Blogging the Unbloggable

B-FEST 2008

Well, another B-Fest has come and gone, and I somehow survived watching a cornucopia of hack filmmaking at its most sublime. I trucked out with my girlfriend and a few other pals and settled in for 24 hours straight of guaranteed B-grade films at Northwestern University. Here's my report:

Friday January 18th, 5:30 PM -- After a Philly's Best cheesesteak, my friend Mike and I showed up and claimed our seats. Our usual spot in the front right was taken, so we had to move toward the back a little. Not being near the aisle made doing spur-of-the-moment bits on stage almost impossible, so we relied on our wise-cracks to make our presence known.

6:05 PM -- Tentacles (or "Tentacoli") started of the festival in grand style. A goofy Italian "Jaws" knock-off with a star-studded American cast and a giant octopus subbing for a shark, this movie had everything you could ask for. John Huston as a nosy reporter? Check. Shelly Winters as a paranoid mother? Henry Fonda? Check? Check? NU Graduate Claude Akins (Sheriff Lobo) as the Sheriff? Check? A bright and colorfuy boat race montage followed by the inevitable attacco del tentacle? CHECK!

AWESOME SCENE: Scientists enlist the help of 2 killer whales to fight the octopus in the end. Look for it in the trailer:

7:50 PM -- My girlfriend, Morna, really responded to Dracula's Daughter... It actually was a pretty good movie at least by B-Fest standards. It's the sequel to the first Dracula movie with Bela Lugosi. Morna really responded to the elegant, chilly proto-goth quality of Gloria Holden (Countess Marya Zaleska aka... Dracula's Daughter.) A bit slow-moving at times but overall nicely moody, well shot, and only 71 minutes! At the time, this was one of the most expensive movies made by Universal ($278,000 in 1937.)

AWESOME SCENE: The burning of Dracula was pretty spooky. I also enjoyed any time she used her hypno-ring.

9:15 PM -- Somewhat anticipated by the audience, Barbarella came on the screen with a crazy opening title sequence that featured Jane Fonda floating around in her spaceship with credits strategically placed over her R-rated parts. Fonda --seemingly as miscast as her dad Henry in the octopus movie-- stars as the titular (feel free to snicker) character in this late '68s sci-fi freakout. Pretty much a technicolor nonsensical mess, it is of course noteworthy as the movie where Duran Duran got their name.

AWESOME SCENE: Probably the scene where Barbarella undoes the "Excessive Machine." Just plain reediculous:

"You've exhausted its power. It couldn't keep up with you!"

Not my favorite movie here, but it adds variety I guess. I ducked out before the end to go watch the Bulls lose to the Golden State Warriors. I never found out if she found "Durand-Durand."

11:45 PM -- The Wizard of Speed and Time This perennial B-fest short is pretty shopworn, but thankfully only lasts a few minutes. Normally everyone watches it while lying on the stage, but we were boxed in to our row by a surly guy on the end who didn't appreciate excessive traffic.

Here is part of it...

Later, creator Mike Jittlov expanded the short into a feature length movie. I think I have it on VHS somewhere but I've never dared watch it.

MIDNIGHT -- Make way for the Tiger Woods of B moviesPlan 9 From Outer Space. I think this film has been well-documented on my end in the past, but I will say that I was glad I brought an umbrella for the plate tossing that goes on during the flying saucer scenes.

Photo courtesy of Evan Jacover dot com

AWESOME SCENE: Too many to mention. Here are a whole bunch of classic lines complied for your convenience...

Saturday January, 19th
1:30 AM -- A minor yet pretty entertaining Blacksploitation movieBlack Samson followed. Samson, (Rockne Tarkington) who runs a bar in an rough inner-city neighborhood, is trying to fend off the white mob as they try to muscle in on his turf. Samson-- an imposing man dressed in a dasheki and jeans-- ends up kicking everyone's ass with a giant stick he carries around. His bar features a great organist, strippers and a giant lion that lounges around.

This is not Tarkington's first appearance at B-Fest, as he was also in the oft-screened Ice Pirates

AWESOME SCENE: The finale featuring the neighborhood denizens chucking furniture, beds, and appliances from the rooftops down on top of the mobsters. Then Sampson dukes it out with the head mobster guy in the junk-strewn street.

Here's the trailer, with some great music by Allen Touissant:

3:15 PM -- A movie directed by John Boorman ("Deliverance")? Starring Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling? This starts to like a pretty promising cinematic adventure until the title comes up: Zardoz I started running out of gas around here so I didn't catch all of this pre-Star Wars, futurisic sci-fi head scratcher. As far as I could tell, the movie takes place in Ireland in the year 2293. Connery is a barbaric killer who kills off the excessive people in the world. I think there is also something about the people who never age or die...unless the commit a crime: then they get a few years added to their life as punishment. Unable to comprehend what was going on, Morna and I gave up and went to sleep.

AWESOME SCENE: The opener is pretty wacky. Check it out:

5:00 AM -- The Magic Sword I slept through it. It's supposed to be a good MST3K episode though. Here's the whole thing, if you dare!

6:30 AM -- The Blue Bird I slept through it. Jane Fonda movie #2.

8:15 AM -- In Marijuana, Sonny Bono tells kids that smoking dope is a real "bummer." At 34 minutes, it's too long to be a short and at 8:15 AM, it's too early to be watched. Slept through it.

9:00 AM -- The Mummy's Hand was a 1940 sort-of-sequel to The Mummy. It thought it was not as awful as the other movies here, but still B-Fest-worthy. A cast of archetypes wanders around a set from another movie looking for a mummy...you know the rest.

Check out Christopher Lee introing this movie for television:

10:15 AM -- The Undying Monster A decent werewolf movie made in 1942, that at times had me thinking I was still watching the Mummy movie. I was really out of it... breakfast was needed.

AWESOME SCENE: I went downstairs to the cafeteria and had a ham and cheese crepe (no wonder NU is so expensive!)

11:15 AM -- Now B-Fest gets down to SERIOUS business with the Olivia Newton-John vanity camp-a-thon known as Xanadu. "A Fantasy, A Musical, A Place Where Dreams Come True." as the tag-line reads.

Where do I start?

I guess with the "plot"... it involves a talented yet suffocating commercial sign painter Sonny (Michael Beck, best known as Swan from "Warriors") who sees the mystical muse Kira (Olivia Newton-John) and falls in love with her. Oh, and an aged ex-big band clarinetist Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly) befriends him and decides to open up a giant disco-roller rink/music club called Xanadu with the painter guy. Also, as a muse, Olivia Newton-John was not supposed to fall in love with mere mortals...so they can't be together until Sonny crosses over into the mystical realm and rescues Olivia Newton-Jonn.

Then, at the end, a bunch of extras dance and sing multiple musical numbers. Naturally, ELO was involved somehow.

This film is so bad, it prompted the creation of the notorious "Razzie" awards given out yearly to the worst in filmmaking. I think it cost about $20 million to make and is absolutely slathered in tons of "laser-y" special effects. At times, it almost appears to be prescient to "Tron" but most of the time it just drives you crazy with inane dance numbers and the classic combination of the worst aspects of special effects, rock music, and roller skating.

AWESOME SCENE: I was laughing pretty hard when they had the fantasy sequence where Gene Kelly imagines a swinging big band and Michael Beck imagines an awesome '80s rock and roll group. The scene then ends with both visions intermingling in a classic Reese's Peanut Butter cup moment.

"'The Warriors' opened a lot of doors in film, for me, which 'Xanadu' then closed." - Michael Beck

3:00 PM -- Empire of the Ants was supposed to be in this slot but I guess the film broke. Even better, they replaced it last minute with Lone Wolf McQuade. This mid '80s Chuck Norris shoot-em-up set the stage for the televised badassery that is "Walker, Texas Ranger." Playing a Texas Ranger, Chuck does battle the evil leader of a band of gun runners (played by David Carradine.)

AWESOME SCENE: Pretty great stuff thoughout, but the movie enters into the pantheon of all-time B-Fest movie greats with this scene toward the end:

"Hand me a beer, kid." WOAH! NOW THAT'S A GODDAMN B-MOVIE!

4:30 PM -- Now, we bring it home with the traditional Godzilla movie closer. This year is Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla.

As I understood it, some human-looking aliens (who reveal themselves to be apes upon attack or death) build a robotic "Godzilla" imposter and dress him in Godzilla skin. After his first attack, a few human scientists detect that Mechagodzilla is really this robot made of "space titanium." Godzilla himself emerges from the sea to fight this cybernetic doppleganger and clear his good name. Another giant monster, by the name of King Seeser, also helps battle this robotic monster. I guess "Godzilla and King Seeser vs Mechagodzilla" didn't really cut it as a good title for the movie.

Good stuff all around... plenty of smashing, flames, missles, and even one of my favorite B-Fest trope: the night scenes filmed during the day with a filter on the lens.

I'm glad I could find some of this stuff on YouTube to share with you a little of the experience of watching so many bad movies in one day. All in all, a good festival this year with octopi, vampires, werewolves, aliens, mummies, Godzilla, robots, the gill-man, and a few Fondas thrown in for good measure.

Happy New Year

I hope you all had a good holiday.

I've just been spending the last few weeks eating, sleeping, watching movies and recovering from two months of animation. Now I need to recover from the recovery. Time Traveler is turned in to Superdeluxe.com, however no word on when it'll be available to the general public. I'll keep you guys posted.

Also coming soon is B-Fest 2008... I got my tickets lined up! Do you?