm messes with their computerized mainframe, you just know they’re going to make a bee-line for those naughty youngsters. Why a suburban mall would ever need such heavy duty protection is obviously by the by…
How To Make It Weirder: By taking out the cheesy lightning explanation. It would be stranger if the robots just had an in-built puritanical streak.
Ring (1998)
The High Concept: A cursed video tape precipitates the imminent death of anyone who watches it, foreshadowed by a creepy phone call.
The Weird: From the bizarre patterns on the video itself, to the more straightforwardly horrific moments featuring Sadako, it's clear that Ring is the product of a particularly deranged imagination. The phonecall element is a nice added extra…in the age of caller ID, there’s something weirdly disturbing about a ringing landline.
How To Make It Weirder: Tricky one. By having something come out of the telephone receiver as well as the TV set?
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (2005)
The High Concept: Kids win a backstage tour of a mysterious chocolate factory.
The Weird: Never mind the fact that the factory is run by a creepy, child-hating eccentric, nor that it is exclusively staffed by an army of freakish, sing-song midgets...the weirdest part of this concept is the idea that any normal child would be remotely interested in touring a food manufacturing plant. Wouldn’t they rather be out stabbing somebody?
How To Make It Weirder: By revealing that Wonka’s secret ingredient is the skin of dead children. That should do it…
