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01.24 PM :: B-Fest wrap up.
B-Fest 2012 is over, and somehow I survived. We had about 8 or 9 people in our group, and most of us were awake for the whole thing. I did my usual thing of trying to stay awake through most of the festival, and started flagging round about 5am, after being up for nearly 24 hours straight.
This year's collection of movies was actually pretty well-balanced out. Classic sci fi, ridiculous over-the-top 1970s action, cheezy blaxploitation, weird foreign films, direct-to-video travesties, and Turkish nonsense. The diverse schedule made it one of the strongest B-Fest lineups that I can remember (I've been attending 6 years now).
Here's my thoughts about each film that was shown.
Best of the Best -- A crappy 1980s sports film where the plucky American team goes overseas to compete against the more experienced, ruthless foreign team. In this case it was a karate team led by James Earl Jones, who also gave the B-Fest audience a running gag in his stentorian pronunciation of the word "team." Draw it out: "TEEEEAAAAMMMMM." That showed up quite a bit.
The Astro Zombies -- A mad scientist wants to create zombies that he can control through radio waves. Unfortunately he's apparently using the brains of psychotic people, because the zombies run amok and kill a bunch of people. They're also apparently solar-powered, for some reason, because one of the zombies loses his power pack and has to survive by pressing a flashlight to the solar cells embedded in his forehead. Could actually be a cool idea, but in the execution on film it just looks ridiculous. A Ted V. Mikels film that has the great Tom Pace, also seen in The Girl in Gold Boots, and the legendary Tura Satana as an enemy agent keen on getting the details on how to create Astro Zombies for her government. Sad to say, she doesn't succeed.
To Catch A Yeti -- At some point in every B-Fest schedule there's a film that's really bad, and the initial momentum of great so-bad-it's-good films just begins to dissipate. This is the point where people started to get that taste of despair. Meat Loaf plays a trapper hired by a rich family to capture a yeti for their spoiled son, so he can tie the thing up and shoot ping pong balls at it while he plays rock music. No, seriously. There's some additional nonsense about a family who unexpectedly gets the yeti and keeps it hidden, and also Meat Loaf's assistant, who looks like a shorter version of Bobcat Goldthwait.
The best part of this film was when Meat Loaf is checking in with the rich family, and the spoiled kid shows up and starts verbally abusing everyone in the room. Meat Loaf's character begins getting more and more steamed at the kid, until finally he just picks him up (using the traditional movie method of having the kid stand on a hidden platform that lifts him up, as if Meat Loaf were actually pinking him up), and says "If you say one more word, kid, I'm going to throw you across the room." The kid says one more thing, and Meat Loaf throws him across the room. Great fun. It's on YouTube, if you actually want to see it.
At this point in the schedule, there was the usual raffle break, followed by The Wizard of Speed and Time (delayed a few minutes, due to projector issues) and then Plan 9 From Outer Space, where many paper plates were thrown. That took us through to about 1:30am.
Disco Godfather -- Great Rudy Ray Moore nonsense. Contains the classic line "Where is Bucky, and what has he had?" (as memorialized in Black Dynamite) The Disco Godfather attacks the dealers of angel dust that are harming the kids in his town. Vowing to "attack the wack" (or "wack the attack," as someone memorably flubs the line), the Godfather beats up everyone in a five mile radius until the drug dealers give him angel dust and cause him to go insane. Most memorable ending of any Rudy Ray Moore film.
Death Bed: The Bed That Eats -- Memorable low budget film in a similar vein as Manos: The Hands of Fate. A demon-possessed bed "eats" everyone that is foolish enough to sleep on it. And when I say "eat", I mean it sends up some yellow bubbles from inside the bed, and the person sinks into the bed, where it is eaten by acid. Too much nonsense to catalog here; it's available on DVD after several decades in obscurity. (B-Fest specializes in films that have decades of obscurity.)
Tarkan vs The Vikings -- Turkish movie nonsense! Tarkan is a strong Turk who pals around with two wolves/dogs, each one named Kurt, until one of the Kurts is killed by an outrageously costumed Viking. Tarkan vows to kill the Viking who killed his dog. Lots of great nonsense including Chinese assassins, a dog climbing up a rock wall, and a giant inflatable octopus with limbs suspended by strings. Also notable for the shot where the lady Chinese assassin falls to her death down a bottomless pit ... except you can see several pairs of hands catching her when she falls.
Guru, The Mad Monk -- a 1970 film by Andy Milligan, a director known for making period films with major anachronistic touches due to low budgets. Father Guru is a 15th century schizophrenic who kills people who are insufficiently pious (meaning, everyone he encounters). There's some nonsense about wanting to save one of the doomed souls, a woman who needs blood for her experiments, and a lot of other details that I can't even remember. Look for the scene where Father Guru is talking to himself in the mirror, and there's a modern-day light switch on the wall next to the mirror.
The Brain from Planet Arous -- Classic sci-fi starring John Agar as a scientist who gets possessed by a giant floating brain from outer space. The evil brain causes accidents to happen, and wants to take over the world, but is defeated by a good floating brain who happens along to tell John Agar's fiancee that the evil brain is vulnerable right at the point of the Fissure of Rolando. The fiancee writes this info on an encyclopedia page and slips it to Agar, who is able to kill the brain when it least suspects.
Stunt Rock -- Now we're talking! From 1980 comes this fantastic Ozploitation film featuring actual stuntman Grant Page doing some amazing stunt work, and the band Sorcery playing some bad arena rock -- complete with stage show featuring actual illusions, performed by two magicians dressed as Merlin and the Prince of Darkness! Also some nonsense about a reporter working on a newspaper article vaguely connected to all of this, a TV actress who wants to do stunt work, and a doofus of an agent who looks like John Davidson.
This was the stand-out film for me and, I dare say, most of the attendees. It was just so loud and overblown and ridiculous that everybody was won over by it, and there was much loud cheering during its run. After this film we had a half hour lunch break, and it was a perfect film to break on.
Road House -- The notorious Patrick Swayze vehicle where he utters the classic line "Pain don't hurt." The AV Club article about the film says it all, pretty much.
The one interesting thing that happened here was that a notification window popped up in the middle of the film. They were showing this film via digital projection from a Mac, and naturally it was connected to the campus wi fi, and in the middle of the screening it got an update notification for one of the pieces of software. The audience was collectively hoping for a software installation in the middle of Road House, but instead they just closed the window. Alas.
Werewolf In A Girls' Dormitory -- The title was pretty promosing, but the actual film turned out to be largely in the model of that one MST3K film The Horrors of Spider Island, in that it was a foreign film with some monsters, and a whole lot of talking. Also, much less cheesecake in this film.
The basic plot: a new professor shows up at a girls school, and about the same time there are some werewolf attacks at the school. Suspicion naturally falls on the new processor, and naturally he turns out to not be the werewolf. That's about all you need to know.
The Galaxy Invader -- The father of a hillbilly family finds an alien from outer space, and steals his weapon, thinking he can make a fortune from it. His friend convinces him to hunt the space alien, and eventually lots of people end up dead, including the father AND the alien. Pretty ridiculous low-budget film including one of the least convincing dummy thrown off a cliff scenes you'll ever see.
The hillbilly father is also notable for never changing out of the white T-shirt he wears the entire film. It's a great shirt, with a couple of major rips to indicate that he's a slob. I mused that you could totally make a T-shirt to promote this film by simply taking your own white shirt, ripping it up as shown in the film, and then wearing it.
It Came From Beneath The Sea -- We were originally slated to get the traditional Godzilla film ending for B-Fest this year, but instead we had to settle for this classic sci fi story of a giant octopus attacking San Francisco (effects by Ray Harryhausen). In the tradition of sci fi films that take themselves seriously, you get a lot of shots of the Navy and government officials standing around in meeting rooms, planning their strategies and talking over radios. Still, the effects save the film and make it worth watching.
And that's it for B-Fest films. We had the usual great time watching them, and will probably be back again next year.
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