ON THE SILVER GLOBE and WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO BABY JANE Are Unstreamable

On the Silver Globe is many things — an epic space opera, a Christ allegory, an unfinished film, long, experimental, confusing, riveting, and unstreamable. Based on Jerzy Zulawski’s 1903 book of the same name, the movie follows a team of astronauts who crash land on a distant Earth-like planet and form a society on the supposedly uninhabited terrain. Years into the future, a scientist named Marek (Andrzej Seweryn) returns to the planet looking for the original astronauts and is hailed by the people as a Messiah who has come to free them from the telepathic bird-like humanoids called Sherns.

Everything in this movie is hauntingly surreal from the dialogue, to the costumes, to the landscapes, to the close-up shots of various characters — though it’s a pretty difficult watch. Director Andrzej Zulawski shot the film between 1976 and 1977 before the Polish government shut down the increasingly chaotic production over worries about its subversiveness. It was only in 1987 that Zulawski “finished” the work with a series of shots of modern-day Poland and a voiceover explaining the narrative gaps and the rest of the story he was unable to film. In 2016, the Polish Film Institute released a definitive 4K digital restoration of On the Silver Globe approved by Zulawski before his passing and DP Andrzej Jaroszewicz. Nearly 50 years later, the film remains as hypnotizing as ever. JAS KEIMIG

Find it in the Directors section under Zulawski, Andrzej. Or rent it by mail.

If you need evidence that the movie What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) became an instant Camp classic, see: What Really Happened to Baby Jane (1963). Filmed directly after the original movie premiered, this short, silent, and very gay spoof was created by a group of hobbyist filmmakers called the Gay Girls Riding Club. Made up of well-connected gay men and cross-dressers, the group would get together each weekend and, essentially, create a movie. If that makes it sound slapdash—it wasn't. These were full-scale drag productions, with funny camerawork and Adult Swim-worthy performances.

Of course, it's hard to make What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Campier than it already is. In it, Bette Davis, playing a drunk child star-turned-adult demon named Baby Jane, waddles around in Clown White makeup. She dresses up like a doll and sings about her dead daddy. She's supposed to care for her sister (Joan Crawford), but instead, she feeds her dead animals. It's extraordinary. But in What Really Happened..., the Gay Girls bump up the extra. Crawford's character gets flung over Baby Jane's head as if the two are performing in a Friday Night Smackdown. Baby Jane uses a bed pan as a murder weapon. Baby Jane dances with her almost-dead sister's Oscar on the beach. It's really extraordinary.

Come see me introduce (and perform in drag!) before a screening of What Really Happened to Baby Jane on Saturday, August 24th, at SIFF Egyptian. We're celebrating the American Genre Film Archive's 15th anniversary! More on that next week, but check out the complete programming here.

Find it in the LGBT section. Or rent it by mail.

Looking for more? Browse our big list of 350+ hard-to-find movies over on The Stranger.

*The fine print: Unstreamable means we couldn’t find it on Netflix, Hulu, Shudder, Disney+, or any of the other hundreds of streaming services available in the United States. We also couldn’t find it available for rent or purchase through platforms like Prime Video or iTunes. We don’t consider films on sites that interrupt with commercial breaks, like Tubi, to be streamable. Tubi is like Neu Cable. And yes, we know you can find many things online illegally, but we don’t consider user-generated videos, like unauthorized YouTube uploads, to be streamable.