Blogging the Unbloggable

B-Fest 2007

Below are 4 entries from my journey to B-Fest at Northwestern University. It's a 24 hour marathon of the worst movies ever made. My girlfriend Morna and I plus a few friends joined about 200 people in attendance. Good stuff...below are my bleary-eyed missives issued during the festival. I recommend you scroll down to Part 1 and read from there.

B-Fest is on PART 4

4:45 AM Street Trash I went back to catch the end of Street Trash, and somehow the movie got much, much worse. At 5:30 in the morning, I really didn't want to see some bums playing keep-away with another bums severed...uh, member. But that's what the movie had to offer. And man, was it loud. Me and the girlfriend decided to move the air mattress off the stage and away from the blast of the speaker.

6:15 AM The Hypnotic Eye I slept through this one. Relatively peacefully. Maybe next year.

7:45 AM Tarantula 1955. I've seen this one before. I caught bits and pieces of it, but happily slept through most of it. It has a kinda creepy special effect with a real spider superimposed on top of desert footage. At 8 am seemed like not too bad an special effect, comparitavely speaking. Ah, what do I know....zzzz

9:45 AM Krull Man, what a mess. This is a movie where the most memorable part of it is that bad-ass blade weapon that guy tosses around. Otherwise, just a bunch of fantasy/sci-fi nonsense. Apparently, the British actress (Lysette Anthony) who played the princess had all of her dialogue dubbed by American actress Lindsay Crouse. Anthony was totally unaware that her voice was to be dubbed. Classy. In order to show my support for Ms. Anthony, I slept through most of the movie in protest.

11:00 Brunch time. I enjoyed a Ham and Cheese Omelet wrapped in a Crepe. Very continental. Then...

NOON Invasion, U.S.A.Glad I stuck around for this 1985 Chuck Norris vehicle about a bunch of thugs who invade Miami. From what I could tell, their plan was to 1) hit some churches, shopping malls, and suburban houses 2) wait for anarchy in the United States to follow and then 3) take over the country when everything collapses. One thing they didn't figure on was Chuck Norris driving around in his pickup truck and foiling their plans with uncanny timing. There is no indication in the movie --that I could see-- of how he's able to figure out the enemies' operational methods so precisely. No matter. Chuck kills them all at just the right time and utters about 4-5 lines of dialogue throughout the whole movie. His economy is impressive.

After Chuck blows away the vaguely Russian main bad guy with a bazooka, we knew that we had seen enough. There was no topping that finale. It was time to go.

(Did I mention that the bad guy ALSO had a bazooka in the end and got outdrawn by Chuck at the last possible instant? That's how AWESOME that movie was.)

Roger Ebert's 1985 review of Invasion U.S.A. simply ends with the following short paragraph:

"Is this a bad movie? Real bad."

B-Fest is on PART 3

Ughh...tried to sleep on the "twin-sized" inflatable mattress with my girlfriend. We strategically set up the mattress on the stage right next to the speaker, to insure maximum difficulty of sleeping. We might be done for the fest...could be time to go home and sleep in a quiet bed. Here's what I think I saw in the last few hours:

1:30 am Savage Sisters This was a real tough one to keep track of...so many double crosses. I guess there was a million dollars worth of cash that everyone was after. I'm not sure, but I think the Savage Sisters ended up on top in the end.

3:00 am Mystery Short #2 I can't remember what this was. I don't think it featured midgets, though.

3:15 am Invasion of the Star Creatures This 1963 "comedy" had "bedtime" written all over it. It started out as a simple farce between a couple of inept army privates (in a 3rd-rate, Martin and Lewis kinda way.) Really dumb... but then they got kidnapped by some Venusian amazonians and things got more dumb. My brain couldn't take it and I passed out.

4:45 am Street Trash Loud, garish, overdone...(but with some suprisingly swift tracking shots,) this 1987 shlock-comedy-horror flick really might seal it for me. A skid-row liquor store owner finds an old case of booze and sells it cheaply to the local homeless types. Upon drinking "Viper," the homeless people melt violently into a blue pulpy mess.

"Blue pulpy mess" describes how I'm feeling alright... it might be it for me and the girlfriend. I'll keep you posted....

B-Fest is on PART 2

We've pumped up the inflatable mattress and are getting ready to crash for a few hours. But before we sleep, here's what we saw:

11:45pm The Wizard of Speed and Time. This short features a guy dressed in a green wizard outfit dashing his way across the country for reasons that are unknowable. The time-lapse photography is quite heady as he moves faster than a locomotive. Many of the festival-goers jump up on stage and lie down underneath the screen to get a better sense of the stunning speed of which the wizard moves. And, naturally, there was a guy there dressed like the Wizard (pictured left). It looked like he put a lot of effort into the costume. Probably too much.

Then, we get to the main event:

Midnight Plan 9 From Outer Space This is the big one. Edward D. Wood Jrs. masterwork from 1959 has been shown at every B-Fest every year since it's inception. For such a big deal event, the actual movie is dull, slow moving and hopelessly inept --even for B-Fest. What makes it entertaining is the series of strange rituals the audience goes through. Including:

-- Throwing paper plates in the air during the flying saucer scenes.

-- Yelling "Tor" when Tor Johnson shows up

-- Yelling "Bela!" when Bela Lugosi shows up

-- Yelling "Not Bela!" when Bela's replacement shows up (who is a foot taller and covers his face with a cape.)

Etc....

Good fun this year... except I got clocked in the eye with a paper plate. Those things hurt! I got cut!

Then they showed Gavotte a French wordless short about two midgets fighting or something. That harpsicord music will echo in my brain for the rest of my life. Horrifying. One of the midgets looked like Nathan Lane. Brrrr....

Now they are showing:

1:30 am Savage Sisters which so far looks like a Quentin Tarantino favorite. A 1974 "sex-ploitation" flick about guerrilas, betrayal and loose women with machine guns. There's also a womens prison involved. Garish and just right for this time of night.

I might just try to go to sleep except the speaker is right near our mattress... I don't know if this is going to work.

B-Fest is on PART 1

6:00 pm The Brain That Wouldn't Die-- Awful stuff with a mad scientist who's girlfriend dies in an auto accident. He revives her head and she gets telepathic powers. The movie conked out toward the end so nobody could see how it ended.

7:30 pm The Beastmaster -- Mark Singer's finest moment as a Conan-esque warrior who has control over such beasts as a puma, a hawk, and...two ferrets. There's a dog who gives his live for the Beastmaster also. Revenge follows. Pictured left is John Amos (Good Times, many films) who acts as the resident "black guy" in the vein of Wilt Chamberlain in the Conan moives.

9:40pm Revenge of the Creature --- The creature of the black lagoon is captured and dropped into a sea-world like amusement park. You can probably see where this is going. This one was shown in 3D--which gives the 2D characters only slightly more depth. Also, it gave me a big headache...but some great stuff overall...

Also, a young, uncredited Clint Eastwood had his first screen appearance as the lab assistant in the lab scene with a monkey. Clint was testing if a cat would eat rats if they were well fed. Nice work, Clint. Also, Henry Mancini did some of his first scoring music during a dance party at the "Lobster House."

I also won Big Momma's House 2 and MST3K DVDs at the raffle. Whoop!!!

Stay tuned...