Beautiful Disasters: The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (2015) | Hacker News Reader

Beautiful Disasters: The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T (2015)

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This is one of those movies that's guaranteed to amaze anyone you introduce it to, and it's so little known that you have plenty of opportunities to do so. This article doesn't even mention what I thought to be the most surreal scene, the roller skaters with the siamese beard. No further explanation needed, if that piques your interest you should watch the movie. It's one of those films that the entire time you watch it, you just think "How could they make this? Why would they make this? Was the world ever really so different that this seemed OK?" It will make you question if you can ever understand the way the world was before you were born.

"The torrent by which I was able to view the film, after all, beheld these download instructions: 1. eat lots of acid, 2. fire up in your favorite media player, 3. enjoy!"

I mean, that's the obvious choice, but proceed with caution.

"It's one of those films that the entire time you watch it, you just think "How could they make this? Why would they make this? Was the world ever really so different that this seemed OK?"

If you enjoy this sort of thing, I highly recommend Alejandro Jodorowky's The Holy Mountain[1], which is both much weirder and far more profound than The 5,000 Fingers.

If you find yourself liking The Holy Mountain I'd recommend Jodorowsky's other masterpieces: El Topo and Santa Sangre.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmR0vi0ifzE

seconded!

In preinternet times it took me years to know the name of the movie, I watched it on TV when I was a child and years later I could recall scenes but no one knew which was the title of the movie. It's a strange movie one of those that can induce nightmares and/or boredom in a child.

I think it was the US TNT cable tv network that used to run a late night “100% Weird” movie block on Saturday nights that used a lot of clip art from this movie in their promo spots and actuality showed this movie one night - it was the first and only time I’ve ever seen it. It mostly triggers flashbacks to my own parents obsession with trying to get me to play the piano.

It’s really hard to find movies like this anymore, nobody bothers to stream them. If you know about them you can sometimes find them on Amazon but if you don’t know them I don’t know how you’d ever discover them.

There was one movie called Night Patrol which was a standard police farce movie except the main character (credited as “the unknown comic”) wore a paper bag over his head in every scene.

And all of the Trama Team movies from the 80s - Toxic Avenger, Surf Nazis Must Die, Rock ‘N Roll High School.

And the worst horror film ever -Student Bodies - which had an on-screen body count, helpful pointers to the fatal mistakes each character made before they died, and the main bad guy “The Breather” who would lose all his footwear every time he went up stairs because he’d constantly step in gum.

Even NetFlix doesn’t roll out gems like those.

Some of these types of films are available through Kanopy, which you might be able to use if you have a US library card. If your library participates, it’s free, but limited to 10 movies or episodes per month. It was a great day when I found it, owing to a comment here on HN. Far better catalog than Netflix.

Kanopy is the best! I used to use a service called Juststreamit, to find what streaming service something was on, now there's an app called Justwatch. I'd signed up for a Kanopy account years ago and was able to put it good use. It has so many indie films that I'd been waiting to watch and you can also sort by language which is great for learning.

Hoopla and Pluto.tv have a lot of these cult films too.

I recorded this in April when it was shown on TCM (in the U.S.). Haven't seen it yet!

I miss Night Flight on USA Network. Probably ruined my GPA from staying up so late but it was worth it. It's kind of back in streaming form, now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Flight_%28TV_series%29

https://www.nightflightplus.com/

I finally figured out what I watched as a kid when it was on Svengoolie:

https://svengoolie.com/blog/the-seuss-is-loose-and-somewhat-...

I'd never heard of this until earlier this week I listened to an old episode of Damn Interesting which covers it in their usual gripping fashion. Highly recommended: https://www.damninteresting.com/a-debaculous-fiasco/

Oh my god. This movie has been one of my favorites for a long time. Most people have no idea Dr Seuss ever did any live action and it's as trippy as you'd think with a dose of weird 50s nuclear paranoia ("ITS ATOMIC!") Even cooler, I found out my uncle was an extra in it as a child actor!!

As an interesting side note, the kid actor went on to be one of the architects of dBase III, wrote several books on the subject and became an activist for the decriminalisation of marijuana after being arrested for drug possession.

This movie explains a lot about dBase III…

I first saw this c. 1989 at a local theatre. There must have been about four other people there. It leaves a mark, that’s for sure. The dance of the imprisoned musicians remains a favorite scene.

If it was Mr. T, just imagine all the gold rings!

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