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It was a dark and dismal Chicago evening, the
kind of day one wants to spend inside curled up with some snacks taking
in a flick. A good thing, too, since after months of anticipation, B-Fest
2003 was finally upon me. In the previous weeks, I had been proselytizing
far and wide, trying to convince my fellow college students to give 24
hours of cinematic pain a try. By 3:30 PM on January 24, however, the
potentially interested parties had been narrowed down to two hardcore
ninja droogs. The wheat had been separated from the chaff, now it was
time to separate the boys from the men. Their dedication was demonstrated
early on, as we hadn't been traveling for more than 5 minutes when we
were nearly run over trying to catch a bus. I was fearful on the train
north, because I had been up since the early morning conditioning, and
my local grocer failed to provide the Jolt or Surge I was depending on
to keep me awake the entire night. In both of my previous Fests, I had
been unable to stay up for the whole time, falling prey to the soporific
monochromaticity of War of the Colossal Beast in 2001 and Slime
People in 2002. This year was going to be different, though - I had
a crew to back me up, so I had something to prove. My initial fears were
allayed the second I touched down in Evanston: breathe it in, there was
cheese in the air. Soon, a fellow walking next to me noticed my arms laden
with foodstuffs and pillows.
"B-Fest?" he said.
"B-Fest," I replied. "Merkin?"
[shudder] "Merkin," he winced. Ah, a fellow veteran. Finally, the massive
form of Norris loomed on the lakeshore horizon, looking black and ominous
in the twilight. Inside, however, all was right with the world: folks
with Tor emblazoned on their shirts, overheard snippets of conversation
comparing the merits of Octopus 2: River of Fear and Spiders
2: Breeding Ground. Following a brief haggle over seat spaces with
a-then-unawares-of-my-identity Chris Magyar, I dropped off my junk and
made a run for the rest room. I went in a lanky, bespectacled everyman,
but emerged as none other than the Wizard of Speed and Time. Some mention
must be made of the motivation behind this act: the kernel of the idea
had been planted long ago (see my B-Fest
2002 diary), but basically, I mentioned in a discussion
with TelstarMan that it might be neat to dress as the Wizard, even if
it would push into the realm of uber-geekdom. Saying this, I never really
intended to go through with it - that would be downright nutty.
But Telstar called my bluff, saying that if I went in the costume, he'd
shave his head, and shave it he did, leaving me in the position of having
to put up or shut up. Now, I had a Wizard costume in mind already for
use in a student movie I'd been working on, so in the end I swallowed
my pride, brought it up to Northwestern, and danced around in green and
gold felt for a night. Happily, it seems people really liked the costume
- I ended up being asked to pose for several pictures by random strangers
and received a good amount of cheers when I ran up onstage during a strangely
Wizard-esque segment of Cool as Ice. Improvised as they
are, onstage skits (well, not really skits, we might call them "acts")
tend to be incredibly hit-or-miss at B-Fest. But when they hit, it's pure
joy (as Hecubus said, referencing his own very well-received antics in
Mac and Me, "You like me! You really like me!")
Of course, one of the major things I was looking forward to this year
was meeting and greeting the various online personalities that frequent
the BMMB, and those rascals didn't disappoint. TelstarMan was present
with CDs aplenty (and I must thank him again if only for providing the
Wizard Theme Song), as was much of the Stomp Tokyo crew: Chris "icrywolf"
Magyar, E. Mark "bbanzai" Mitchell and their respective ladies, Seraphim
Jones, Chris Holland (unfortunately, no Scott) and of course, the wily
Dr. Freex. From the depths of Iowa came the far-more-sleep-deprived-than-I
3Beerman and his own ninja crew. On hand for their first B-Fests were
those BBoard darlings Marlowe and Hen Grenade (Does Hen really looks like
a cartoon chick? No. Does Marlowe really look like Duckman? Um, with all
due respect to the bronzed demigod from Maine, er, no comment.) Hecubus
was also present - I spoke with him later on, but not long enough I'm
afraid (I also spent far too little time conversing with Hen and Jen,
the latter of whom I only met at the end of the Fest -something that will
have to be remedied next year: I have some thoughts on The Brave Little
Toaster as the consummate modern epic that I'd like to run by you.)
I also encountered a few of the ragtag freedom fighters from beyond the
reaches of the Stomp Tokyo empire: the titular Brothers of the Brotherhood
of Bad Movies, Nathan Shumate, and some of the Minions of Jabootu, with
both Lianna Skywalker and Juniper in attendance.
KINGDOM
OF THE SPIDERS
Peoples met, it was time for the movies
to start rolling. In every B-Fest, it would seem that certain running
gags develop, and the vast majority of these are established in the first
two or three movies. (e.g. screaming at mountains thanks to The Crawling
Eye in 2002, and yelling "Where the heck's the Blood of Dracula?!?"
in 2001, a gag that Telstar felt compelled to continue this year.) B-Fest
2003 was no exception, as during and following Kingdom of the Spiders
(1977), no place or object could be mentioned without being suffixed by
"...OF THE SPIDERS!!!"
Kingdom of the Spiders is essentially any bug swarm
on the rampage movie with William Shatner added. It's very similar in
certain respects to Tarantula (although the tarantulas in Kingdom
are normal-sized), and was clearly more than a little inspiration for
Ticks. Shatner plays Dr. Robert "Rack" Hansen, who's called Rack
because of an incident involving billiards and his older brother. Well,
not really an incident as much as a boring anecdote that we're
treated to as Shatner tries to spin his game with the ladies. Speaking
of the (deceased) older brother and game-spinning, there's a whole love-triangle
subplot concerning Shatner, his widowed sister-in-law Terry (Marcy Lafferty),
and big city gal Diane Ashley (Tiffany Bolling). The sister wants Shatner,
but he'll have none of it, preferring to be a surrogate father to little
niece Linda (Natasha Ryan) in no legal capacity. Several audience members
went a little too far in speculating on the exact relationship between
Shatner and the little (~8 years old) niece, which somehow made accusations
of child molestation the next big running gag. Admittedly, it did get
a little weird, with the niece being shot from odd camera angles in far
too short skirts (were this animated, one might even call it fan service.)
But I digress...wasn't this movie about spiders? Yes,
spiders. Farmer Walter Colby (Woody Strode!) and his wife Birch (Altovise
Davis) are having trouble with his herd of cattle, seems they've been
dying mysteriously. The cause? Hundreds of tarantulas! The aspects of
tarantula biology presented here are questionable at best. The tarantulas
live in giant hive-mounds, and are on a swarm-migration because DDT has
killed off their predators and prey. Oh, humanity, when will you learn?
Once the spiders start swarming, it's pretty much just a matter of killing
remaining running time by killing off cast members. Strode is one of the
first to bite it, being attacked by the spiders in his truck. His wife
(the "black widow", as described by Telstar) is surrounded by the creepy
crawlies back in house, and in one of the most ridiculous scenes in the
movie, she shoots three of her fingers off in order to kill a spider on
her arm (she even misses the thing!) Soon, the spiders overrun the town,
and in a surprisingly gruesome and apocalyptic scene, hundreds are cocooned
by the malicious little mygalomorphs. Shatner and friends hole up in a
remote bed and breakfast, struggling to keep out waves after waves of
tarantulas (this totally should have been an episode of Newhart.)
There, they rapidly break all the major rules for surviving an attacking
swarm of arthropods, worms, undead, etc.: they go in the basement (to
replace fuses, because in every single movie of this type, a few
critters manage to short out the power), they forget to board up the chimney,
and of course, they open up the air conditioning vents.
The latter scene comes close to the "unhanding" of Mrs.
Colby in terms of hilarity: for reasons that are still not entirely clear
to me, Shatner decides to open up the mysteriously-clogged vent to see
if it's infested with spiders. He gets some old lady to stand with her
face right under the vent, for no reason other than to have spiders fall
on her, which of course they do. Eventually, though, Our Heroes survive
the night, only to find that the entire county is covered in a giant spider
web in the morning. The End. Now, a few comments on the use of spiders
in this movie. I'm hardly an animal rights zealot, but I felt the rampant
disregard for spider life in this movie was sickening. I keep tarantulas,
and though they aren't the most loving of pets, they're no more dangerous
or human-hating than, say, a cat. Furthermore, they outlive just about
any of the major mammalian pets, with female tarantulas living as long
as 20 years. Thus, to see what must have been hundreds of spiders heartlessly
crushed, shot, dropped, burned, and run over in this decidedly not-Humane-Society-approved
movie was rather disturbing. People complain enough for the handful of
vertebrates snuffed for the Italian Cannibal movies, yet a hundred
spiders are killed and not a peep. What would people say if someone ran
over dozens of puppies with a truck to make Kingdom of the Puppies?
All I am saying...give spiders a chance. ::Arachno-rights rant off::
COOL AS ICE
Now this is the stuff. It's everything
I wanted in a Vanilla Ice movie and so much more. Bad rap, insane outfits,
and Naomi Campbell in a guest spot! Ice, as "Johnny Van Owen", plays the
leader of a band of hip-hop bikers (read that line again and tell me this
isn't one of the greatest films ever) who get marooned in a whitebread
suburb when one of their "hogs" breaks down. (Ice later had a major career,
under his real name of Robert Van Winkle, as a motocross racer, so his
association with motorcycles is not unexpected.) Here's where the film
gets really weird: an insane old couple offers to fix the broken motorcycle
and give the crew a place to crash in the meantime. Their house can only
be described as Pee-Wee's Playhouse on even more acid, complete with glowing
spinning globes and walls covered in quotes referencing Oscar Wilde (!!!)
Of course, a movie about a guy waiting around for his
bike to be fixed would be pretty boring, so another plotline involving
a love interest for Ice is thrown in. To woo her, Ice acts like a jerk
and starts stalking her. Oh, Ice...he's a dreamboat. Seriously, allow
me to summarize the history of their relationship:
- 1. Ice jumps his bike in front of her while she's riding
her horse, causing the horse to throw her. Oh, Ice...
- 2. Ice finds out that she (Kathy Winslow, played by
Kristin Minter) is a high school senior who's received many scholarships,
and starts stalking her at her house. He then steals her black book
containing all her forms for college. Oh, Ice...
- 3. Kathy wakes up in the morning (dressed in a rather
sheer nightie for a girl her age) as a pantsless Ice lying next to her
drops ice cubes in her mouth. This scene in no way is supposed to suggest
that Kathy and Ice had conscious sex, rather, it quite clearly tells
us that an unclothed Ice broke into her room while she was sleeping
and lied next to her all night. Dude, that's not right. Furthermore,
Kathy's a high schooler, while Ice is what, late twenties? Come now,
Ice.
- 4. Ice infiltrates the "square" kids hanging out at
the Sugar Shack, and then beats up Kathy's boyfriend and his team of
goons. Oh, Ice...
- 5. Ice takes Kathy out to a construction site, gets
her all wet, and proceeds to get his mack on. Oh, Ice...
But alas, young love is never without its complications,
in this case being that Kathy's parents (Candy Clark and Michael Gross!)
are ex-mobsters who changed their identities to escape a sizable debt.
Unfortunately, the gangsters recognize Gross on the news, and come to
collect. Gross then mistakes Ice for one of the gangsters (I kept yelling
out that Ice was "El Blanco", but I don't think anyone heard me), his
son is kidnapped, and general mayhem ensues. Of course, it's nothing that
can't be solved by a little ninja rap, and in the end we've learned a
little about life, a little about ourselves, and a lot about being cool....AS
ICE!!!
FLASH GORDON
In the history of movies, very few can be said to have
had truly great theme songs. Part of this can be attributed to the fact
that not many movies have theme songs…sure, they have their soundtracks,
but not single songs that play over the credits. And of those that do
have real theme songs, most of them are really bad. But there are the
exceptions: Shaft, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, C.H.U.D.
II: Bud the Chud, and Flash Gordon. I don't care if you like
Queen or not, if their opener to Flash doesn't get you singing
out "AAAAA-AAAAAAHHHH!" every other line, there's something seriously
wrong with you. (Rest assured that yelling "AAAAA-AAAAHH!" after random
words in later movies became a running gag in its own right.)
Flash Gordon is, of course, the intentionally campy
1980 film version of the old comic/serial tale of the All-American man
with the golden hair defending the Earth against extraterrestrial evils
from the Planet Mongo. Intentional camp is a very touchy beast, always
walking the razor's edge of enjoyable wit and pig-bladder awfulness, but
I think that Flash managed to pull it off. Much of this can be
attributed to the actors: Sam Jones made a suitably innocent and heroic
Flash, Melody Anderson managed the not-to-difficult role of Dale "waiting
around to be rescued" Arden, and Topol was a delight as the brilliant
but dangerously insane Dr. Hans Zarkov (I had forgotten how homicidal
he was at the beginning of the film.) The juiciest roles, though, went
to the attacking Mongonians: Peter Wyngarde as the diabolical, quasi-robotic
General Klytus, Timothy Dalton as Prince Barin of the Arboreans, Brian
Blessed as Prince Vultan of the Hawkmen (perfectly playing a character
essentially identical to Vulcan as played by Oliver Reed in The Adventures
of Baron Munchausen), and the inimitable Max von Sydow, of all people,
as Emperor Ming the Merciless. (Vultan's beak-mace rocked, by the way.)
Several people have commented on the showing of Flash
as representing a major shift in B-Fest content, with 50s black and white
monster and exploitation films giving way to consciously bad 80s shlock.
I love the 50s stuff, to be sure, but I welcomed the change. Indeed, I
found myself complaining about the paucity of bad recent works in past
B-fests. Call me an upstart whippersnapper if you like, but the b-canon
is an ever-evolving creature, and it's nice to see that B-Fest reflects
this. Besides, you can only show the "classics" so many times before people
start to get jaded, as witness the selective exodus during Plan 9.
Also, in all likelihood, this Fest may have been somewhat of an aberration,
and future years will probably feature a more even decadal balance.
"Pathetic Earthlings, hurling your bodies out into the void, without the
slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything
about the true nature of the universe, anything at all, you would've hidden
from it in terror." - Ming the Merciless
RAFFLE BREAK
Alas, my luck of previous years was not
with me this time around, but my friend Adam did win a nice DVD of The
Wasp Woman.
THE WIZARD OF SPEED AND TIME
I AM the Wizard of Speed and Time.
PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE
Shown every year at midnight. By this time, the Wizard suit was getting
really darn hot, so I left the theater for a while to change, stopping
along the way to join the little Stomp Tokyo refugee party whose members
have seen Plan 9 far too many times to warrant another viewing.
At the time, Telstar was particularly obsessed with the finger-shooting
scene from Kingdom of the Spiders, speaking at length about how
the answers to all the world's problems somehow involves blowing off three
fingers. He's a card, that Telstar. Despite such scintillating topics,
I eventually had to take my leave and return to the theater to catch the
"stupid minds" and Solaronite scenes. I have only seen Plan 9 five
times now, so it's still a while before I get sick of watching it. Besides,
as my friends pointed out, it's not about watching the movie at all, it's
about throwing paper plates around like a madman and letting the collective
joy wash over you. (Especially when the plates aren't plastic or food-covered!)
THE HAPPY HOOKER
Somewhat of a disappointment, actually, especially since I've gone through
life hearing Adam West intoning "Remember me in The Happy Hooker Goes
Hollywood?" somewhere in the back of my head. This, the original Happy
Hooker movie, is a pretty dull tale of famed Dutch immigrant/prostitute/bordello
owner Xavier Hollander (herein played by Lynn Redgrave). Also, much to
the displeasure of the assembled crowd, for a film titled The Happy
Hooker, there wasn't really any, um, visible hookery to speak of,
and any nudity was vanishingly scarce (prompting the "WE DEMAND BREASTS"
sign.) Keep in mind that it was getting into the wee hours of the morning
when this was shown, the sort of time when people expect Bee Girl-esque
romps to air (their expectations may also have been built up a bit by
the overwhelmingly nudity-packed lineup last year.) Furthermore, this
film was really quite confusing chronologically, with the story being
told in flashback from a police station. Only compounding this problem
was the fact that a full reel of the film was missing, meaning that our
protagonist goes from "jilted foreign wife on her own in New York" to
"top hooker in the city" in a single scene cut. Really, the only thing
to recommend about this one was seeing Richard Lynch playing a beat cop
who really had it in for Xaviera. He wasn't even in the movie that long,
I just enjoy Richard Lynch villains.
FLESH GORDON
Did I just say that people were disappointed by the less than risque content
of The Happy Hooker? It's as if the A&O folks knew this would
occur, because they followed up Hooker with what was definitely
the bluest film of the Fest, Flesh Gordon. Actually predating the
film version of Flash Gordon by a good margin (Flesh is
1974, Flash is 1980), Flesh describes itself as a satirical
hero story for the modern age. Whatever its lofty aims, it's really just
a bunch of sex jokes set in a sci-fi setting. Not that there's necessarily
something wrong with that. While I decidedly shy away from the raunchier
side of humor, Flesh Gordon turned out to be surprisingly entertaining.
The ramshackle plot concerns an attack on the Earth by the Planet Porno
(you should already be able to discern the sort of ham-fisted humor at
work here.) The evil ruler of Porno, Emperor Wang the Perverted, has bombarded
the Earth with his "Sex Ray", a device which amplifies the libido of all
it contacts to the point where they simply break into random orgies. Our
Hero Flesh and his woman Dale Ardor are in an airplane when the ray hits,
and only Flesh's immense self-control allows their successful escape from
the doomed craft. Upon landing, they encounter crazed Scottish Dr. Flexi
Jerkoff, and using Jerkoff's ridiculously phallic spaceship, they head
to the Planet Porno. Along the way, they are hit several times by the
Sex Ray, meaning that Dale is nekkid for pretty much the whole first quarter
of the movie.
On Porno, they encounter the decadent, orgiastic Pornoan
society, get trapped underground, battle a clan of subterranean Amazons,
and take on Wang himself. (Wang is referred to as "His Protuberance" by
the members of his court, an inappropriate title considering that it is
later revealed that the root of Wang's despotic rule is the fact that
he had his member bitten off.) Although their foes are mighty, the heroes
have dead princess Amora's "Pasties of Power" on their side. And believe
me, the sight of a middle-aged Scotsman shooting enemies with energy blasts
from his nipples is a funny thing indeed. As a last desperate measure,
Wang calls upon the ancient god of evil to defend all that is wrong and
perverted in the universe, and Flesh engages in a final battle with the
enormous god-monster.
The god-monster is one of several stop-motion creatures
presented in Flesh Gordon, and their inclusion makes the movie
really, really weird. This is because the stop-motion scenes are really,
really good. The whole movie has horrible acting, lame sets, and generally
cheesy special effects, and then in the middle of it all are stop-motion
monster fights that are easily the equal of Harryhausen. The god-monster
drinks especially deep from the well of Harryhausen, looking exactly like
a cross between his Trog, Cyclops, and Kraken. (The other creatures featured
include a trio of vicious penisaurs that menace Flesh, Dale, and Flexi
in the caves and a completely awesome metallic insect monster.) The god-monster
was not only wonderfully animated, but was just a great character overall.
Indeed, I think I can speak without hyperbole when I say that he was not
only the best character in this movie, but the best character of all the
movies that night (and I say that with full knowledge of No Holds Barred).
He's just so cool - a jive-talking hipster that just wants to chill and
have some fun. He isn't even really that evil, with his only misdeed being
abducting Dale and ripping off her top to sneak a peek at her breasts.
And while I certainly do not endorse monster sexual assault in any shape
or form, you have to cut the guy a break - Dale was dropping her top at
the drop of a hat for the whole movie, why should he miss out? He also
provided one of my favorite lines, upon climbing to the summit of the
castle, he quipped, "This is the Tower of Murder, it's where I hang out."
A LANGUAGE ALL MY OWN
The requisite late night short. In past years, these have always involved
either midgets, bizarre cartoon porn from the 1930s, or both. Imagine
my shock upon seeing this tame Betty Boop cartoon. And that's tame even
by Betty Boop standards: she just flies to Japan, sings for a while, and
then leaves, as opposed to the psychotic, nightmarish Boop adventures
like Minnie the Moocher. (My associates were quite incensed by
this short, claiming that I promised "midget porn"! I make no promises.)
Incidentally, I was really surprised by the portrayal of the Japanese
in this short. I'm so used to seeing the yellow, bucktoothed subhumans
shown in all the WWII-era cartoons that it was completely unexpected to
see the Japanese depicted as actual human beings. Sure, there were jokes
and sight gags based on Japanese lanterns, fan dances, kimonos, and the
like, but the people weren't caricatured and there was nowhere near the
level of harsh racial stereotyping that would be so prevalent in years
to come. Rarely have I seen such a clear visual example of changing popular
opinions on the international scene.
WARLORDS OF ATLANTIS
Noted marine biology historian and illustrator Richard Ellis has, in his
book Monsters of the Sea, stated that "Warlords of Atlantis
is the ultimate giant octopus movie." I'm tempted to defer to his authority
on this one, as the competition is either unimaginably awful (e.g. Tentacles
or Octopus) or not truly octopodal (e.g. the pentapus from It
Came From Beneath the Sea, for which see below.) Warlords of Atlantis
tells the story of an oceanic bathysphere expedition gone awry. Really,
though, when does an bathysphere expedition ever not go awry in
a movie? Anyway, after being menaced by what is erroneously referred to
as "a living placoderm", (that monster was so completely not a placoderm,
it looked like some sort of plesiosaur-eel hybrid) bathyspheric heroes
Greg Collinson (Doug McClure!) and Charles Aitken (Peter Gilmore) manage
to recover a golden statue from some lost civilization and bring it back
to the ship. The lure of gold prompts the already shady crewmen to turn
bad, shooting Charles' father, Professor Aitken, cutting the bathysphere
line, and taking the treasure for themselves. It would seem that the statue
was a beloved heirloom of the local benthic cephalopod community, however,
because it isn't long before a giant octopus ("the all-time world's champion
giant octopus," quoth Ellis) shows up. It grabs all the villainous crewman
(including a young, thin John Ratzenberger!), and through means I am not
at all clear on, drags them to the bottom of the sea with the bathysphere,
drops them through an underwater vent, and lets them float up to the sunken
kingdom of Atlantis (Interesting thing about giant octopodes, Norm, they
don't kill their prey when golden statues are at stake.) How they managed
to survive both lack of oxygen and the immense pressure difference between
the surface and the ocean floor is beyond me, but hey, they've gotta get
to Atlantis somehow!
Once they do get to Atlantis, things just get really nutty,
with an army of fish-mutants, a race of marooned Martians, some plan to
conquer the Earth, shapely princesses in skimpy Atlantean garb, and constant
assaults by Gamera-ankylosaur monsters. Eventually, McClure and the gang
escape, run away from a flock of flying piranha (predating both Piranha
II: The Spawning and The Far Side in this regard), and make
it back to the boat. Cue repeat octopus attack, in which it uses the gold
statue as a club to smash the ship (this scene was actually really cool).
The heroes, including a somehow-hanging-onto-life Professor Aitken, survive
in a life raft, and two of the thuggish crewmen hang onto the raft to
provide kicking propulsion back to land. It's funny because they'll be
dead after a few miles.
DEMENTIA-13
Called by some a cerebral "horror classic" by Francis "Not Yet Ford" Coppola,
I really don't see what all the hoopla is about. On the contrary, I thought
this was one of the worst movies that showed this year. It probably didn't
help that I was mere hairs away from sleep at this point, but the film
was incredibly boring and hard to follow. (One could claim that a philistine
like myself simply "didn't get it", but considering that I've followed
David Lynch movies with little trouble, I don't think that's the case.)
The movie is about Louise Haloran (Luana Anders), whose husband John (Peter
Read) dies of a heart attack right before a major will revision in the
Haloran family. The thing is, if John is dead, Louise gets nothing out
of the will, so she has to pretend that he is alive and merely absent
as she visits the Haloran estate. There, she winds up in trouble with
John's bitter mother, his brothers Richard and Billy, Richard's fiancee,
Kane, a sketchy family doctor, groundskeepers, and the supposed hauntings
by John's sister, who died mysteriously as a child.
There are several things about this movie that make a
dull and confusing plot all the worse. For one thing, I realize this is
extremely superficial, but Louise and Kane look exactly the same, so I
never knew which one was which in any given scene. Furthermore, the way
scenes are done, it seems like everything is either a flashback or a flashforward,
even though almost the entire movie moves in chronological order. For
example, a character might say "And I remember that fateful day..." and
the picture will blur out, only to fade into the next day! I was really
afraid that this was going to be the black-and-white borestorm that knocked
me into sleep this, year, and it very likely would have been had not my
friends been there to poke me from time to time. One more thing, what's
up with that title? Does that make any sense whatsoever? Magyar postulated
that that was you could break down the concept of "dementia" into units,
with "13" being the total amount of dementia caused by watching this film.
Hmmm, intriguing concept, but I'm still not convinced...now where's my
blood of Dracula?
A brief aside on sleeping folk in Norris: Few can maintain consciousness
for the whole Fest, so most people bring sleep gear of some kind and find
a spot to settle down, often in the aisles under their seats. This is
expected, but some of the other "sleeper colonies" were rather creepy.
The stage was completely colonized, and as others have commented, looked
like any "war aftermath" scene. The freakiest, however, was the Norris
lounge outside by the computer cluster, brightly lit with fluorescent
lights, where people had combined chairs into what looked for all the
world like giant cribs, resulting in what looked like a frightening, enormous
neonatal wing (Hecubus was sitting by there, he can attest to the horrors.)
One of my friends opted to occupy the darkened, otherwise empty "Big 10"
boardrooms near the bathroom...I shudder to think what might have been
inhabiting the pitch black windowless gallery in Norris' center.
NO HOLDS BARRED
With the more boring films of the night successfully sat through, now
there was nothing that was going to keep me from staying up for all 24
hours. Especially since the next movie was like a shot of pure adrenaline
into the collective hearts of those in attendance. Hulk Hogan movies are
always fun, and though I maintain that none will ever surpass Santa
With Muscles in terms of sheer entertainment value, No Holds Barred
came close. This is one of those movies that exists in an alternate dimension
is an actual sport, with real athleticism involved and real stakes on
the line. The Hulkster plays Rip Thomas: wrestler, philanthropist, orphan
and surrogate father for his little brother Randy, and all around perfect
guy. Rip has three great powers on his side: the love of all that is good
and pure, the ability to rip a tank top that already has three symbolic
rips in the back, and the little hand symbol thingy. What is the little
hand symbol thingy (LHST), you ask? It's like this: make a fist. Then,
extend your thumb and pinky. Then extend your pointer, but only halfway,
so that only the first knuckle can be seen if viewed from above. That,
my friend, is the LHST, and it is a symbol of unfathomable potency. Twice
in the film a seemingly defeated Rip is given the inspiration he needs
to succeed by the LHST.
Rip's success in the fine art of wrestling catches the
fancy of evil television producer Brell (Kurt Fuller), who wants to sign
him for his own network. Ah, Kurt Fuller. I loves me some character actors,
especially the many who always play the role of troublemaking "pencil-necked
bureaucrat". Among these, Kurt Fuller is one of the kings, playing a full
range of characters that covers a continuum from "annoying pencil-necked
bureaucrat" (e.g. Wayne's World) to "evil pencil-necked bureaucrat"
(e.g. Ghostbusters II, Porn 'n Chicken.) But I was unaware
of just how far into the evil range that continuum went until I
saw No Holds Barred. Please forgive my atypical use of harsh language,
but Fuller's character of Brell is really, really damn evil. Easily the
evilest character of any movie in all of B-Fest. I discussed with several
people whether he was more evil than Ming the Merciless, and all agreed
that the Tyrant of Mongo didn't have anything on Brell in the evil department.
Don't feel bad about that one, Ming, even Satan could take some pointers
from Brell. Have I made it clear enough that he's evil, because this movie
certainly wouldn't seem to think so. The whole movie is pretty well established
in the first five minutes, and everything that follows is fluff designed
to reinforce what we've already seen. Brell is bad, so every scene will
be him doing something worse. Rip is good, so every scene will be him
stepping closer and closer to canonization by the Church. Similarly, Rip
hooks up with the female lead in the movie, Samantha (Joan Severance)
in about three minutes. This must surely be a record for the amount of
time even a movie this bad took to get through the requisite "initial
confrontation between hero and love interest, period of shaky coexistence,
then love." (Actually, Samantha was originally hired by Brell to seduce
and confound Rip, but the mere exposure to Rip cleansed her of her sins
in no time flat.)
Brell offers Rip a ton of money to join his network, but
Rip refuses, because he is too noble to breach his contract. (See? He's
good.) Brell then traps Rip inside a limousine and sends a team of thugs
to beat him up (See? He's bad.) Mere limos, even those with iron-plated,
escape-proof doors, are no match for the Hulkster, of course, and he literally
explodes through the roof and proceeds to knock out all the thugs. He
then holds the evil limo driver up in the air, and, in one of the film's
finest moments, comments, "What's that I smell?" The limo driver then
whimpers out "Dookie!" much to the delight of everyone in the audience
(or to the confusion of those who couldn't hear what word he said.) By
the way, the driver was even listed in the credits as "Dukey." Cute.
Anyway, Brell sets up scheme after insidiously evil scheme,
all of which fail miserably. Finally, he hits on the idea of establishing
his own, "dirty" wrestling circuit, a sort of ultimate fighting dealy
using the lowest, scuzziest toughmen in existence. Many a seedy bar later,
Brell hits upon his evil champion: ZEEEEEEUUUUUUSSSSSSSSS!!!!
Zeus, played by Tom "Tiny" Lister, Jr., is the necessary
piece to complete Brell's dominance over the realm of evil. You see, Brell
is pure evil, but is physically weak, while his opponent, Rip, is strong.
But Zeus is not only pure evil, he's also very strong. So it all works
out. Zeus demonstrates his evil right off the bat, introducing himself
by grabbing a waitress by the skull and ramming her through a barrel for
no reason whatsoever. Zeus is not only evil, though, he's also really
stupid. His vocabulary seems to be limited to two words: "ZEEEEEUSSSSS"
and "AAAARRRRGGGGH." (Actually, this is not entirely true; he does grunt
out a few more words during the "Randy gets beat up" scene.) This set
in motion what was to become one of the most popular running gags for
the rest of the Fest: screaming "ZEUS! AAAA-AAARRRGGGGH!!!" to the Flash
theme. Try it, it's fun!
Back to the plot, the sheer level of atrocity committed
by Brell and Zeus is almost too horrible for what should be a wacky, light-hearted
romp about wrestlers. For example, Brell hires someone to abduct and rape
Samantha (luckily, Rip stops him), and Zeus beats Randy so badly that
the latter is paralyzed. That's some pretty stern stuff, but luckily I
have so little respect for the characters in this movie that that didn't
stop me from enjoying the goofy suplex antics. Up until this point, Rip
had been unwilling to fight Zeus, but with his brother hospitalized, it's
time for some serious payback. This is exactly what Brell had been waiting
for, so he hypes the event, gets exclusive airing rights, and just to
make sure Rip loses, kidnaps Samantha. (Cause he's eeeevil, you
see.) Zeus whomps on Rip pretty darn hard, that is, until Samantha escapes
and Randy manages to twitch the pinky on his otherwise-paralyzed hand
in emulation of the LHST.
Overflowing with the power of good, Rip beats Zeus right
out of the ring. Zeus' evil had not yet been quenched, however, as he
proceeds to knock out Rip's elderly trainer, throw Randy out of his wheelchair,
AND kick the boy's paralyzed body across the aisles, in a scene that manages
to rip off all five Rocky movies. Brell looks on with diabolical
glee, because it's all so ridiculously evil! Evil evil evil! Evil does
not go unpunished however, as Rip and Zeus' battle migrates up to Brell's
production booth, climaxing in Rip knocking Zeus off the ledge down into
the ring. While Zeus is falling to his death, Brell had been pulling out
all the electrical equipment in the booth (out of evil rage, apparently.)
Thus, when Rip goes to confront Brell, the latter backs up into all the
exposed wires, is electrocuted, and dies in a scene that I maintain bears
a close resemblance to the death of Clayface in Batman: The Animated
Series. It turns out that neither the elderly coach or Randy was killed,
Rip gets back Samantha, and good reigns triumphant. USA! USA! USA!
BREAKFAST
Arghhhh...natural light! Get it off me! Get it off me! After roughly 21
hours of eating nothing but peanut butter cups and peppermint patties,
it was time to grab some real eats. Okay, it was a muffin and a danish,
but close enough. Following a quick gnosh, I found 3beerman and sat down
to discuss the dynamics of morality presented in No Holds Barred.
Before long, we were joined by Dr. Freex, TelstarMan, and Marlowe, all
of whom claimed I was a "big geek" for complaining about the placoderm
in Warlords of Atlantis not really being a placoderm. Coming from
that group, that's pretty harsh.
MAC AND ME
Also known as Coca-Cola and McDonald's: The Motion Picture. If
there's a way to work more product placement into a movie, I haven't seen
it. I mean, the main character is named after McDonald's, for goodness
sakes. And that's not all, let's run up the product placement tally!:
Coca-Cola, Skittles, McDonald's, United Van Lines, Dos Equis (!!!), Otter
Pops, Power Wheels, Sears, Volkswagen, Brawny, and the WGN. Mac and
Me is the heartwarming story of a poor extraterrestrial separated
from his family who befriends a young boy and must escape from pursuing
hordes of government agents and...gee, sound a little familiar? Ah, yes,
in addition to being a soulless corporate shell, Mac and Me is
also the most blatant of E.T. ripoffs. But there are the little
differences. For example, in Mac and Me, the little kid is in a
wheelchair, because that, um, makes it all the more tragic (in one scene,
when the chair goes careening off a cliff and falls into a lake, the entire
crowd cheered.) Also, while E.T. had that one scene with Reese's
Pieces, Mac and Me has that one scene with Skittles. Mac and
Me's ripoff status is even reflecting in its television choices: the
kids in Mac watch noted Smurfs-derivative The Snorks.
And you know how E.T. can heal people? So can the Macs, but um, they're
ALSO infinitely elastic and immune to fire.
Now, I saw this movie way back in the day, but I had forgotten
how truly execrable it was. This was one of the few movies this year that
made me shake my head and say, "What in God's name was that?" For example,
there's one scene set inside a McDonald's (with Ronald in attendance!)
that turns into an insane McDonald's dance party that turns into a McDonald's
block party! Factor in a diminutive alien in a bear suit tap dancing on
top of the counter, and you have some seriously messed-up stuff. The uses
for Coca-Cola in this movie also boggle the mind. It is used to feed Mac,
and the heroes deduce that it must have the same chemical composition
as the water on Mac's home planet (which appeared to be a barren desert
moon orbiting a blue gas giant.) Thus, when Mac's family is found dead
in the desert later in the movie, they are literally brought back to life
by giving them a drink of Coke. Or, as the audience was shouting out,
"THE POWER OF COKE COMPELS YOU! THE POWER OF COKE COMPELS YOU!"
Speaking of the other aliens, part of what made this movie
so bad is the appearance of the extraterrestrial cast members. Don't get
me wrong, E.T. was a hideous, wrinkly little freak, but he looks like
a frickin' supermodel compared to Mac's family. Mac himself is by far
the cutest of the bunch, and he looks like a paunchy oversized sea monkey
or a Cabbage Patch doll Gollum. As for the rest, they can only be described
as butt-fugly. Seriously, it hurt me just to look at them. I feel the
use of the communal "END! END!" chant was overused on this year's mild
fare, but I was yelling right along with them at the close of this one.
And, as a final affront to us all, Mac and Me ended with what is
surely one of the most frightening phrases ever flashed on screen in the
form of a giant bubble gum bubble: WE'LL BE BACK! Thank Almighty Coke
that that never came to pass.
THE LAST DRAGON
Clearly this year's answer to Breakin'! (there was talk of Electric
Boogaloo finally being shown this year, but sadly it was not to be.)
Like Breakin'!, this was a mid-eighties piece about people in the
inner city taking on roles generally outside their racial circles. And
while Breakin'! starred Boogaloo Shrimp and Shabadoo, The Last
Dragon stars Taimak (don't call him Tarmac!) and Vanity. Taimak plays
"Bruce" Leroy Green, a teenage African-American boy in Harlem who studies
martial arts and dresses in Chinese fashion. Leroy is renowned for his
fighting prowess, but he has yet to attain the final level of power: "The
Glow." To learn of "The Glow", Leroy is sent looking for an elusive kung
fu master who will tell him everything he needs to know. Getting in his
way is Sho'nuff (Julius Carry), the self-proclaimed "Shogun of Harlem."
Sho'nuff is a perpetual delight – he's obsessed with defeating Leroy
and being recognized as the true master of martial arts. To this end,
he's always screaming out "Who's the Master?!?" to which we the audience
members would always shout back, "SHO'NUFF!" Leroy's a loser - no style,
you see.
While Leroy is searching for the secret to "The Glow"
on the streets, an entirely separate plotline is going on. Evil producer
Eddie is trying to get his girlfriend Angela on Laura Charles' (Vanity)
popular music show, and he'll stop at nothing to accomplish this. Eddie
is actually a lot like Brell; both are bald, Machiavellian media moguls,
although Eddie isn't quite as evil as Brell. To be sure, Eddie is very
evil, but you'd have to be an archfiend to even come close to Brellian
levels of maleficence. Angela, on the other hand, is an innocent pawn
in the game. She has the exact same voice as Betty Boop in the
body of Cyndi Lauper, making her a disturbing entity overall. Her music
videos are frightening in their own right, especially "Test Drive" in
which she is wearing a pair of headlights as a bra and a rump-mounted
license plate. The two plotlines converge when Eddie sends a team of thugs
to kidnap Laura and she is rescued by a passing-by Leroy. Confounded by
the young fighter, Eddie hires a veritable army of eccentric warriors
to kill Leroy. Sho'nuff, of course, is more than happy to finally get
the chance to face Leroy. For the whole movie, he has been trying to get
Leroy to fight: beating people up, breaking into Leroy's dojo, and destroying
Leroy's father's pizza place in a scene oddly reminiscent of Do The
Right Thing.
Aided by his Chinese Odious Comic Relief pupil, Leroy
manages to take out all of Eddie's goons, but finds himself in a tough
spot against Sho'nuff. It turns out that "The Glow" is obtained through
perfect self-confidence, and Sho'nuff has it. Here's where the movie gets
kind of weird. I thought "The Glow" was merely an expression, but that's
not the case. People using "The Glow" actually glow with fighting energy,
much like The Force in Star Wars. In Sho'nuff's case, the glow
is red, because he's evil. It looks like Leroy is doomed, until at the
last moment he develops his own glow (white, natch) and proceeds to own
(it turned out that the "master" he was questing for had just been a computer,
and the only knowledge he really needed was within himself and all that
garbage.) Eddie and all the thugs are then arrested, and Leroy and Laura
live together in happiness.
What did I learn from this movie? That violence is the
answer to all of our problems. Throughout the film, Leroy preached non-violence,
going on an on about how using the martial arts is almost always the wrong
choice, and one must be calm and respectful in all situations. Based on
everything else in the film, that's bull-honkey. Had Leroy simply fought
Sho'nuff at the beginning of the movie, all the problems could have been
avoided: his dojo wouldn't have been trashed, his family business wouldn't
have been ruined, etc. And when things finally got so bad that he couldn't
run away like a little girly-man any more, you know what saved the day?
Violence, that's what, and lots of it! Thanks for your inspiring message,
The Last Dragon, I think I'm going to go out and bust some heads
right now.
IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA
One of the archetypal 1950s giant invertebrate on the rampage movies.
Enormous beast loosed on mankind as a result of radiation? Check. Military
officials unwilling to listen to the crackpot-yet-true theories of scientists?
Check. Female lead with ambiguously gendered character name? Check. Incredibly
long scenes of people standing around in labs and boardrooms interspersed
with occasional shots of a monster attacking sailors and winos? Check.
Despite its strict adherence to formula, this is one of the better movies
of its type, boasting some very nice stop motion work by Harryhausen.
Much has been made of the fact that the giant octopus in the film
only has five arms (making pentapus the proper classical name for
it), but this is only noticeable in a few scenes. Considering the cost
and laborious nature of animating eight separate arms, I can certainly
understand the choice. Other things to watch for: the strangely mutually
accepted love triangle between the three lead characters and the 50s era
views on "professional women."
WHAT IS COMMUNISM?
Baby don't hurt me. Don't hurt me. No more.
SUPERGIRL
Also known as Superman V: Superman Will Not Be Appearing in This Film.
Helen Slater plays Supergirl, who, unsurprisingly, is Superman's girlish
cousin. But she was not always Supergirl, oh no. At one time she was Kara,
just one of the Kryptonian survivors living in Argo City. That is, until
she was given the Omegahedron to play with by rascally elder Zaltar (Peter
O¡¯Toole!) The Omegahedron is the magical power source of Argo City, and
it can do just about anything. It's supposed to be kept secure at all
times, but Zaltar "borrowed" it for a spot of fun, what with him being
a rascal and such. Kara creates a dragonfly-like creature using some sort
of matter-pen, then grants it life with the Omegahedron. It promptly flies
through the paper-thin Argo City walls, and the Omegahedron goes with
it, dooming the Argosians to a cold, inevitable death. (Say, isn't that
how Lobo wiped out his home planet?) Zaltar gives Kara the means to escape
to Earth, and resigns himself to banishment in the Phantom Zone.
Once she arrives on Earth, Kara discovers she has powers
far beyond those of normal girls, including the ability to create clothes
simply by walking behind a tree. In order to hide her powers, she creates
the secret identity of "Linda Lee", who blows Superman's disguise out
of the water based on hair color alone (Supergirl is blonde, but Linda
Lee is brunette.) Presumably because she is a masochist, she then uses
her powers to enroll in one of Metropolis' elite private schools. Her
roommate turns out to be Lucy Lane (Maureen Teefy), Lois' little sister.
Continuing the tangled web of relationships, Lucy has a crush on their
schoolmate Jimmy Olsen (Marc McClure.) Unfortunately, the girls' third
roommate, Lily Luthor, was not featured.
With super-powered people, it's always only a matter of
time before some villain bent on world domination shows up, and Supergirl
is no exception. But just as Supergirl is the lame cousin of Superman,
so is her nemesis decidedly wanting in the villainy category. Superman
dealt on a day-to-day basis with the likes of General Zod and Darkseid,
beings of unfathomable evil power. The best Supergirl gets is a washed-up
carnival psychic with serious self-confidence issues. Said villain is
Selena (Faye "What the heck am I doing here" Dunaway), a dabbling black
magician who lives in a haunted house ride. Her mentor in the dark arts
is the diabolical Nigel (Peter Cook), who also happens to be Linda's math
teacher (you know, I always had my suspicions about my calculus professor...)
The apprentice outdoes her teacher, however, when she stumbles across
the wayward Omegahedron. Suddenly, all the power of the universe is at
her command. What does she use this power for? Picking up guys, mostly.
No, I'm entirely serious here: she uses her spider spells to cause wandering
hunk Ethan (Hart Bochner) to fall in love with the first woman he sees.
Now, anyone who's seen that one episode of Captain N: The Game Master
where Kid Icarus shoots Simon Belmont with the love arrow and he accidentally
looks at Mother Brain and falls in love with her already knows what happens
next. That is, he ends up looking at Supergirl and falls in love with
her rather than Selena. Enraged by this, Selena vows to destroy Supergirl,
yadda yadda yadda.
Things escalate until Selena takes over the town (first,
an insignificant suburb of Metropolis, tomorrow the world!) and Supergirl
gets magically whisked away to the Phantom Zone. There she meets Zaltar,
talks him out of his depression, lets him get sucked into a vortex of
doom, and escapes, fights a demonic shadow beast, and finally defeats
Selena. By the way, it is explained early on that Superman is out "on
a mission of peace to another galaxy." How convenient: had he been around
he certainly wouldn't have put up with this two-bit attempt at evil. Finally,
to answer a question I posed Hen and Marlowe at the end of the Fest, Linda
Lee all the way. I don't care if Supergirl does have the suit.
GODZILLA 1985
The Big G returns to the big screen following the devolution into low-budget
camp his series suffered in the 1970s. The need to toss off the onus of
Godzilla having become a "friend of children" is very clear in this movie,
which is essentially just a return visit to the 1954 original. The timeline
of this movie places it as a direct sequel to the original (and the American
cut of the original), even to the point of bringing back Raymond Burr
as reporter Steve Martin. In this one, Godzilla starts out frozen in the
polar seas, only to be reawakened by human meddling. This is said to be
the same Godzilla as the original, but I distinctly remember a little
thing called the oxygen destroyer skeletonizing him in 1954. And don't
pull any of that Regenerator G-1 crap with me, as I'll have none of it.
Anyway, ships start disappearing, and one Japanese fishing vessel shows
up with all the crew (save one) dead and heavy traces of radioactivity
in the area. It seems that they weren't directly killed by Godzilla, though,
but rather by a swarm of insectoids (parasites on Godzilla?) that invade
the ship, as we learn in a scene that bears more than a passing resemblance
to the Alien movies. From here on in you know the drill: Godzilla
starts attacking power plants in Japan, trashes Tokyo, and pretty well
crushes any military that gets in his way. Both Japanese, U.S., and Russian
armies try to stop the beast, all to no avail, so the bigwigs in Washington
call in the one man who knows Godzilla firsthand: Raymond Burr. Now, in
most movies, the interaction between a character we'll call The Learned
Individual and The Military Brass goes like this:
The Learned Individual:
I have such-and-such insight into the menace. I know this sounds crazy,
but if we do A, B, and C we may just have a chance of stopping this monster.
The Military Brass:
You're crazy. We're just going to nuke it to kingdom come.
(military action fails, but a few individuals eventually defeat the foe
using the Learned Individual's sodium, MacIntosh computer, Puberty
Love, etc.)
However, in Godzilla 1985, while the military doesn't
listen to Burr, it's not because they're necessarily pompous fools, but
because he has nothing to say. He pretty much just writes Godzilla off
as an unstoppable force of nature and resigns himself to watching it destroy
stuff. While this is certainly an interesting take on this sort of character
in a movie, it's a waste of Burr, who comes off as being a tangential
player at best. Plus, he's wrong, as Godzilla is defeated thanks to an
active volcano, in what is one of the saddest closings to any Godzilla
movie.
And on that note, so ended B-Fest 2003. I emerged from my wizardly cocoon,
packed up my stuff, bade my farewells, and headed out to the train. (As
it turned out, I didn't go home but ended up wandering around downtown
in the snow until midnight, but that's another story.) My living in Chicago
has made it extremely easy to attend B-Fest for the past few years, so
I am somewhat worried at my prospects for return considering that I will
likely be somewhere else at grad school next year. Nevertheless, I am
sure that nature will find a way for me to return...so watch for the Wizard
in the robe of green...I will help you find your dream dream dream dream
dream dreams!
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