Most films follow certain rules about character and narrative, covering familiar themes and set within a recognizable genre - but some throw us a curve ball, shattering conventions and offering instead something completely beyond the norm. From surrealism and the avante-garde to the wildly experimental, cinema history has thrown up some truly, spectacularly weird movies which almost defy any categorisation. Quirky, bizarre and often hugely ambitious, they take cinema as an art form in new directions, eschewing reality in favour of obscure dreamscapes and forays into the subconscious or depicting human behaviour at its most eccentric and unusual. The following list covers 18 of the oddest movies you're ever likely to come across, spewing forth from the minds of the most imaginative - and controversial - filmmakers from around the world. Watch them with an equal sense of amazement and sheer bafflement - cinema doesn't get any weirder than this.
18. Crash
With a few billion people currently swarming around on the planet it's inevitable that a few of us are going to have slightly unusual bedroom habits. While variety is the spice of life, few readers are likely to identify with the characters in David Cronenberg's Crash, who get their sexual kicks from car accidents. Adapted from the 1973 novel of the same name by J. G. Ballard, Crash is one of the weirdest "kinky" movies ever made. The huge controversy at the time of its release was both completely expected and blown out of proportion, none of which prevented it from winning the Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1996. Cronenberg is no stranger to exploring the excesses of human nature and Crash is no different - unsettling at times, for sure, but it's a remarkably mature exploration of a difficult subject, voyeuristic without being exploitative and featuring a wonderful score from Howard Shore.