Weird Shakespeare Adaptations

Inspired by bardsfingertips' post about favorite Shakespeare films, I thought I'd throw this out there:

Name a strange Shakespeare-inspired film.

My choice- Strange Brew. Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as Bob and Doug McKenzie from the "Great White North" finding trouble in a brewery and references to Hamlet around every corner.

Well, thank you.

I would actually say Titus is one of the strangest. Very surreal.

I wasn't crazy about Taymor's film version... Any thoughts?

How about the mess that is My Own Private Idaho? River Phoenix and Keanu Reaves in a bizarre rewriting of Orson Welles Chimes at Midnight, which is itself a lumping together of pieces of 1 and 2 Henry IV and Henry V, focusing on the characters of Hal and Falstaff.

i totally forgot about that one. i still cringe when i remember keanu reeves' "delivery" of the line "i know you not old man" at the end.

Remember: he was John the Bastard once ;)

Agree about the cringe factor in My Own Private Idaho. It's just the director Gus Van Sant having his own private wankalo.

Theater of Blood directed by Douglas Hickox isn't exactly an adaptation but it is full of Shakepeare snippets and definitely qualifies as weird. Vincent Price is in high camp form.

#7 - I think I've seen that one! Vincent Price was the greatest.

Anyone seen Scotland, PA? I was tempted (it's Christopher Walken after all), but it got some really lousy reviews.

I tried watching Scotland, PA, but the DVD I rented was scratchy...nevertheless, I was really bored by it. I think the only aspect I liked were the witches...if I remember correctly, one of them was Andy Dick.

Votes for strange Shakespeare adaptations: Ten Things I Hate About You (Taming of the Shrew), She's the Man (Twelfth Night), The Lion King (Hamlet), and Forbidden Planet (The Tempest). Don't get me wrong, I actually like Forbidden Planet but it is a bit odd. My wife tells me there was an episode of the old 80's TV show Moonlighting that was based on The Taming of the Shrew (Cybil Shepherd as a shrew? Oh, Yeah.)

I saw this one film I rented because Quentin's face was on the covers as a means of advertising it. It's called Switchblade Sisters (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073778/) and was also very much inspired by Othello.

It is actually a girl exploitation film with emphasis on developing street gangs. Overall a very odd film that is much-loved by Mister Tarantino and is considered by him a huge influence.

Anyway, odd film.

Wow- you all dug up a lot of interesting ones I hadn't heard of or considered. I think I learned about the Shakespeare connection after the fact with regards to Forbidden Planet. Only then did I connect the dots. Who knew all that was missing from the Tempest was an amorphous space monster? And if it was Caliban, where's Ariel?

The Moonlighting Taming of the Shrew! Man, I remember that one! Reminds me just how good Moonlighting was... when it was good.

Anybody remember the Nelvana cartoon special Runaway Robots! Romie-0 and Julie-8?

I'd never heard of the Runaway Robots cartoon jseger9000, but it's great to pop it into imdb and find that the writing credits are "William Shakespeare" and "Clive A. Smith." Not a bad name to share a byline with.

Ah, no one has yet mentioned Men of Respect, John Tuturro's mafia Macbeth.

Yeah, it musta been a dream come true for Shakespeare to be able to share a byline with a superstar like Clive A. Smith:)

If only he could have lived to see it ;)