Odd Noggins — Odd Noggins(DVD/ VOD)

From the year 2014 Odd Noggins is a wondering ‘n’ wacky mixture of Sci-fi and horror tropes. The films fed through with touches of weird humour, repeated in film references, extremely low-grade effects, rubbery aliens and corpses,  mayonnaise, well-proportioned and tattooed women, and a floating plot will often have you puzzling what the hell is going on?

Odd Noggins is the sixth feature-length film from Oregon based writer and director Joe Sherlock. He’s been actively making films since 1996 with his first film being SOV Dimension Of Blood- and he’s gone onto helm a total of twenty-eight feature-length/ shorts. It’s fair to say from the evidence of Odd Noggins he comes off like a B grade movie-obsessed blend of  David Lynch and Russ Meyer, I can’t say his work will be for everyone but if you enjoy wacky/low-grade art house takes on sci-fi/ horror, his work could well be for you.

After an intro by a gapped toothed and beaded eyed man- the film kicks off as it means to go on, in a bizarre/ confusion & what is reality/ dream manner. As we see a woman waking up twice from different nightmares before she starts shaking and become covered in yellow goo- she collapses the floor, with her skin peeling off her face and her eyeball leaking- next, we switch to a large breasted and tattooed middle-aged woman watch the film about the woman on her couch. She randomly chats with her similarly large friend on the phone, then cracks open a beer, strips off and takes a bath. She gets a call from her tubby middle age boyfriend, whose just leaving work- and is eager to get back to her, but he just has to drop in and see his buddy at the bar- he does this, and just as they start chatting we follow another well-proportioned woman heading to her home- she strips off and jumps on her man. As the film unfolds we meet one set of characters after another- they don’t seem connected with the characters we’ve seen before, and with each set of characters we have a woman(mainly well proportioned) stipping and taking a bath/ and or shower with a beer. We also have a moustached and shade wearing man who seems to be doing some type of experiments added into the mix, though we don’t find out what they relate to until the films last quarter. Along with already mentioned bath and beer moments, we have other repeated elements-  characters reading a National Enquirer like mag, mayonnaise and yoghurt eating, mentions of Bob’s Halloween party, and repeated lines. The only real consistent character here is a slimmer tattooed woman- who when we first meet her doing belly grams, though as the film goes on she decides she might want to be a stripper. The whole film unfolds in a seemingly random and wacky flow, with towards the end some vague idea of a firm plot coming into play, involving boxes, severed heads and shades.

The film runs around the hour and twenty-minute mark, and I must say it was one of the more distinctive and weird modern B movies I’ve seen in some time. You keep thinking it’s all going to make sense/ logic soon- but really aside from the last quarter sort of tie-up,  you don’t get what you want and you are left with a host of questions- like what was real, what wasn’t? was it all filmed with some sort of reason/ flow, or was it just made up as it went along?, and why does it constantly keep pulling the rug from under you, adding new characters, who are largely not developed?. So I’d say you’ll find it either intriguingly odd, or frustrating/ annoying -I largely sit in the former camp, though I can certainly appreciate why you might fall in the latter.

Odd Noggins is available as either a DVD, VOD( which is how I saw it), or as part of the recently released Sterling production blu ray boxset, which takes in a host of Mr Sherlocks films. I’d certainly say if you enjoy quirky, odd and lightly sleazed sci-fi/ horror you’ll need to check out the film- head here to find out more