Oh, the comedic possibilities herein.

French midgets in fancy 18th century attire, fighting over pillows is the order of business during this short. Of course, Staff Sgt. Borntreger just had to sit on stage, staring up at the funny midgets in all their glory. Fortunately, no one seemed to mind. I would hate to see them get hurt.

Memorable Quip: "Midgets can't read!" Quoth Andrew as the midget opened a book.

Gorgo - sponsored by Stomp Tokyo

The film we chose to sponsor was the one in which a monster stomped a city, even if it wasn't Tokyo. (Unfortunately, the B-Fest sponsors held that Mothra, the last film of the festival, was off-limits.) It's a fun monster flick about a giant lizard brought to London for a circus. It therefore has some uniquely British touches. Having seen it a few times before, however, I faded out for some of the later scenes.

Memorable Quip: "Could you step on the Royal Family while you're at it?"

War of the Colossal Beast

This sequel to The Amazing Colossal Man features the poor brute transformed by injury into a mindless beast-man with a penchant for playing with automobiles. Once again, I faded out towards the end. I'll have to catch the rest on video.

Short: Dirty Shorts

If it were in focus, I'd have to censor it.

Clearly the most shocking thing in the festival was this collection of animated pornography, featuring Bosko-like people doing the nasty with various other people, animals, and objects. It's an interesting little peek into the history of cartoons, but I do wonder what sort of person it takes to spend the time hand-animating this stuff. I was quite pleased by its inclusion, because it clearly shook things up. Sadly, Andrew was asleep at this point and, fearing his warnings from last year about waking him up, we let him continue snoozing.

Invasion of the Bee Girls

If you've never seen this 1973 classic, you're really missing something. Nicholas "Star Trek" Meyer really wrote up a doozy of a script and it's complimented by some skeezy character acting. Authorities hunt madly for the woman or women who are killing men by having incredibly intense sex with them. It seems these poor women have been transformed by genetic experiments into (duh) Bee Girls, and their attempts to procreate are lethal. This is apparently a regular film at B-Fest, and rightly so; at about 4 a.m., you're ready for some gratuitous nudity and a goofy sci-fi plot. (Meyer really has a thing about dangerous women: he also wrote Fatal Attraction.) It was at this point that the delerium started to set in, and some of the best one-liners of the night were called out.

Memorable Quips: "I've got a really good buzz going." That was one of mine, and I'm proud of it.

Solarbabies

Next on the docket was this piece of 80's schlock which features yet another dystopic future ruled by gangs on roller skates. It features a "floating ball of light" entity with magical powers who helps the good kids escape their tormentors. Sarah Douglas shows up as a villain; a very young Lukas Haas (Mars Attacks) is the boy who discovers the magical creature. It was supposed to be shown in anamorphic widescreen, but the projector was a bit wonky and they couldn't get it in focus. We were given the option of watching it squished in focus, but in the end that couldn't be provided either. In the end, we saw it squished and slightly less out of focus than before.

Wild in the Streets

And then the film turned upside-down....

Definitely one of the most interesting films of the evening, Wild in the Streets features a young rock 'n' roller who leads a campaign against old people. Beginning with pop songs like "14 or Fight" (designed to get the voting age down to 14), pop star Max Frost (Christopher Jones) constructs a political machine that pushes down the mean age of the Senate and eventually lands him in the Oval Office. From there, he enacts laws that enforce retirement at thirty, followed by retirement camps at thirty-five where adults live out the rest of their lives wacked out on the LSD in their drinking water.

We were all pretty out of it, but the psychedelic qualities of the film were enhanced by the fact that one of the reels had been spliced improperly, so we were forced to watch it upside-down and backwards. Eventually things returned to normal, but there wasn't quite as much attention paid to it as there might have been otherwise. Many people bailed in favor of bathroom breaks or a trip outside to take in some fresh air.

The She-Creature

A beautiful young woman is forced to become a killing monster by a hypnotist. Hey! Didn't we see this one already? Well, to be fair, the hypnotist actually resurrects one of her past life forms, a "Black Lagoon" type sea monster. The plot takes a long time to reach this rather simple conclusion and there are a lot of romantic entanglements, but eventually it comes down to the monster and dueling hypnotherapists.

Memorable quip: "Do you smell fish?"

Short: Wizard of Speed and Time

He is the wizard of speed and, uh... what was that other thing?

This time in anamorphic widescreen, which of course warped it and threw it out of focus.

The Undertaker and his Pals

Or, as I like to call it, Cannibal Diner. Gruesome undertaker partners with cannibalistic owners of a greasy spoon to murder young women and feed their body parts to the patrons. The undertaker steps in conveniently to help the victims' relatives by providing his funeral services. Strictly a business arrangement, you understand. This one left me a bit cold, as the humor was a bit limp and tended to rely on weak gags and over-the-top, wink-at-the-camera type performances. Joe Bannerman and I left to grab some breakfast at the cafeteria, which opened at eleven. No, we didn't think too much about what might be in our food.

Atomic Submarine

By now I had gotten all the sleep I was going to get, so I fortified myself with a Frappucino and barrelled through Atomic Submarine, which is actually one of my favorite 50's sci-fi films. Not only does it recycle the sets from It, the Terror from Beyond Space and feature Joi "Boots" Lansing, but it also contains the inspiration for aliens Kang and Kodos on The Simpsons. Truly a work of art, sculpted in cheese.

Memorable line: The alien inside the mysterious spacecraft speaks via "brainwave frequencies." When a human asks if it's extrasensory perception, the alien replies that that is correct "in your primitve Earth terms." Any condescending character in another film throughout the weekend would find their lines followed by recitations of "in your primitive Earth terms!"

Short: Wizard of Speed and Time

Shown in regular aspect ratio, but rotated 90 counter-clockwise.

Short: Mystery of the Leaping Fish

"Hello, sheriff? I want permission to kill Dorothy's dog!"

A rather bizarre little Tod ("Dracula") Browning short flim about cocaine addiction. I'm not really sure what it had to do with anything, and it ended abruptly. (I learned later that the film broke in the middle. I was too sleep-addled to know the difference.) Not something I'd recommend to be repeated in future fests.

Assassin of Youth

Maybe this is why we were subjected to Leaping Fish. This 1937 anti-drug caper was pretty looney itself, with an anti-marijuana film-within-a-film that drew comparisons to What is Communism?

When a clause in Grandpa's will stipulates that young Joan Barry maintain a certain moral standard in her life, her greedy cousin tries to rob Joan of her inheritance by getting her mixed up with a gang of teenaged potheads. An investigative reporter posing as a soda jerk takes a shine to Joan and, with her help, tries to clear her name while ridding the little town of the scourge of drugs.

Elmyra Gulch moves up in the transportation world.

By far the most amusing aspect of the movie is the appearance of a Margaret Hamilton lookalike who serves as the town gossip. Not only does she blabber too much and cause general misery, she also rides around on a motor scooter, which only serves to reinforce the Wicked Witch comparisons.

Memorable quips: "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little joint, too!"

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave

Scott and I nabbed a copy of Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed from AMC a few months before B-Fest and cleverly reviewed it for the day of B-Fest. Little did we know that the print would be unavailable for the actual event. It was replaced by this other Hammer horror flick, starring Christopher Lee as (duh) Dracula. When the vampire is exorcised from his own castle, he besieges the responsible priest, claiming the priest's niece (?) as his minion. Things were getting a bit hazy here towards the end, but I was awake for most of this. Probably most enjoyable were the scenes in the German pub with the foot-high pilsner glasses balanced on the end of a pole. Mmmmmm.... beer.

Mothra

The B-Fest organizers ended things right with this amazing showing (in actual anamorphic widescreen Tohoscope!) of 1961's Mothra. It was a bit of a dream come true for more than a few of us. The plot, if you've never seen it, concerns the Cosmos Twins, tiny fairy-beings who are kidnapped by a greedy corporate type. He makes them perform as a singing duo, and even manages to provide them with some amazing little costumes. There was an unexpected tie between Mothra and Solarbabies: both films feature a bursting dam. Mothra in this format is a big, colorful movie, and it was a good end to the year's festival.