The American Astronaut (2011)

The American Astronaut defies categorization, a kind of independent noir science-fiction Western musical art film about sex, rock 'n' roll and Nevada. Shot for what appears to be about $15, the black-and-white movie is so low-rent that it makes use of paintings to depict space travel and cuts to a montage of still images to advance the narrative.

Yet the film contains some striking high-contrast imagery, moments of loopy surreal humor, catchy rock production numbers—all by McAbee and Bobby Lurie's band, the Billy Nayer Show—and a peculiar plot that's literally so out-of-this world that audiences won't know what they're looking at.

American Astronaut is the culmination of McAbee's San-Francisco-based performance act, corralling his interests in music, performance art, acting, animation and filmmaking into one spaced-out enterprise. At times, it has the feel of David Lynch's Eraserhead; at other times, a Westernized Rocky Horror. But mostly, it's its own thing, and most of the time, that isn't bad.

McAbee is like a skid-row Hugh Jackman, and the interior of his spaceship is furnished like, well, a furnished room: peeling wallpaper, antique sconces, a brass bed and a control panel that looks like Flash Gordon's, only older. Unlike the cantina at Mos Eisley, the Ceres Crossroads is populated by outer-space rejects so foul you can practically smell their dirty undershirts—and the stand-up act there would give Charles Manson the creeps.

Jupiter, by contrast, is an abandoned movie theater in Queens, lit like 1984, with ranks of zombified mineworkers attending a spotlit Fuehrer. Their entertainment? A young boy, dressed like an Art Deco Thor, prancing to a mystifying rock song about being the only man on Jupiter to see a woman's breast.

A space station is a barn with a wizened alien. And Venus is a Victorian tea party on the banks of a wintry lake, populated by aging Southern belles fluttering their fans. Characters often break into song to advance the story—most oddly, two middle-aged men marching in a men's room while the hero takes a dump.

Weird and mesmerizing when it's not amateurishly self-indulgent, American Astronaut is unlike any other genre film—or any other film—you're likely to see this year, so if you have 10 bucks and an hour and half, it beats reruns. (Patrick: From Scifi.com film reviews)