B-Fest 2012: The Year We Took One For the TEEEEEAAAAM!
Oh, B-Fest, I love you so. Last year I failed to do a recap, so I swore this year I would do better.
The night before the Fest, I joined the rest of the BMMB Members at the Hala Kahiki Lounge in River Grove. This is a tradition that I only started joining in last year. I do not drink, though, so while others got sozzled I just had three cups of coffee--which were, to my and others' delight, supplemented with shot glasses full of cream. At this particular night, two memorable events happened.
The first involved the great telstarman--who also provided me with a dump truck-sized box of books to read--continuing a great joke he started playing on Brother Ragnarok earlier in the week. See, the aforementioned Telstar had gone to Half Price Books with Bro Rag the previous year and had noticed a book called Flesh by Gus Weill and suggested it to Bro Rag based on its silly cover. Bro Rag turned up his nose at the suggestion.
He did not realize that Telstar is a villain whose weapon is generosity.
A deadly weapon in the right hands.
Well, Telstar proceeded to give Bro Rag multiple copies of Flesh when he least expected it. The desk clerk at the hotel gave it to him with his room key. It was on top of a box he helped Telstar get from the latter's trunk. It was inside his menu at Giordano's. It was in his coat pocket when he sat down in Telstar's car after a Best Buy visit. And the best one: after they did a round of mini-golf at Alghrim's Funeral home--
Yes, there is a funeral home that has a mini-golf course in its basement and it is in my town, Palatine. No, despite knowing that this exists I have never gone to the course myself.
Anyways, after finishing the mini-golf, an employee of the funeral home gave Bro Rag a packet containing Flesh...and a pamphlet on how to cope with grief. Having the waitress at Hala Kahiki give Bro rag his 6th copy was almost anti-climactic at that point, but it was still hilarious and I was glad to witness that much at least.
The other great event was getting to see El Santo of 1000 Misspent Hours And Counting get the Amazon gift card we all chipped in to give him, to help replace some stuff he lost in 2011's freak earthquake on the East Coast.
All in all it was a fun evening and I stayed way too late, which means I went into B-Fest 2012 on 5 hours of sleep. It was worth it, though. And now, onto the Fest:
6:00 p.m. Best of the Best
This turned out to a perfect opening film. Eric Roberts and Christopher Penn (Sean Penn's chubby brother) are passed off as part of a TEEAAAM of martial artists coached by James Earl Jones. Everything about this film is delightfully absurd, including the flashback to one member of the TEEAAAM as a kid dropping his ice cream cone when he saw a member of the opposing TEEEAAAM kill his brother. This was one of the running gags spawned by the film, but the biggest running gag came about because the hysterical way that James Earl Jones says "TEEAAAM".
There was nary a movie that went by that did not either feature that word or some variation yelled out.
Best of the Best was such an awesome opening film that my voice was almost totally blown out by the time it was finished. I usually pace myself slightly better than that. But when a film right off the bat allows you to vary up the "USA! USA USA!" chant with "Korea! Korea! Korea!" and then the film itself follows your example, you can;'t help but get into the spirit of things.
7:50 p.m. Astro Zombies
This is not really a movie, so much as a series of unconnected images that are shown to us in real time. For instance, a scene where John Carradine's mad scientist unscrews a compartment on a device, pulls out the drawer, tosses a small circuit board in it, closes the drawer, screws the compartment again, turns on a light on the device, turns off the light, unscrews the compartment, pulls out the drawer, and pulls the circuit board back out. Again, in real time. One sequence kept cutting back to a clock, which spawned another running gag, "Show the clock!"
It really is an utterly pointless film that was a blast at the Fest but would be murderously dull in a solo viewing, even if Tura Satana is a lot of fun (sadly, first thing I've seen her in since the only Russ Meyer film I've yet seen is Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls) and it's always a hoot to see John CarraDIIIIIINE.
9:30 p.m. To Catch a Yeti
This is a terrible kid's film from the 1990s as it turns out, featuring Meat Loaf as the villain--yes, Meat Loaf--and a Yeti that, well...
KILL IT WITH FIRE!
It was awful in all the worst ways and, yes, there were many Meat Loaf jokes. And it did delight us with cries of, "Shut up, Wesley," since one of the other villains is a spoiled rich kid named Wesley who wants the Yeti for his pet. Meat Loaf ends up dumping him headfirst in a snow bank and the film ends by assuring us he's still there at the end. Hooray for child murder!
The film also disposes of Meat loaf by having him detained by airport security because his short minion had a shotgun in his possession. This inspired the first ever (I'm assuming) chant of, "TSA! TSA! TSA!"
After that was the Raffle, in which I won nothing. As usual. (Unless you count Telstar giving me a DVD copy of Desperado out of the stuff he was carrying out to the Raffle because I didn't already own it) During the raffle, Bro rag also won--a copy of Flesh. Because that never stops being hilarious. (No, I mean it, that shit is hysterical)
11:45 p.m. The Wizard of Speed and Time
The print for this film is starting to look a little ragged, so I hope they do something to preserve it on a digital format so it never stops being a tradition. This year, in defiance of tradition, it was actually run upside-down and backwards first. Then normally, and once again given the reverse treatment.
12:00 a.m. Plan 9 From Outer Space
For the first time ever, this was not run on film. For the most part, it looked great--a little too great, if you get me--except for a couple times it randomly glitched and turned into what looked like an acid flashback. I actually stayed awake for the whole film this time, and made my own contributions to the annual flinging of the plates. Including a portrait guaranteed to chill other Fest-goers to the bone:
Some poor bastard is gonna get hit with THIS!
But, then, after the plates flew...
...I discovered that somebody had bested my efforts:
You win, creator of Kung Fu Yeti. You win it all.
1:25 a.m. Avenging Disco Godfather
Rudy Ray Moore plays the owner of a disco who decides he is going to ATTACK the WHACK. (Or, sometimes, WHACK the ATTACK) This was a hoot, but it managed to be the first film I dozed off during. This means, hilariously that I woke up during the titular hero's climactic Angel Dust freakout. On a delightfully bizarre note, that's where the film ends, too--with Disco Godfather still freaking out after strangling what turns out to be a drug-induced manifestation of the drug kingpin/politician villain. Did the villain ever get his comeuppance, then? I have no freaking clue!
Still, there aren't many films that can open with Sho'Nuff from The Last Dragon having a bad PCP freakout while looking more like Urkel than the Shogun of Harlem.
3:00 a.m. Death Bed: The Bed That Eats
I am so glad I stayed awake for this one. I honestly have no idea what kind of movie the filmmakers were trying to make. It plays like a deadly earnest art film one minute, goofy schlock film the next, and occasionally it hits both notes simultaneously. A lot of folks find it boring, I understand, but I loved it. Almost as much as I love House (aka Hausu), which would also go over great at B-Fest.
I got in a few good riffs throughout the Fest, but one of the few I recall was during this. After one girl of a group of three is eaten by the bed, one of the other two asks her companion to go see if Susan is hungry: I called out, "No, Susan's already ate." Yes, I am actually proud of that.
4:25 a.m. Tarkan vs. the Vikings
This movie. This movie, oh man. I would have to say that this was the absolute highlight of the Fest, even as great as much of what came after was. A Turkish film about a Hun Turk hero named Tarkan (who is also a Hung Turk, judging by the reaction of every woman he meets) who seeks revenge against Vikings clad in bathmats after they kidnap the daughter of Attila the Hun and kill Tarkan's "wolf", Kurt. Well, one of Tarkan's dogs named Kurt. See, he has two dogs, a father and son, both named Kurt. Telstar got the running gag started from that with his random question (or variation of said question), "Why are they both named Kurt?" Much like TEEEEAAM, that was never not funny.
Speaking of which, the film really should've been called Kurt vs. The Vikings (unless you go with Telstar's other suggestion, Dog-Thrower: The Motion Picture), because Tarkan is a moron who manages to get captured more often than any hero I have ever seen. He wouldn't have succeeded without the aid of Kurt Jr, who seeks to avenge his father's death--the leader of the bathmat-garbed Vikings did in Kurt Sr, see.
Did I mention the "Chinese" temptress and her minions the film features as its neutral villains? Did I mention the film's soundtrack randomly borrows from other films, including twice using "Thus Spake Zarathrustra"? Did I mention one of those times is during one of the appearances of the film's inflatable giant octopus? Oh, that octopus is a thing of sheer beauty.
It was also one of the only times I can recall a film being subtitled at B-Fest, which just meant we couldn't miss any of the hilariously bad dialogue. Like Tarkan explaining that Kurt Sr won't eat before his son does--and then responding to the question of why neither of them is eating by explaining that Kurt Jr won't eat until his father does. The fact that this film is currently out of print on DVD saddens me greatly.
(Note: As Bro Rag pointed out after this film's focus on Kurt, the theme to this year's Fest seemed to be an abundance of cute dogs featured in several of the films. There's always an overall theme to the Fests, whether consciously or subconsciously. Last year was The B-Fest That Hated Women, due to the high number of films involved rape or sexual violence directed at women--so cute dogs was a huge improvement there)
5:55 a.m. Mutant Hunt
Being a huge fan of Tim Kincaid's delightfully sleazy and inept film, Breeders, I thought I would love this film. However, while this film is definitely inept and is a smidge sleazy, it is also boring. So boring that it became naptime number two. This despite the fact that it involves its protagonists trying to stop "psychosexual mutant cyborg killers", the hero is a total douchebag (we meet him after the heroine barges into his apartment where he had apparently just finished having sex with girl with the memorable white mullet/pompadour hairdo from Breeders; after a cyborg kills the white-haired girl, his reaction is to tell the heroine, "Easy come, easy go." YES, REALLY), and every fight involves the protagonists standing idly by and not helping whichever of their compatriots is involved in the fight.
Yes, somehow, this was all dreadfully dull. I had eagerly anticipated seeing an awesomely inept movie, and instead just got served 80-odd minutes of boredom. This is how I felt about that:
You have failed me, Tim Kincaid. You have failed me.
7:15 a.m. Guru the Mad Monk
This is a period piece on a budget. Meaning it is clearly supposed to be set in some vaguely medieval period, yet there are obvious light switches and--in a moment of true hilarity--a Vespa sitting in the background of a shot, plain as day. It's also incredibly talky, with characters saying 70 lines were three might do. I tried to sleep through this one and couldn't, but damned if I know why.
8:25 a.m. The Brain from Planet Arous
I expected to doze through this since I'd already seen it at B-fest 2004, but instead I was wide awake and riffing it all the way through. If you haven't seen it, incidentally, you really should. It is a lot of goofy fun.
9:40 a.m. Stunt Rock
I don't even know how to describe this. It's one part documentary on Grant Page, an Australian stunt man; one part concert film of Sorcery, a band so generic they need magic acts performed on-stage during their act in order to be at all memorable; and one part movie about Page coming to Hollywood to work on a made-up TV show and falling (ha!) for an American reporter. All in all, it is fucking weird.
Due to a lot of the stunt footage, my main reaction was just to say, "Oh, shit", over and over (note to self: rent the original Gone In 60 Seconds), though I did at point cry out in horror due to a sequence involving nothing but hang-gliding. (Due to the fact I once had to repeatedly transfer an incredibly dull collection of film reels devoted solely to hang-gliding at my job) There was also a warring chant that started with one side of the theater yelling "STUNT!" and the other yelling "ROCK!"
I can't say it wasn't memorable, that's for certain.
11:40 a.m. Road House
This went over exactly as awesomely as I had expected. It also helped that Telstar and Osco Sean (aka retrozombi, who sponsored it, had a couple of stage gags to go along with it. this included stage-fighting during a brawl scene in their Luchadore masks...
...and Telstar ripping Sean's throat out on stage, complete with silly string blood spray. (I am deeply saddened that I could not get a shot of that) I'm amazed how many people at the Fest had not seen Road House, but they were believers by the end. Honestly, I think the organizers made a mistake in not using Road House as the closer, but it was a relatively minor mistake all in all.
1:40 p.m. Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory
I stayed conscious for the entirety of this because I am a sucker for werewolf movies. But this one was a total dud. It might more accurately be titled, Werewolf Sometimes In The General Vicinity Of A Girls' Dormitory. (And if you're thinking this film is sleazy due to its title, don't. There's only one shot even remotely exploitative and even that's pretty damned chaste) One of the running gags for this one sprang from the fact the caretaker of the place looked a lot like Peter Lorre, so people took to shouting out things in a Lorre impression. I took part in this as well, since I pride myself on my Peter Lorre impression, but alas my impression suffers a bit when my voice sounds like...well, like I've been shouting insults at a movie screen for 20 hours.
The one real highlight of the film was a sequence where a character is mauled by a "wolf" (not the werewolf, a wolf), but most everything else is incredibly uneventful and only funny because of the riffs those of us who were still conscious were throwing.
3:05 p.m. The Galaxy Invader
Rednecks versus an alien, but not remotely as interesting as that sounds. I left to go to the bathroom during part of it--the only film I left during at any point--and I may have fallen asleep. But it still had some great riffing moments and its ending, involving a shot of a dummy going over a cliff, completely redeemed the entire flick through sheer hilarity.
4:30 p.m. It Came from Beneath the Sea
I had expected to be let down by this as a closer, especially given how disappointed I was with it when I first saw it--and during my B-Fest in 2003, I slept through it--but I'll be damned if it didn't end the Fest on a high note. I had recalled the effects being some of Ray Harryhausen's worst, but aside from the eye that belongs on a frog and not an octopus--they don't have eyelids, for God's sake--the effects were actually better than I remembered. There were some great riffs, including some golden ones on the sexism of 50's sci-fi--though this film actually allowed its scientist heroine a lot more independence than I recalled--and a lot of folks got some amusement when we realized the male scientist who ends up saving the day was named John Carter.
It was a far worthier closer than I had suspected--though Road House would still have been better by far. All in all, I think this may have been one of the best I've ever been to.
Afterwards, a BMMB group shot was taken (sadly, with Iz not joining me I had to give my camera to somebody who did not know what they were doing), goodbyes were said, stuff was cleaned up, and I went home. I decided to take a brief nap at 7:30 PM or so, intending to reset my internal sleep clock a bit so I could still do some stuff that night--the next thing I knew it was 2:40 AM today. Oops.
I was planning on maybe making this my last Fest for a bit, or at last taking a break from next year's. But now I can hardly wait for 2013. Once the Fest gets inside you, you can't get it out!
In closing, let me just remind you of the greatest lesson you will ever learn, courtesy of Road House:
The night before the Fest, I joined the rest of the BMMB Members at the Hala Kahiki Lounge in River Grove. This is a tradition that I only started joining in last year. I do not drink, though, so while others got sozzled I just had three cups of coffee--which were, to my and others' delight, supplemented with shot glasses full of cream. At this particular night, two memorable events happened.
The first involved the great telstarman--who also provided me with a dump truck-sized box of books to read--continuing a great joke he started playing on Brother Ragnarok earlier in the week. See, the aforementioned Telstar had gone to Half Price Books with Bro Rag the previous year and had noticed a book called Flesh by Gus Weill and suggested it to Bro Rag based on its silly cover. Bro Rag turned up his nose at the suggestion.
He did not realize that Telstar is a villain whose weapon is generosity.
A deadly weapon in the right hands.
Well, Telstar proceeded to give Bro Rag multiple copies of Flesh when he least expected it. The desk clerk at the hotel gave it to him with his room key. It was on top of a box he helped Telstar get from the latter's trunk. It was inside his menu at Giordano's. It was in his coat pocket when he sat down in Telstar's car after a Best Buy visit. And the best one: after they did a round of mini-golf at Alghrim's Funeral home--
Yes, there is a funeral home that has a mini-golf course in its basement and it is in my town, Palatine. No, despite knowing that this exists I have never gone to the course myself.
Anyways, after finishing the mini-golf, an employee of the funeral home gave Bro Rag a packet containing Flesh...and a pamphlet on how to cope with grief. Having the waitress at Hala Kahiki give Bro rag his 6th copy was almost anti-climactic at that point, but it was still hilarious and I was glad to witness that much at least.
The other great event was getting to see El Santo of 1000 Misspent Hours And Counting get the Amazon gift card we all chipped in to give him, to help replace some stuff he lost in 2011's freak earthquake on the East Coast.
All in all it was a fun evening and I stayed way too late, which means I went into B-Fest 2012 on 5 hours of sleep. It was worth it, though. And now, onto the Fest:
6:00 p.m. Best of the Best
This turned out to a perfect opening film. Eric Roberts and Christopher Penn (Sean Penn's chubby brother) are passed off as part of a TEEAAAM of martial artists coached by James Earl Jones. Everything about this film is delightfully absurd, including the flashback to one member of the TEEAAAM as a kid dropping his ice cream cone when he saw a member of the opposing TEEEAAAM kill his brother. This was one of the running gags spawned by the film, but the biggest running gag came about because the hysterical way that James Earl Jones says "TEEAAAM".
There was nary a movie that went by that did not either feature that word or some variation yelled out.
Best of the Best was such an awesome opening film that my voice was almost totally blown out by the time it was finished. I usually pace myself slightly better than that. But when a film right off the bat allows you to vary up the "USA! USA USA!" chant with "Korea! Korea! Korea!" and then the film itself follows your example, you can;'t help but get into the spirit of things.
7:50 p.m. Astro Zombies
This is not really a movie, so much as a series of unconnected images that are shown to us in real time. For instance, a scene where John Carradine's mad scientist unscrews a compartment on a device, pulls out the drawer, tosses a small circuit board in it, closes the drawer, screws the compartment again, turns on a light on the device, turns off the light, unscrews the compartment, pulls out the drawer, and pulls the circuit board back out. Again, in real time. One sequence kept cutting back to a clock, which spawned another running gag, "Show the clock!"
It really is an utterly pointless film that was a blast at the Fest but would be murderously dull in a solo viewing, even if Tura Satana is a lot of fun (sadly, first thing I've seen her in since the only Russ Meyer film I've yet seen is Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls) and it's always a hoot to see John CarraDIIIIIINE.
9:30 p.m. To Catch a Yeti
This is a terrible kid's film from the 1990s as it turns out, featuring Meat Loaf as the villain--yes, Meat Loaf--and a Yeti that, well...
KILL IT WITH FIRE!
It was awful in all the worst ways and, yes, there were many Meat Loaf jokes. And it did delight us with cries of, "Shut up, Wesley," since one of the other villains is a spoiled rich kid named Wesley who wants the Yeti for his pet. Meat Loaf ends up dumping him headfirst in a snow bank and the film ends by assuring us he's still there at the end. Hooray for child murder!
The film also disposes of Meat loaf by having him detained by airport security because his short minion had a shotgun in his possession. This inspired the first ever (I'm assuming) chant of, "TSA! TSA! TSA!"
After that was the Raffle, in which I won nothing. As usual. (Unless you count Telstar giving me a DVD copy of Desperado out of the stuff he was carrying out to the Raffle because I didn't already own it) During the raffle, Bro rag also won--a copy of Flesh. Because that never stops being hilarious. (No, I mean it, that shit is hysterical)
11:45 p.m. The Wizard of Speed and Time
The print for this film is starting to look a little ragged, so I hope they do something to preserve it on a digital format so it never stops being a tradition. This year, in defiance of tradition, it was actually run upside-down and backwards first. Then normally, and once again given the reverse treatment.
12:00 a.m. Plan 9 From Outer Space
For the first time ever, this was not run on film. For the most part, it looked great--a little too great, if you get me--except for a couple times it randomly glitched and turned into what looked like an acid flashback. I actually stayed awake for the whole film this time, and made my own contributions to the annual flinging of the plates. Including a portrait guaranteed to chill other Fest-goers to the bone:
Some poor bastard is gonna get hit with THIS!
But, then, after the plates flew...
...I discovered that somebody had bested my efforts:
You win, creator of Kung Fu Yeti. You win it all.
1:25 a.m. Avenging Disco Godfather
Rudy Ray Moore plays the owner of a disco who decides he is going to ATTACK the WHACK. (Or, sometimes, WHACK the ATTACK) This was a hoot, but it managed to be the first film I dozed off during. This means, hilariously that I woke up during the titular hero's climactic Angel Dust freakout. On a delightfully bizarre note, that's where the film ends, too--with Disco Godfather still freaking out after strangling what turns out to be a drug-induced manifestation of the drug kingpin/politician villain. Did the villain ever get his comeuppance, then? I have no freaking clue!
Still, there aren't many films that can open with Sho'Nuff from The Last Dragon having a bad PCP freakout while looking more like Urkel than the Shogun of Harlem.
3:00 a.m. Death Bed: The Bed That Eats
I am so glad I stayed awake for this one. I honestly have no idea what kind of movie the filmmakers were trying to make. It plays like a deadly earnest art film one minute, goofy schlock film the next, and occasionally it hits both notes simultaneously. A lot of folks find it boring, I understand, but I loved it. Almost as much as I love House (aka Hausu), which would also go over great at B-Fest.
I got in a few good riffs throughout the Fest, but one of the few I recall was during this. After one girl of a group of three is eaten by the bed, one of the other two asks her companion to go see if Susan is hungry: I called out, "No, Susan's already ate." Yes, I am actually proud of that.
4:25 a.m. Tarkan vs. the Vikings
This movie. This movie, oh man. I would have to say that this was the absolute highlight of the Fest, even as great as much of what came after was. A Turkish film about a Hun Turk hero named Tarkan (who is also a Hung Turk, judging by the reaction of every woman he meets) who seeks revenge against Vikings clad in bathmats after they kidnap the daughter of Attila the Hun and kill Tarkan's "wolf", Kurt. Well, one of Tarkan's dogs named Kurt. See, he has two dogs, a father and son, both named Kurt. Telstar got the running gag started from that with his random question (or variation of said question), "Why are they both named Kurt?" Much like TEEEEAAM, that was never not funny.
Speaking of which, the film really should've been called Kurt vs. The Vikings (unless you go with Telstar's other suggestion, Dog-Thrower: The Motion Picture), because Tarkan is a moron who manages to get captured more often than any hero I have ever seen. He wouldn't have succeeded without the aid of Kurt Jr, who seeks to avenge his father's death--the leader of the bathmat-garbed Vikings did in Kurt Sr, see.
Did I mention the "Chinese" temptress and her minions the film features as its neutral villains? Did I mention the film's soundtrack randomly borrows from other films, including twice using "Thus Spake Zarathrustra"? Did I mention one of those times is during one of the appearances of the film's inflatable giant octopus? Oh, that octopus is a thing of sheer beauty.
It was also one of the only times I can recall a film being subtitled at B-Fest, which just meant we couldn't miss any of the hilariously bad dialogue. Like Tarkan explaining that Kurt Sr won't eat before his son does--and then responding to the question of why neither of them is eating by explaining that Kurt Jr won't eat until his father does. The fact that this film is currently out of print on DVD saddens me greatly.
(Note: As Bro Rag pointed out after this film's focus on Kurt, the theme to this year's Fest seemed to be an abundance of cute dogs featured in several of the films. There's always an overall theme to the Fests, whether consciously or subconsciously. Last year was The B-Fest That Hated Women, due to the high number of films involved rape or sexual violence directed at women--so cute dogs was a huge improvement there)
5:55 a.m. Mutant Hunt
Being a huge fan of Tim Kincaid's delightfully sleazy and inept film, Breeders, I thought I would love this film. However, while this film is definitely inept and is a smidge sleazy, it is also boring. So boring that it became naptime number two. This despite the fact that it involves its protagonists trying to stop "psychosexual mutant cyborg killers", the hero is a total douchebag (we meet him after the heroine barges into his apartment where he had apparently just finished having sex with girl with the memorable white mullet/pompadour hairdo from Breeders; after a cyborg kills the white-haired girl, his reaction is to tell the heroine, "Easy come, easy go." YES, REALLY), and every fight involves the protagonists standing idly by and not helping whichever of their compatriots is involved in the fight.
Yes, somehow, this was all dreadfully dull. I had eagerly anticipated seeing an awesomely inept movie, and instead just got served 80-odd minutes of boredom. This is how I felt about that:
You have failed me, Tim Kincaid. You have failed me.
7:15 a.m. Guru the Mad Monk
This is a period piece on a budget. Meaning it is clearly supposed to be set in some vaguely medieval period, yet there are obvious light switches and--in a moment of true hilarity--a Vespa sitting in the background of a shot, plain as day. It's also incredibly talky, with characters saying 70 lines were three might do. I tried to sleep through this one and couldn't, but damned if I know why.
8:25 a.m. The Brain from Planet Arous
I expected to doze through this since I'd already seen it at B-fest 2004, but instead I was wide awake and riffing it all the way through. If you haven't seen it, incidentally, you really should. It is a lot of goofy fun.
9:40 a.m. Stunt Rock
I don't even know how to describe this. It's one part documentary on Grant Page, an Australian stunt man; one part concert film of Sorcery, a band so generic they need magic acts performed on-stage during their act in order to be at all memorable; and one part movie about Page coming to Hollywood to work on a made-up TV show and falling (ha!) for an American reporter. All in all, it is fucking weird.
Due to a lot of the stunt footage, my main reaction was just to say, "Oh, shit", over and over (note to self: rent the original Gone In 60 Seconds), though I did at point cry out in horror due to a sequence involving nothing but hang-gliding. (Due to the fact I once had to repeatedly transfer an incredibly dull collection of film reels devoted solely to hang-gliding at my job) There was also a warring chant that started with one side of the theater yelling "STUNT!" and the other yelling "ROCK!"
I can't say it wasn't memorable, that's for certain.
11:40 a.m. Road House
This went over exactly as awesomely as I had expected. It also helped that Telstar and Osco Sean (aka retrozombi, who sponsored it, had a couple of stage gags to go along with it. this included stage-fighting during a brawl scene in their Luchadore masks...
...and Telstar ripping Sean's throat out on stage, complete with silly string blood spray. (I am deeply saddened that I could not get a shot of that) I'm amazed how many people at the Fest had not seen Road House, but they were believers by the end. Honestly, I think the organizers made a mistake in not using Road House as the closer, but it was a relatively minor mistake all in all.
1:40 p.m. Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory
I stayed conscious for the entirety of this because I am a sucker for werewolf movies. But this one was a total dud. It might more accurately be titled, Werewolf Sometimes In The General Vicinity Of A Girls' Dormitory. (And if you're thinking this film is sleazy due to its title, don't. There's only one shot even remotely exploitative and even that's pretty damned chaste) One of the running gags for this one sprang from the fact the caretaker of the place looked a lot like Peter Lorre, so people took to shouting out things in a Lorre impression. I took part in this as well, since I pride myself on my Peter Lorre impression, but alas my impression suffers a bit when my voice sounds like...well, like I've been shouting insults at a movie screen for 20 hours.
The one real highlight of the film was a sequence where a character is mauled by a "wolf" (not the werewolf, a wolf), but most everything else is incredibly uneventful and only funny because of the riffs those of us who were still conscious were throwing.
3:05 p.m. The Galaxy Invader
Rednecks versus an alien, but not remotely as interesting as that sounds. I left to go to the bathroom during part of it--the only film I left during at any point--and I may have fallen asleep. But it still had some great riffing moments and its ending, involving a shot of a dummy going over a cliff, completely redeemed the entire flick through sheer hilarity.
4:30 p.m. It Came from Beneath the Sea
I had expected to be let down by this as a closer, especially given how disappointed I was with it when I first saw it--and during my B-Fest in 2003, I slept through it--but I'll be damned if it didn't end the Fest on a high note. I had recalled the effects being some of Ray Harryhausen's worst, but aside from the eye that belongs on a frog and not an octopus--they don't have eyelids, for God's sake--the effects were actually better than I remembered. There were some great riffs, including some golden ones on the sexism of 50's sci-fi--though this film actually allowed its scientist heroine a lot more independence than I recalled--and a lot of folks got some amusement when we realized the male scientist who ends up saving the day was named John Carter.
It was a far worthier closer than I had suspected--though Road House would still have been better by far. All in all, I think this may have been one of the best I've ever been to.
Afterwards, a BMMB group shot was taken (sadly, with Iz not joining me I had to give my camera to somebody who did not know what they were doing), goodbyes were said, stuff was cleaned up, and I went home. I decided to take a brief nap at 7:30 PM or so, intending to reset my internal sleep clock a bit so I could still do some stuff that night--the next thing I knew it was 2:40 AM today. Oops.
I was planning on maybe making this my last Fest for a bit, or at last taking a break from next year's. But now I can hardly wait for 2013. Once the Fest gets inside you, you can't get it out!
In closing, let me just remind you of the greatest lesson you will ever learn, courtesy of Road House: