|
|
 |
| What would an event in New Orleans be without a jazz band? Well, quieter, for one thing, but it fit the festival mood. |
The worst thing about this particular hotel is its proximity to nothing, especially restaurants open between 9 p.m. and noon. We do eventually figure out that Canal Street has a few good spots for late night dining (especially the 24-hour Krystal on Bourbon), but even those are a good hike towards the French Quarter. Armed with more knowledge about the surrounding area it would be a good choice, but for first-time explorers of the Big Easy it is a bit frustrating. If the rates are still as cheap relative to the rest of the city ($20 - $30 cheaper per night than the nearest competitor), we'll probably stay there again next year. As far as we know, no one was brave enough to try the swimming pool.
Andrew Borntreger and wife Katie arrive while we are out sampling a bit of the New Orleans nightlife, a fact which causes much grumbling on Andrew's part. Having not been left with a detailed itinerary of Andrew's driving schedule, however, we have no way of knowing that our departure for Pat O'Brien's occurs mere minutes before they check in. So much for Marine training.
Saturday, June 10 - Festival Day!
The next morning we assemble the entire group for breakfast. This does not go smoothly, as the 24-hour diner hand-selected by Chris is closed on Saturday mornings. (For some reason, you cannot believe everything you read on the web.) Ken begins to theorize that this is some Stomp Tokyo plot to take over the highly-profitable b-movie web site market by starving the competition to death, but a quick trip back to the hotel results in the failure of this particular bid for power.
Loading up the car with all the necessary supplies and such, we head for Ben Franklin High School, where the New Orleans Worst Film Festival is held. Andrew B. leads us on a merry chase as we cover some of the more flavorful parts of the city and cross the same canal twice on our way to the auditorium.
Dr. Freex signs a copy of Forever Evil for a young, overawed fan.
Upon arrival, Andrew presents the NOWFF crew with the canned goods he purchased on behalf of the B-Masters (price of admission to NOWFF is $7 and a bag of non-perishable food). Most notable are the Vienna Sausages and the ten pounds of SPAM® sitting on top of what must have been 50 or 60 pounds of canned food. For the love of Pete, ten pounds of SPAM®! The ticket sellers are properly impressed.
We make our way into the auditorium, pleased to find that it is nearly empty and we have our choice of seats. The B-Masters dominate the front rows, littering the place with seat cushions, pillows, cameras, and duffel bags. Chris begins inflating the 4-foot Godzilla that was bought for the occasion. Because of the unfortunate placement of Godzilla's inflation nozzles, this causes some excitement and many compromising photos are taken.
The assembled B-Masters... whose cuisine will reign supreme?
Soon a man who sounds like an irritable escaped commandant from the German army tells us to sit down and start watching movies, so we do.
Serpent Island
The festival starts out on a discouraging note with Serpent Island, a film that manages to feel twice as long as its 60 minute running time, and only satisfies the requirements of its title as an afterthought. Acting dynamo Sonny Tuft plays a sailor who is commissioned to go to Haiti with a beautiful woman and her masculine captain. A love triangle results. There are supposedly other people on the boat, but we only see them during stock footage. The first thirty minutes are devoted to the trip to Haiti (title completion rate: 50%), and once we get to the island, two more speaking characters are introduced. Our new characters are a voodoo thug who stalks our main characters, and a voodoo priestess. A large portion of the second half of the film is padded out with stock footage of boring voodoo rituals, until the jungle stalking is done and the woman finds some sort of gold idol and is attacked by very nimble boa constrictor (title completion rate: 100%, but only after an hour of sonorous padding).
Sonny Tufts is a sort of poor man's John Wayne: he's out of shape, scruffy, and his tan changes from scene to scene. In one shot, he practically looks like a native himself. Against all standards of common sense and decency, Tufts takes his shirt off in a full third of his scenes and wears pants that make us wonder what he's eating. This is easily the worst film in the festival, as it is mostly just boring.
My Son the Vampire
This film confuses the heck out of us, so we turn to Ken "I liked Batman Returns" Begg for an explanation. Back around the 40's and 50's a vaudevillian actor named Arthur Lucan took his fan favorite character "Old Mother Riley" to the big screen, and this is the last film in that allegedly humorous series. Bela Lugosi plays a scientist called the Vampire who has an atomic robot on order that will allow him to conquer the world. Quick, someone get us the number of that mail order company! Sadly, the robot is sent to Old Mother Riley instead. So now Bela has to convince Riley to put him in her will so he can get the robot back, hence the title (title completion rate: 100%). At least that's the meaning of the title according to Ken, because we never quite managed to puzzle it out. Highlights include the incredibly unfunny drag performance by Lucan, a short henchman of Bela's that Andrew "I love midgets" Borntreger claimed was a midget, and the silly Captain Video style robot. This will not be showing up on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs.
Short: Sneaky Destroys Society (our reconstructed title)
A chilling combination of The Neighborhood of Make-Believe and The Violent Years, this elementary school film short shows what happens when one marionette litters and commits vandalism in a marionette town: chaos erupts! Civilization crumbles! The Thunderbirds do not show up to save the day.
Hillbillys in a Haunted House (you thought hillbillies could spell?)
Three traveling "hillbillys" stay in a haunted house (title completion rate: 100%). You want more? Okay, the house is actually a base of operations for two evil scientists (Basil Rathbone and John Carradine, both probably never harder up for work), an evil henchman played by a clearly drunk Lon Chaney Jr., a gorilla (whose presence in the house is never fully explained), and the Chinese dominatrix who is running the whole show. The hillbillys are actually three country singers, one woman and two men. The three never show much life unless they are asked to sing, which is quite often. The bad guys think the hillbillys are agents for M.O.T.H.E.R., ha ha.
During one of "Boots" (the blonde female hillybilly with an impressive bullet bra) Malone's musical numbers, we tried out our "When Dinah Shore ruled the Earth" joke on Dr. Freex. He immediately flinched as if he had been hit in the back of the head with a claw hammer, thereby guaranteeing that it (the joke, not the hammer) will show up in the inevitable full review. These sub-"Beverly Hillbillies" antics are not really THAT painful, but after the hillbillys have saved the day, they travel on to their jamboree, and we are treated to a full twenty minutes of musical numbers, including one from Merle Haggard. It just kept going on, and on, and on. The audience got really ugly by the fourth song. And even though Andrew "the Compassionate B-Master" Borntreger may be a big tough Marine, he started whimpering like Superman at a kryptonite convention by the times Boots took the stage. Luckily his wife was there to console him.
Attack of the Crab Monsters
For us, this movie looked a lot like the interior of a Chinese restaurant. Luckily, we get back to auditorium just in time for...
Seven Dwarfs to the Rescue (dwarves can't spell either)
Though the organizers of NOWFF make a big deal about the fact that this is the worst film they've ever seen, it isn't that bad, especially when preceded by 20 minutes of pointless country music. Essentially, this Italian fantasy film retells Snow White and the Seven Dwarves with less of Snow White and more of the dwarves. This sits right with Andrew Borntreger, who thinks the only thing funnier than midgets is people in wheelchairs being eaten by monsters. The Prince of Darkness captures Snow White, who is already engaged to Prince Charming in this version. PoD's origin is obscure, but judging from the bad haircut, he may be related to Bill Gates. The dwarves must travel through many lands and face many perils, like being flushed down a giant forest toilet, and playing cat's cradle with some giants. There's also a weird scene where the dwarves meet some mermaids, and just when things are starting to get hot and heavy, the mermaids are scared off by a rat. The whole movie has some rather bizarre similarities to the much later fantasy film Krull, including the captured princess being wed to Darkness, the travel through many lands, and even the set design. Title completion rate: 90%, since there are indeed seven dwarfs in the film and they do eventually do some rescuing, albeit after taking several naps.
Godzilla vs. Monster Zero
Who are those handsome fellows introducing this film? You probably know the drill, aliens use Godzilla and Rodan to defeat Ghidrah on Planet X, then turn traitor and attack Earth with all three monsters. Read our full review here. Title completion rate: 100%, although it's more like "Godzilla and Rodan vs Monster Zero."
"Come to our web site and we'll give you free stuff!"
Navy vs. the Night Monsters
Scientists traveling back from Antarctica accidentally seed a south pacific island with deadly, man-eating plants. The island is home to the dumbest navy base in the world. How dumb are these sailors? Even after they have instituted a policy of lighting up the area around the base in order to ward off the plants (plants afraid of light?), they still have sentries walking around who aren't equipped with flashlights. Most of the 85 minute running time is devoted to the main characters discovering the nature of the threat they're facing, even though it's bloody obvious to anyone who isn't a complete boob. And speaking of complete boobs, Mamie Van Doren plays a nurse at the base who has two friends that enter every room before she does. Title completion rate: 100%, and the Navy wins by napalming the entire island. This display of military superiority over walking plants brings cheers of "USA! USA!" from the appreciative crowd.
Plan 9 from the Outer Space
The classic Ed Wood tale of arrogant humans and the aliens who come to teach them ecological responsibility through invasion, using the animated corpses of Tor Johnson and Vampira. This is our second b-movie festival, and the second time we've seen this in a theater. We might ask that not every b-movie festival play this film, but then when would we get our sleep? Chris uses this time to deflate Godzilla, a more difficult task than you might suspect. Title completion rate: 100%, although the plan itself goes awry. The festival winds down with a final Looney Toons short, "Duck Dodgers in the 24th 1/2 Century."
Sunday, June 11
The Crab Monsters take over the brain of a handy Marine.
Everyone is rousted from their beds at about 10 a.m., and we all head out to find a Sunday brunch. After a few false starts, we settle on the Court of Two Sisters, which is as elegant and pleasant a place as you'd ever want to find yourself on a Sunday morning. The buffet is astounding, the conversation lively, and the Marine and the lawyer are hung over. Definitely a must-visit while in New Orleans, if a bit pricey. The B-Masters re-enact a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" before finally splitting up to do our separate tourist activities or to leave town.
It was great to see the B-Masters again, and even better to meet those people who we hadn't seen before. Some of the B-Wives (or B-Widows, depending on whom you ask) were in attendance to see first-hand the madness that transpires when this group gets together, and the NOWFF staff made us feel at home. When we departed on Monday, the numbers of our group whittled down by pressing matters at homes across the country, we knew we'd return to the Big Easy next year, hopefully with even more of the B-Masters in attendance.
Thoughts on NOWFF:
While B-Fest is obviously the Iron Man competition of b-movie festivals, we find that NOWFF has many points on which to recommend it. For instance, the Saturday showing date combined with an earlier starting time means that you're more likely to be rested going into the festival, as well as not being so dog-tired coming out. The fact that the NOWFFies also sell concessions on site means that you don't need to be quite so prepared with food and such beforehand.
Unfortunately, NOWFF's showing venue (a high school auditorium, as we mentioned) can be hideously uncomfortable. While the air conditioning is cranked up to a nice temperature and the room is well designed to allow a proper view of the screen from just about anywhere, the seats were likely designed by the Marquis de Sade. Wooden, folding, and utterly unyielding, these seats could make a hardened man cry after 12 hours. Many folks chose to stand towards the back during a movie or two just to regain circulation. Chris, who had heeded the warnings of the official NOWFF web site, brought along a seat cushion and one of the hotel pillows, and was still a bit sore in the rear.
The Enigmatic Apostic (left) and Ken Begg, High Priest of Jabootu.
We predict that if NOWFF continues to grow, it will soon overflow this venue and require more room for people as well as more comfortable seats. Although the seats weren't nearly filled, there's something about sitting in the dark for a full day that requires a seat or two of space between viewers. Even married couples began spreading out in order to stretch out over the confines of their seats and to get some personal space.
One of the best things about NOWFF is the fact that the people who organize it are highly visible. Alfred Richard and Crystal Guillory, the President and VP of the festival, were on stage between each film, introducing presenters and giving away prizes during the breaks. There's a lot of camaraderie going on and they do a lot to make you feel part of the event, even if you're a stranger in town. Everyone is highly enthusiastic and it makes for a great festival atmosphere.
Another way in which NOWFF shines is, of course, its locale. New Orleans is the right place for a festival of any kind, and it's extremely handy to be in a party town during the warm season. In June, the Spring Break and Mardis Gras crowds have long since cleared out, leaving the town with some friendly throngs, but definitely not overcrowded. Almost everywhere we went there was room available. A notable exception was the D-Day Museum, which had just opened and was sold out of tickets, but the members of our group who went there also found a nearby Civil War museum with which to occupy their time.
Even the B-Wives enjoyed themselves!
Lastly, a word about the schedule. NOWFF motored along like the cars in Death Race 2000, voraciously mowing down its attendees by showing films with almost no time between them. Some of the movies had presenters to slow things down a little, but these films are shown machine-gun style in order to fit them all into the 12-hour time period. While we appreciate the extra screening time, perhaps a half-hour break should be scheduled once or twice during the proceedings, if only to give the video projector some cool-down time! We found that our sanity came at the expense of seeing one of the films, and we chose the showing of Attack of the Crab Monsters to make our exit and sit in a nice quiet Chinese restaurant down the road. This also gave us some leftovers to eat when the munchies visited later that evening, so we were glad we made that particular choice.
If you're thinking of traveling to a b-movie festival for the first time, we highly recommend the New Orleans Film Festival: it's a good solid dose of bad film, but not enough to overwhelm and there are plenty of other things to do during your visit. You may find yourself in need of the city's other offerings after you witness what goes on in the auditorium of Ben Franklin High School each June.
Read Dr. Freex's take on the Festival
or
Go Back to Stomp Tokyo