Looking for strange films of any genre that take place in deserts/small towns on the outskirts of civilization.
Think of Breakdown or The Hills Have Eyes as the atmosphere I'm looking for, but again, any genre is fine. The more obscure, the better.
 It's All Fucked Shirt $22.14 |
 |
It's All Fucked Shirt $22.14 |
Napoleon Dynamite
Seen it of course, but it's been like 15 years so I've been in mood to watch again.
Good one. Don't see it mentioned very often.
Haven't seen either. Exactly what I'm going for. Adding 'em to my list.
Pic related is weird desert film I think of a lot. It was only available in VHS quality for years until it got a bluray release. For some reason I just love people walking around in the desert. The film can have a shit budget but still look good because of the vast landscape.
Oh, it doesn’t have the small town aesthetic but Lawrence of Arabia is the ultimate desert scenery kino. You’ve probably already seen it, but if not you should definitely add it to your list.
It's insane, but I still haven't seen Lawrence of Arabian despite getting it on Bluray years ago for a few bucks. I have no excuse. It's just one of those classics that has somehow slipped by me. And of course I've seen all the Breen kino.
Saw a good chunk of this at some chick's apartment years ago. I was loving it and the girl didn't get the surrealism and asked if we could turn it off. All I remember about that chick is that her lips were disgustingly dry when we kissed and that her cat seemingly understood sarcasm and tried to attack me when I mocked him.
>All I remember about that chick is that her lips were disgustingly dry when we kissed and that her cat seemingly understood sarcasm and tried to attack me when I mocked him.
Intriguing ngl
>Seen it of course, but it's been like 15 years so I've been in mood to watch again.
Watch it with the idea in mind that the ebay time machine works and both Rico and Nappy have affected each of their own timelines as a result.
It's probably why the movie starts with circular plates and ends with Napoleon hitting that tether-ball both backwards and forwards. It's hinting that he's traveled back in time to Marty McFly his situation. Also would explain how he managed to go catch that fish and turn up riding a horse at his brother's wedding in the short film on the DVD. He keeps going off into time to actually build and practice his epic skillz rather than just bullshit about them.
The Rover
I also recommend The Rover, enjoy your kino watching my good chum!
pic related looks like fallout 4
There's no creosote in Massachusetts. It would be New Vegas if anything.
The Station Agent (2003)
>
kek
>H-HE’S FAST!
This one is pretty okay. It’s like a crime thriller that takes place entirely at a diner in the desert. The big gimmick is that it was shot entirely on some old film format I forget which, so it has a cool grainy look.
gerry (2002)
Breakdown
The Hills Have Eyes Part 2
fricking TREMORS
should have been the first post
Yeah Tremors is the gold standard of the desert aesthetic, I should've mentioned in OP. Any time someone mentions Tremors I have a brief moment where I think
>"Should I stop everything I'm doing and just watch Tremors?"
Same thing happens with RoboCop. Those films are evergreen.
>tremors
>robocop
>waterworld
>aliens
>groundhog day
i could put all of these on in a loop and never have to watch anything else ever again
Cam here to post this. The best “middle of nowhere” movie.
Red Rock West
Fandango
>Red Rock West
>U Turn
Good 90s noir thrillers, the "The Hot Spot" fits in the same category
Highway Patrolman
Haven't seen a few of these, thanks fellas.
Straight to Hell
Rubber is set in/around a run-down looking desert town if I recall correctly.
Seconding Rubber
Was immediately what I thought of (and No Country for Old Men)
There's that surrealism inspired australian movie.
There's that WMAF australian movie where russel crowe Drives™
>There's that surrealism inspired australian movie.
Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds?
Directed by the guy who did The Crow and I, Robot and Dark City.
Desert Vibe movies:
Weird Korean-produced samurai/ninja type movie:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Warrior's_Way
Feels more like a surreal cowboy movie for the most part.
Ninja guys are more like vampires or demons, jumping out of the sand etc.
Listen to Stephen King's The Gunslinger audiobook. They fricked up the Dark Tower movie hard, but the original book is pure surrealist occult post-apocalyptic cowboy movie kino.
>surrealism inspired australian movie
I'm assuming he means Picnic at Hanging Rock
>Spirits of the Air, Gremlins of the Clouds
OP here, despite the massive list I've already acquired, I saw your post and the title of this alone was strange enough to intrigue me immediately. I'm watching it now and the aesthetic seems like it was tailor made for what I was looking for today.
>intense film grain
>moody lighting
>middle of nowhere crappy house with a bunch of weird trinkets surrounding it
>dust and sand everywhere
>mysterious drifter arrives and is met by mentally unhinged characters
A perfect recipe. This thread fricking rules.
A-fricking-men
do places like this still exist in america?
atomic city idaho
A tiny bit, especially around Nevada, but the interstate destroyed this aesthetic along with Route 66 as a whole. Isn't it crazy to think about a time where you could go on a big cross country trip and feel solace knowing that a late night neon-lit diner would be waiting for you in the middle of the fricking desert? Wish I could've experienced that.
it was a simpler time. I remember moving south and my dad stopped by at a diner in the middle of nowhere in Tennessee that served the best blue berry pancakes I ever had. Its probably closed now
That Bradbury short story about the town with a road through town that's been decommissioned in favor of an interstate a few miles away is absolutely haunting.
kachow
lel
Frick! I saved the pic and I was going to post Cars when I saw your posts.
>decommed roads
...while very real, I got to see state highways decommed in my life and the towns on the route disappear in less than 20 years.Just empty shells now.
...my dad would say...kind of. the equipment back then was way rougher to drive (some still had Armstrong steering and no AC), and the feds still ran as regulators.
But again, I have lived long enough to see the end of the TA's when Flying J's and Petros/Pilots were still new, and when you could leave DFW going to California on a run doing the 3 down 4 up loose leaf logs and see those old struggling mom & pop truck stops with the "trucker reserved" seating in booths with the little juke boxes or tv's that you put the quarters in while you waited to eat.
Waitresses back then were the best kind, and your tea never ran out. You could play the old arcades (if they had them back then), and wait at a phone bank of 30 phones full of drivers calling in to dispatch or home.
The 70's were the peak of truck driving, and if you never got to see, or be in, a convoy...it is something amazing.
I once ran from DFW to Chicago (split speed limit was still around) and got in a convoy of 30 trucks (night time was 50 or 55mph in Illinois) and we would swap leaders every 15 or so miles (running 70mph) for 300 miles.All night long. Chatter all over the radio, picking up trucks coming into the line, and dropping them off as they hit their drops. Even local and regionals were coming and going. There were so many trucks we just bypassed the scales twice, and nobody did anything about it.
Not a single cop one we passed wanted any part of it. That was back in '96, and I never saw another convoy again.
SWIFT (sure wish it was a fast truck)
WERNER (i can't remember that one)
BJ c**t (JB Hunt, capped at 55mph)
STINKIN' SIMON (Sweet Simon the Skunk)
There was even one for Schneider, but that is so damned long, I can't remember it.
Kids don't know what they are missing.
A rare quality post. Thanks for sharing.
great post, thanks. on Cinemaphile of all places.
I'd be so mad if this was GPT generated though lol.
>gpt
absolutely not.
I handcraft all my posts, and all of that post is 100% true-fact IRL.
GPT would never portray the past as anything but evil and racist and backwards.
I miss old vehicle abbreviations
>Buick
Big ugly indestructible car killer
>Ford
Fix or repair daily
First on race day
Found on road dead
Pontiac
Poor old Black person thinks it's a Cadillac
>Swift, to me, was always
Sure wish I'd finished training
>your SWIFT
HA! I hadn't heard that one.
I forgot the PONTIAC one!
Thanks anon. Good times.
>>Ford
>Fix or repair daily
>First on race day
>Found on road dead
Fast Only Rolling Downhill was the one I remember...
>That was back in '96, and I never saw another convoy again.
>I saw convoys off the shoulder of I-10
>Like tears, in rain.
>Time to park.
Good shit
Somehow reminds me of the episode sailcat from Cow and Chicken
JB HUNT- Job Being Holding Up National Traffic
SCHNEIDER- Send Cash Have Not Eaten In Days Emergency Reply
SWIFT- Sure Wish I Finished Training
MAYFLOWER- May All Your Furniture Leave Our Warehouse Entirely Ruined
>I once ran from DFW to Chicago
Yeah you better run, b***h
>SWIFT (sure wish it was a fast truck)
Slow Wagons In Fast Traffic
Sure We're Insured For That
Stevie Wonder’s Institute For Trucking
Stick With It Free Training,
Stop Whining I’m Fricking Trying
Being a trucker in the 60’s would’ve been so fricking cool
ha ha yes
Just think of all the hooker pussy that could be fricked and buried in those days.
>lot lizards
...get your jargon together, anon.
I can truthfully say this:
one of the greatest things I have ever seen in my life, was back in '05 (I think it was) in California, Ontario specifically, off the 15 and 10, where the two TA's were across the road from each other.
I ran for Werner briefly, and I was sitting there (getting ready to eat and doing my logs, before going to the drop yard in Fontana there the next day)...and here comes a friggin' BMW, all blacked out, rolling slow down the line.
I start seeing trucks flashing their headlights (I already knew what it was but gotta tell the story right), and the BMW speeds up and disappears.
So I go back to doing my logs on the steering wheel there, when I see a crowd of lot lizards coming thru in some of the most awesome 1970's getups...
we are talking mini skirts, high heels, fishnets...
and waist length rabbit fur coats.
Just strutting up and down the lines.
About every 20 or so minutes, a deputy would come driving thru and they would all run and hide next to the trucks.
Laughed my ass off at that.
As always, all night long on the radio was some butthole or another hollering about him having a super kicker, or CB, or maybe a TV for sale, while people made fun of them/him.
Or some bullshit like "Mama Cita says want a good time? Hit up Joey Hammers...Mama give you good long time fun."...just laugh your ass off all night long listening to people rip them.
Andy Sixx is that you?
Think of how many hookers are buried out there in those deserts. No CCtv, no DNA or fingerprint analysis to worry about. Those truckers were living the dream
sounds cosy
You can still travel backroads and see real rural America. It's something I do every summer.
The west is fricking huge and littered with ghost towns, even to this day.
yes
lots of them
its kino af
Yeah but they're better in the north. I love random places that are comfy up in the northeast.
This question is so moronic it's like asking if a water balloon contains water.
no sir, it is you who is moronic
Takes one to know one.
It's a water balloon. By definition it is mostly water with a casing of balloon. The water obviously takes up the most volume of the object while the balloon latex casing does not. Podunk America is the water of the balloon that is the geographic landscape of America. Anything else about America is just it's casing.
So did you put water in em or?
I prefer Priest over this. Has the same vibe OP is after.
I love this setting
U turn
Wake in fright
It stains the sands red
Revenge (2017)
Seven psychopaths
Wolf Creek is a movie i watched that I remember exactly nothing about
>small towns on the outskirts of civilization.
The Wicker Man
The Reflecting Skin
held up
There's this one I'm having trouble remembering but it's about a handful of people in a nowhere gas station that gets robbed.
sounds like dusk till dawn which is kino at that part then turns cringe
Not dusk til dawn. It's about interpersonal connections between the people in the gas station & it ends with the guy surrendering or something. I think one woman is pregnant too. I'm really curious to learn the name of it. Google is failing me bad
FRICKING FOUND IT
El Camino Christmas. Funny if mediocre movie, has some big names in it too
American Strays.
Great, underrated, fairly unknown desert diner crime road movie. Luke Perry & some other semi famous types. Worth seeing. MURKA/10.
I saw this Jennifer Tilly was super hot
She's still pretty hot based on the chucky show. Not bad considering she was hot in the 80s too.
Malone
Rubber (2010)?
It's definitely the most fun watch from everything mentioned in this thread
Trailer up until :45 is spoiler free. 1:00 if you must.
Oh and to add to this:
Anything by Neil Breen, especially Double Down takes place in the Las Vegas/Nevada desert for large parts of it.
Not very small town, but hilarious nonetheless.
Fanmade trailer (earlier you turn it off, the better)
Sonny Boy
Arizona Dream
Skinned Deep
Wild at Heart
the aesthetic is called Film Soleil, this guy DK Holm wrote a book about it.
>Film Soleil
OP here, searching this term on Letterboxd to find lists just helped me out tremendously. Thanks man. Can't believe how helpful this thread has been, I got a shitload of new desert stuff to watch.
You got it man, I'm a fellow fan of it
>you can just watch any movie as soon as you hear about it
Why sail the seas?
i liked the infernal machine
Tremors
Southbound.
Reeker is an abysmally bad film about an interesting concept
i liked this one, but its pretty slow, has ray wise though.
the messengers is based in north dakota but its not that good, north dakota has such an eerie vibe when driving through it
also pic rel
Wake in Fright
Australian office guy gets stuck in the outback, boredom, alcohol, and the insanity of the locals quickly wear him down until he cannot recognise himself
based choice, one of my favourite films
mr. oizo! didnt know he made movies. loved his techno music in the 90s. gonna have to get this movie for the OST alone. thanks for posting this, anon
u should already know this one by now, paris, texas
great movie and great soundtrack, i used to have the cassette tape in my car until i crashed it one night and the cops stole all my tapes
did they get the credence dude
Such a beautiful film
>read entire thread
>all helpful replies
>not a single rude comment
Imagine if it was like this more often. Does the desert bring us all together, bros?
Its too obscure of a subject to bring in the "heh heh I am...LE ANGRY" types.
To post on a thread like this you need to actually watch movies, like the media and pay attention to what is on the screen; a thread about black Cinderella only requires your opinion.
Dead Man’s Shoes
shows how beautifully grim the English countryside can be
Splinter takes place in a remote gas station if you're looking for a decent horror flick.
Hell or High Water, kinda.
Cold Skin
?si=gANsV6DBIT-oIik4
Probably dead now but this was best thread on Cinemaphile today.
Fricking philistines
>middle of nowhere movie
>title is name of somewhere
good job moron
don't know if this counts but i definitely reccomend it
these are the best ones
love that movie
Manos: The Hands of Fate
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manos:_The_Hands_of_Fate
Bagdad Café
How has no one posted Identity?
Beat me to it. Literally the movie op is looking for, right after Tremors.
Technically takes place in someone's mind
Interstate highway stops should be mandated to have small local businesses instead of shitty chain franchises
U-Turn
A hot J Lo and a nut-job Bill-Bob Thornton. Oh and Sean Penn
Frick, I'll have to rewatch this myself! I had no idea it's an Oliver Stone movie when I first stumbled into it. It's safe to say it's underdeliver (compared to what it could have been) but it's still very entertaining and has it's own flavour with a great supporting cast.
>city with 41 residents doesn't even have FUEL anymore
>yet even they're prepared to the "fiery but mostly peaceful protests"
An old-fashioned disaster city versus a modern day disaster.
Oliver Stone blows and you should feel bad for this post
>The more obscure, the better.
Wake In Fright (1971).
This movie was way better than it had any right to be.
There is one scene you will never forget.
(ps the black guy is only in there for 5 min)
Dark Country, 2009 thriller with Thomas Jane.
Desert Blue, 1998 obscure coming of age movie with many familiar faces
Australia
Motorama
"The Hitcher", from 1986, starring C. Thomas Howell, Rutger Hauer, and Jennifer Jason Leigh
College kid picks up a hitchhiker who turns out to be a serial killer on the highway, who then frames him for his crimes. Lots of driving scenes out west, and Jennifer Jason Leigh as the friendly roadside waitress.
Check out "The Hitch-Hiker" (1953).
True, and Days of Heaven.
▲
▲ ▲
▲
▲ ▲
Southbound 2015
One I just saw is called Frank and Penelope. It’s not made that good at parts and is kind of weird but it does the wild at heart and natural born killers style lovers story ok
Bad Day at Black Rock?
isnt that where they filmed the backstreet boys incomplete video
Beat me to it. Everyone should watch Badlands.
indeed, and jeremiah johnson
Lol, this seems to be a remake of Maximum Overdrive. Absolutely bizarre, Never heard of it.
scenic route
don't read up
i was following your advice and im halway through and this sucks
lul it's great
You're a lucky man if you're watching this for the first time.
Napoleon Dynamite
The X-Files episode "Rain King" always makes me want to move to the middle of nowhere, USA and find a chubby wife
Gummo
Splinter
Andromeda Strain, the one from the 70s or late 60s
The Proposition
Bug
The Mothman Chronicles
Clean, Shaven
Phantasm II onward, especially IV and V which were mostly filmed in a desert
Southbound.
There is an obscure horror movie about family finding deserted town and being hunted by "something", they escape but it turns out the town full of people they find is on it as well
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_(2002_film)
Fried green tomatoes
Dust Devil
>middle of nowhere
Fricking Moon
Any of the Guy Pearce Australian westerns
And Brimstone as well
However adding westerns might overstretch the scope of the thread a bit
The Homesman
El Topo
Resident Evil 3 Extinction
>comfy new england town is "the middle of no where"
Pennsylvania is not New England, frickwit
>Weird middle of nowhere movies
Tank Girl is set in a desert.
Ice-T plays a genetically engineered warrior kangaroo.
Fun movie.
Bug!
Very strange movie.
Everyone has that movie that they saw bits and pieces of on TV when they were a little kid and then wondered what it was for years, and this was mine. For like 20 years I would have a vague memory of a kid trying to sell cards to people in a park, and when I discovered this was the film, I was shocked I really found it. Bizarre movie. I miss the 90s when shit like this somehow got made.
watched recently, yet didn't get it, was it all a dream?
Asteroid City
Naked Lunch
>Rubber
>Paris, Texas/Lucky (Harry Dean Stanton)
>The Prophecy (Walken)
>The Shrine
The granddaddy of them all
Kalifornia (1993)
the mist maybe
Willow Springs by Werner Schroeter
The World's Fastest Indian
Does The Straight Story count?
>tfw you will never uncover a mystery hidden within a small desert town community
Hell, I'd take uncovering a mystery in any setting. I just wanna be suspicious of local townsfolk glaring at me ominously and figure out what the hell is going on.
Asteroid City
Wake in Fright
The wraith
?si=zrpaMhHdHGwjjoqM
You might like the vast of night.
The lost room mini series
Near Dark
Blood Simple
Nomadland
six string samurai
the endless
resolution
Jeremiah Johnson
Dead Man
yeah a few folks already mentioned pic related - here's another vote for that one...
also...
41
Retroactive
>Retroactive
Damn, good call
bump
Raising Arizona
Tremors
Wake in Fright
arizona dreams
Sam was here
It doesn't have the melancholy feeling of isolation most of this thread is about, but for small town and outskirts of civilization, and to anyone who loves cut-off-and-fricked movies like Aliens, The Thing, and The Shining, there's an old Stephen King miniseries called Storm of the Century which is one of my favorite things he ever wrote.
?si=9p14TMles2cLYYWL
I prefer it in three parts but you can watch it as a single long movie and at better quality.
?si=UAElvjeAEO6jpGmP
Seconding this.
More directly aligned with OP's request, though not as good an adaptation, is Desperation (2006)
The Fare
Radioactive Dreams
Any foreign movie
fair game
Resolution
>no one mentioned Feast
homosexuals
Good one, part 2 is awesome as well, part 3 disapoints
The Vampires' Night Orgy (1973)
...Despite its name, it's really just Brigadoon as a horror movie in rural Spain.
Actually pretty good
The Wild One.
Is this thread still alive?
I figured First Blood probably counts.
That's not even close
Why not? It's middle of nowhere.
Op said any genre.
Middle of nowhere dusty desert settings
There's this weird neo western from the early 70s about someone on the run with stolen money and how it passes on to different hands. I'm trying to remember the name of it. It's absolutely desolate though. Might be mexican or Spanish.
It's called Deadlock
duel
/thread
spielberg makes movies for pets and children
Has this one been posted yet? A foreign set example
Next of Kin 1982
Australian spooky house movie but some amazing exterior sequences especially the climax
White of the Eye 1987
set in Tucson
Bad Day at Black Rock 1955
don't get more deserted and isolated than this
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! 1965
busty vixens racing in the desert
Seven Psychopaths? A lot of great ones already mentioned.
High Plains Drifter.
Natural Born Killers
Duel
Savageland (2015)
It's on YouTube:
Holy FRICK, OP here, can't believe this thread is still up. Never thought I'd get so many great recommendations on here. Hopefully it helped out others who love this setting too. Bless you anons.
You started a good thread.
Also, does Rambo: First Blood count?
Picrel but only the1984 one
Wake in Fright. Shitty Australian mining town in the 70s
Does Maximum Overdrive count? 90% of it is in a truck stop in off a highway.
watched that last night. it hilarious and fantastic.
I think it counts.
Yeah I love it. King heavily in the cocaine phase+ AC/DC+sountrack +estevez playing some drifter = the mathematical formula for kino
first decent Cinemaphile thread for 2023.
I love Tremors.
cool thread OP
here are my entries:
1/ Faster Pussycat Kill Kill!
2/ White Sun of the Desert
The Toybox but it's not good
Convenience Story (2022)
Weird Japanese David Lynch parody set at an abandoned convenience store in the middle of nowhere.
Red Rock West, with Nic Cage
Leviathan takes place in the middle of nowhere... at the bottom of the ocean. Maybe the Abyss, Deep Star 6, or Underwater qualify?
What about Cast Away or Lord of the Flies? Do deserted island / shipwreck kinos qualify?