This is one of my favorite experiences, hosting the Drive-In Asylum Double Feature, a true discovery that I shared with others, a movie about which I had no prior knowledge and was absolutely taken aback by.

Rescued from The Little Art Cinema in Rockport, Massachusetts and filmed as The Violent Sick, this movie promises you — from the poster — “Sadism,” “Quack Love” and “Horror.” I know what two of those things are, but I never knew what quack love was. I still don’t.

I also have no idea who chose this: “Voted primitive art film of the year.”

Imagine a Southern Gothic but also an early slasher film. Then throw it in the Bayou, where a plastic-masked naked woman stalks the night, undercover cops get figured out, and the soundtrack goes from jazz to screams over cowbell.

Director, writer, producer and star Bert Williams was a character actor. This movie was his bid to do something more than just play roles like the King of Goona in The Wild Women of Wongo or random cops and security guards in movies like Midnight Madness, Murphy’s Law,  Helter Skelter, The Usual Suspects, Messenger of Death and Cobra. Man, Charles Bronson must have liked him, because he was in lots of his movies.

Haden Guest, who found the movie, wrote on By NWR, “With its hothouse setting, lurching rhythm and gestures towards horror and sexploitation conventions, The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds is a UFO of a film that resists easy categorization. On one level, Williams’ film offers a fever-dream fantasy of a Deep South driven by the darkest incestuous and murderous desires, a proto-Texas Chainsaw Massacre family bound together by murderous secrets, religious fervor and the taxidermied victims hidden behind the strange inn. At other moments, the film adapts a lyrical pose to become almost an avant-garde trance film best embodied in the figure of the naked, knife-wielding nymph who seems to channel the currents of surrealism and modern dance intertwined in the Cocteau-inspired school of Maya Deren and Curtis Harrington.”

If anything, that’s downplaying just how strange and wonderful this is.

Sure, this is just a Florida regional movie made by a guy who never rose above bit parts and dinner theater, but so what? It stands out from the system; it was created by Williams and his wife, and one of his kids even cut the dailies. This isn’t the kind of film that had studio notes or test audiences. Therefore, it’s brave, frightening, and new territory for your brain, your eyes, and your heart. Sure, it fits into the seedy drive-in world of horror that we all love, but it yearns and demands to be more. That said, I kind of like it out here in the dark.

You can get a perfect copy of this for rent here.