On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age.

First, the spoiler-free pitch for one editor’s midnight movie pick — something weird and wonderful from any age of film that deserves our memorializing.

Then, the spoiler-filled aftermath as experienced by the unwitting editor attacked by this week’s recommendation.

The Pitch: That’s $1522 Per Ape, Per Day!

Two weeks ago, when I found myself watching “Eye of the Cat” for this very column, I realized that it was a remnant of a niche subgenre that has been dormant for far too long: films about humans and animals competing for large inheritances. Despite the fact that pets have absolutely no use for human currency, it used to be perfectly acceptable to open a film with a will reading, only for a human protagonist to discover that his rich relative left their...