Un Chien Andolou (Luis Bunuel, 1929)
“I think that the movie that turned me on to making strange movies was the Dali/Bunuel film Un Chien Andolou. I saw it when I was in my teens and it had a real effect on me. Amazingly I saw it in the classroom! The school were being lent a lot of great short films by the Canadian Film Board and for some reason that movie was in there. It was quite scandalous in school to watch that! Some of the imagery is very effective and in retrospect it certainly guided me in a direction of fantasy and surrealism. I think it probably paralleled Phantasm in that there's not much narrative, it's just weird imagery and I really enjoyed that a lot. It was unlike anything I was watching on television, that's for sure! I think for better or worse when I made Phantasm the audience responded to the mystery and not having it all laid out. They enjoyed thinking and talking about that movie and chewing it over. Years afterwards they're still badgering me about elements of it. Some folks don't like movies that wrap it all up and other folks really respond to it.”