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Chicago 2012: B-Fest 2012 Rundown
Jan. 28th, 2012 09:04 pmBought a certain amount of snackfoods at Dominick's early on Friday morning in preparation for not leaving the building until late on Saturday. That done, I spent the rest of the morning relaxing and losing at Civilization IV. As I don't know where any are in my home state, I went to Popeye's for lunch.
Josh arrived at 3:00, and we departed. En route, I gave him a description of the ET porno that cleaned some of the gunk out of his lungs. We arrived around 4, and I got in touch with the rest of the crew, receiving a B-Fest mix CD from Megalemur, who'd taken up Telstar's slack.
The shows began at 6.
6:00 PM - Best of the Best
Eric Roberts leads the charge as American martial artists do battle with Korea. James Earl Jones is booming, Sally Kirkland is new-agey, ice cream falls to the floor, and TEAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!
The first film at B-Fest is never plot- or dialogue-heavy, because you'll never hear any of it. This is just guys punching each other. The ending's a disappointment, but otherwise, TEAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!
7:50 PM - The Astro Zombies - I hereby fill a crucial hole in my bad cinema resume by seeing a Ted V. Mikels movie. John Carradine pays his mortgage by resurrecting dead men for some purpose, but communists under the command of excrucriatingly hot Tura Santana (who has one of the best outcomes in the ethnic lottery ever) want his zombies.
I think this movie aired too early in the 'fest. The plot is ridiculously complex, and the plotlines don't come together for so long that until the 5/6ths mark, I thought it was made of two separate movies spliced together. With the dialogue drowned out by the audience, I couldn't possibly follow it - not that this is possible anyway.
Got in a good skit at one point. The astro-zombies are powered by light via solar cells in their head; there's a sequence of one zombie holding a flashlight to its forehead to survive. I replicated the sequence, using my cellphone screen in lieu of the flashlight. The guy sitting next to me told me I should have done another lap of the stage. In hindsight, he had a point.
9:30 PM - To Catch a Yeti - No pedophilia involved. Meat Loaf is a hunter out to snag a yeti (which is actually much smaller and less vicious than myth would have it) for the most psychopathic spoiled rich kid ever. The yeti escapes to the US, and is adopted by a suburban family. Meat Loaf wants it back.
Full Moon cannot do kid's films worth a damn, and this is a particularly good example why. Behold: terrible animatronics! An early gag stating that the rich kid has killed five maids! Chroma Key that would shame local news programs! Meat Loaf being far and away the best actor! This film is horrible and beautiful.
They then held the raffle. I won five LPs. I have no clue what I'm going to do with these things.
After throwing some paper plates for Plan Nine at midnight, I went out to the lobby, where some of the gang and I churned over the first crop of films. I went back in around 1 AM for the last few minutes of P9, and the films started again.
1:25 AM - Avenging Disco Godfather - Rudy Ray Moore is Tucker, the Disco Godfather, who vows to lead a one-man war against PCP after his nephew melts down in the middle of his disco. This involves much overacting and some kung-fu.
Rudy Ray Moore films are always entertaining if you're in the right mood. This one goes from being fun to serious to ridiculous at a whim, and ends really dark. Moore's insistent manner of stating his lines ("Where is he, and WHAT has he HAD?") and inability to underact keeps it on an even keel.
3:00 AM - Death Bed: The Bed That Eats - Everyone was terrified of this one. It's the one about a bed that eats people, and it was put at 3 in the morning. It was made in the '70s, but didn't come out until its DVD release. And... it's much better paced than you might expect.
It helps that the director apparently cast the women who appear in it by asking every woman he knew, "Will you take your clothes off in my film?"
However, the guy in the painting (makes sense in context) never, ever shuts up.
4:25 AM - Tarkan vs. the Vikings - A Turkish sword-and-sandals film, kind of a Turkish Hercules, it's rather amazing in what it gets away with given that I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have gotten worse than a Turkish PG - in fact, one person told me you couldn't get away with it in Turkey these days. (There's plenty of violence, including multiple beheadings and dismemberments, and several clear shots of exposed breasts.)
Tarkan is a warrior hero serving Attila the Hun, bodyguard for Attila's daughter. He also has two wolves, both named Kurt. Vikings ransack a Hun settlement, kidnap the daughter, and kill the older wolf. Tarkan swears vengence for his slain wolf. No, seriously - this movie kicks off with the hero basically going, "You killed my dog!"
Between the ludicrous fight scenes (people throw tables and animals at each other as weapons - a LOT), Tarkan's uselessness (his dog does most of the work), and the laughable geography (watch for the Chinese/Siamese/whatever-they're-all-Asian-right people), this was a high spot.
Sadly, it was here that I started nodding off, and I missed the last few minutes...
5:55 AM - Mutant Hunt - ...and the first half hour of this. So I can't say anything about this film other than it's by Full Moon and it's clearly a knock-off of both Robocop and Terminator, so the odds of it being any good are minimal to none. In fact, many people dubbed it the low point of the night.
7:15 AM - Guru the Mad Monk - Andy Milligan's someone I've heard of but don't know anything about. This is another spot filled in on the B-cinema roster.
Father Guru (so, technically, not a monk) runs a pathetic church on the dregs of late Dark Ages France. His church has the duty of doling out sentences to the local criminals, but Father Guru's gone past his restrictions. He keeps a vampire/witch named Olga around (also his mistress), and with the aid of Igor, a warped hunchback, he sells bodies to the local medical schools to support his decadent lifestyle. When a certain woman falls into his hands, accused of murder, and her beloved comes to save her, he proceeds to trap both of them in his debt...
Summing up in one meme: WORDSWORDSWORDSWORDSWORDSWORDS. Something in the region of eighty percent of this movie is talking. When the violence comes, you stop caring who's doing it to whom, because that means nobody's SAYING anything.
8:25 AM - The Brain From Planet Arous - John Agar as a scientist possessed by a malignant evil space brain. I'd already seen this movie, so I went outside and chatted with some of the guys for a while, picking up breakfast from the Starbucks stand at the same time.
9:40 AM - Stunt Rock - Australian stuntman Grant Page, one of the most respected in his profession, is hired for the hotly anticipated show Undercover Gals. A journalist interviews him as, at the same time, the star of the show, Marilyn Van Der Val, becomes increasingly insistent on doing her own stunts. Meanwhile, Grant hangs out in his spare time with his cousin's heavy metal band Sorcery (which is still around!), taking in their mindbogglingly elaborate stage shows (because the film was short on footage).
This film, made famous by documentary Not Quite Hollywood, was probably the most anticipated film at B-Fest this year... and once again my sleep-deprived senses let me down. The film can be divided into two parts: Grant narrating footage of his stunts and Sorcery performances. Whenever Grant started talking, I fell asleep. Whenever Sorcery started playing, I woke up again. So I only saw about 60% of the film.
But I LOVED Sorcery's music.
Lunch was afterwards. The one major drawback to B-Fest's scheduling is that half of the food court in the Norris Auditorium is closed on Saturdays.
11:40 AM - Road House - Patrick Swayze as the best bouncer in the business. If you don't know the rest, come back later.
We bowed before this movie. Not that we respected it, mind you - much fun was had with how the rough-and-tumble country/western bar Swayze works at slowly turns into the Peach Pit from Bevelery Hills 90210 as the film goes on - but we stood in awe before the sheer Swayzeness of the whole thing.
1:40 PM - Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory - I slept through too much of this one to say anything about it. It's black-and-white, made in the '50s, and German, so the title's a tease, anyway.
Still amazingly sleazy from what I did catch, though.
3:05 PM - The Galaxy Invader - The MST3K print of Pod People uses footage from this movie over its credits. The actual movie is just weird. An alien crashlands in the backwoods of some Deep South state, and rednecks hunt it down to capture it for profit.
I really don't know what the creator thought of rednecks by watching this movie. On the one hand, they're all kind of jerks; on the other hand, only one of them is portrayed as really evil. The alien is vicious, but it really just wants its stuff back.
4:30 - It Came From Beneath The Sea - Every B-Fest ends with a giant monster movie. It was supposed to be Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, but sadly, the rights fell through. Instead, we got a Ray Harryhausen movie (directed by "Robert Gordon" - I don't know if it's BIG).
A giant squid is raiding the Pacific, consuming entire ships to survive. Turns out it's too radioactive to hunt its usual prey - they flee from it before it can grab hold - so it has to feed on creatures that aren't so sensitive to radiation. Sadly, that includes us.
I must admit I couldn't made heads or tails of the latter half of the film, as I was dozing off over the later hour or so, but I was amused by how casually sexist so much of this thing was.
When all was said and done, we cleaned up, took group photos, and departed as friends. Now to hope for a slasher film or two next year...
Josh arrived at 3:00, and we departed. En route, I gave him a description of the ET porno that cleaned some of the gunk out of his lungs. We arrived around 4, and I got in touch with the rest of the crew, receiving a B-Fest mix CD from Megalemur, who'd taken up Telstar's slack.
The shows began at 6.
6:00 PM - Best of the Best
Eric Roberts leads the charge as American martial artists do battle with Korea. James Earl Jones is booming, Sally Kirkland is new-agey, ice cream falls to the floor, and TEAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!
The first film at B-Fest is never plot- or dialogue-heavy, because you'll never hear any of it. This is just guys punching each other. The ending's a disappointment, but otherwise, TEAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!
7:50 PM - The Astro Zombies - I hereby fill a crucial hole in my bad cinema resume by seeing a Ted V. Mikels movie. John Carradine pays his mortgage by resurrecting dead men for some purpose, but communists under the command of excrucriatingly hot Tura Santana (who has one of the best outcomes in the ethnic lottery ever) want his zombies.
I think this movie aired too early in the 'fest. The plot is ridiculously complex, and the plotlines don't come together for so long that until the 5/6ths mark, I thought it was made of two separate movies spliced together. With the dialogue drowned out by the audience, I couldn't possibly follow it - not that this is possible anyway.
Got in a good skit at one point. The astro-zombies are powered by light via solar cells in their head; there's a sequence of one zombie holding a flashlight to its forehead to survive. I replicated the sequence, using my cellphone screen in lieu of the flashlight. The guy sitting next to me told me I should have done another lap of the stage. In hindsight, he had a point.
9:30 PM - To Catch a Yeti - No pedophilia involved. Meat Loaf is a hunter out to snag a yeti (which is actually much smaller and less vicious than myth would have it) for the most psychopathic spoiled rich kid ever. The yeti escapes to the US, and is adopted by a suburban family. Meat Loaf wants it back.
Full Moon cannot do kid's films worth a damn, and this is a particularly good example why. Behold: terrible animatronics! An early gag stating that the rich kid has killed five maids! Chroma Key that would shame local news programs! Meat Loaf being far and away the best actor! This film is horrible and beautiful.
They then held the raffle. I won five LPs. I have no clue what I'm going to do with these things.
After throwing some paper plates for Plan Nine at midnight, I went out to the lobby, where some of the gang and I churned over the first crop of films. I went back in around 1 AM for the last few minutes of P9, and the films started again.
1:25 AM - Avenging Disco Godfather - Rudy Ray Moore is Tucker, the Disco Godfather, who vows to lead a one-man war against PCP after his nephew melts down in the middle of his disco. This involves much overacting and some kung-fu.
Rudy Ray Moore films are always entertaining if you're in the right mood. This one goes from being fun to serious to ridiculous at a whim, and ends really dark. Moore's insistent manner of stating his lines ("Where is he, and WHAT has he HAD?") and inability to underact keeps it on an even keel.
3:00 AM - Death Bed: The Bed That Eats - Everyone was terrified of this one. It's the one about a bed that eats people, and it was put at 3 in the morning. It was made in the '70s, but didn't come out until its DVD release. And... it's much better paced than you might expect.
It helps that the director apparently cast the women who appear in it by asking every woman he knew, "Will you take your clothes off in my film?"
However, the guy in the painting (makes sense in context) never, ever shuts up.
4:25 AM - Tarkan vs. the Vikings - A Turkish sword-and-sandals film, kind of a Turkish Hercules, it's rather amazing in what it gets away with given that I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have gotten worse than a Turkish PG - in fact, one person told me you couldn't get away with it in Turkey these days. (There's plenty of violence, including multiple beheadings and dismemberments, and several clear shots of exposed breasts.)
Tarkan is a warrior hero serving Attila the Hun, bodyguard for Attila's daughter. He also has two wolves, both named Kurt. Vikings ransack a Hun settlement, kidnap the daughter, and kill the older wolf. Tarkan swears vengence for his slain wolf. No, seriously - this movie kicks off with the hero basically going, "You killed my dog!"
Between the ludicrous fight scenes (people throw tables and animals at each other as weapons - a LOT), Tarkan's uselessness (his dog does most of the work), and the laughable geography (watch for the Chinese/Siamese/whatever-they're-all-Asian-right people), this was a high spot.
Sadly, it was here that I started nodding off, and I missed the last few minutes...
5:55 AM - Mutant Hunt - ...and the first half hour of this. So I can't say anything about this film other than it's by Full Moon and it's clearly a knock-off of both Robocop and Terminator, so the odds of it being any good are minimal to none. In fact, many people dubbed it the low point of the night.
7:15 AM - Guru the Mad Monk - Andy Milligan's someone I've heard of but don't know anything about. This is another spot filled in on the B-cinema roster.
Father Guru (so, technically, not a monk) runs a pathetic church on the dregs of late Dark Ages France. His church has the duty of doling out sentences to the local criminals, but Father Guru's gone past his restrictions. He keeps a vampire/witch named Olga around (also his mistress), and with the aid of Igor, a warped hunchback, he sells bodies to the local medical schools to support his decadent lifestyle. When a certain woman falls into his hands, accused of murder, and her beloved comes to save her, he proceeds to trap both of them in his debt...
Summing up in one meme: WORDSWORDSWORDSWORDSWORDSWORDS. Something in the region of eighty percent of this movie is talking. When the violence comes, you stop caring who's doing it to whom, because that means nobody's SAYING anything.
8:25 AM - The Brain From Planet Arous - John Agar as a scientist possessed by a malignant evil space brain. I'd already seen this movie, so I went outside and chatted with some of the guys for a while, picking up breakfast from the Starbucks stand at the same time.
9:40 AM - Stunt Rock - Australian stuntman Grant Page, one of the most respected in his profession, is hired for the hotly anticipated show Undercover Gals. A journalist interviews him as, at the same time, the star of the show, Marilyn Van Der Val, becomes increasingly insistent on doing her own stunts. Meanwhile, Grant hangs out in his spare time with his cousin's heavy metal band Sorcery (which is still around!), taking in their mindbogglingly elaborate stage shows (because the film was short on footage).
This film, made famous by documentary Not Quite Hollywood, was probably the most anticipated film at B-Fest this year... and once again my sleep-deprived senses let me down. The film can be divided into two parts: Grant narrating footage of his stunts and Sorcery performances. Whenever Grant started talking, I fell asleep. Whenever Sorcery started playing, I woke up again. So I only saw about 60% of the film.
But I LOVED Sorcery's music.
Lunch was afterwards. The one major drawback to B-Fest's scheduling is that half of the food court in the Norris Auditorium is closed on Saturdays.
11:40 AM - Road House - Patrick Swayze as the best bouncer in the business. If you don't know the rest, come back later.
We bowed before this movie. Not that we respected it, mind you - much fun was had with how the rough-and-tumble country/western bar Swayze works at slowly turns into the Peach Pit from Bevelery Hills 90210 as the film goes on - but we stood in awe before the sheer Swayzeness of the whole thing.
1:40 PM - Werewolf in a Girl's Dormitory - I slept through too much of this one to say anything about it. It's black-and-white, made in the '50s, and German, so the title's a tease, anyway.
Still amazingly sleazy from what I did catch, though.
3:05 PM - The Galaxy Invader - The MST3K print of Pod People uses footage from this movie over its credits. The actual movie is just weird. An alien crashlands in the backwoods of some Deep South state, and rednecks hunt it down to capture it for profit.
I really don't know what the creator thought of rednecks by watching this movie. On the one hand, they're all kind of jerks; on the other hand, only one of them is portrayed as really evil. The alien is vicious, but it really just wants its stuff back.
4:30 - It Came From Beneath The Sea - Every B-Fest ends with a giant monster movie. It was supposed to be Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster, but sadly, the rights fell through. Instead, we got a Ray Harryhausen movie (directed by "Robert Gordon" - I don't know if it's BIG).
A giant squid is raiding the Pacific, consuming entire ships to survive. Turns out it's too radioactive to hunt its usual prey - they flee from it before it can grab hold - so it has to feed on creatures that aren't so sensitive to radiation. Sadly, that includes us.
I must admit I couldn't made heads or tails of the latter half of the film, as I was dozing off over the later hour or so, but I was amused by how casually sexist so much of this thing was.
When all was said and done, we cleaned up, took group photos, and departed as friends. Now to hope for a slasher film or two next year...
