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A Recap of B-Fest 2009
(2009)
Reviewed By Ragnarok
Review______________
For some reason, last year someone thought that B-Fest was less important than something. I don’t know what that was, or why anyone in their right mind would think that B-Fest is anything less than the single most important yearly event in the entire world. That’s right, all you cripple telethons, I’m lookin’ at you. Get the hell out of the way for B-Fest. Anyway, they rescheduled the damn thing for the weekend of my son’s birthday, so I couldn’t go. I suppose that means I’m one of those people who think B-Fest is less important than something, but I’m the one writing this article so I can say what I damn please and bite my hinder if you don’t like it.
This year, everything was back to normal. The Superbowl (who the hell was even playing this year, and do people seriously still give a damn about professional sports?) is superseded by 24 hours of b-movie insanity, with the added bonus that due to finally having money, vacation time, and sufficient childcare contingencies in place, Malorie got to attend her first ‘Fest.
Shoving off at about 6 a.m., we made solid time, fewer stops than usual, and actually got into town early. I was excited, thinking this meant either extra shopping time or extra meeting-BMMBers-at-Best-Western time. Unfortunately, Bob believed his fucktarded Mapquest directions instead of my insistence that we always take Highway 41 and got us ass-backwards lost trying to find the hotel. After an additional hour or so of fiddling around impossibly cramped side-streets, facing the reasonably high probability of being pulled from the car, mugged, and gang-raped by melting and/or exploding winos, we approached our lodgings from totally the wrong direction. It probably wasn’t really that bad, but I can’t resist an opportunity to give Bob shit. He deserves it anyway.
Actually, there was one interesting diversion. As we do about 50% of the time, we biffed the branching of Highway 20 and Business 20 and wound up having to drive through Rockford, which, if you’ve never been there, is a shitty, depressing ghetto of a town and I would urge you to avoid it at all costs. The Nebraska contingent, known as the Black Hole of Des Moines Society, stop every year in Iowa City at a McDonald’s featuring a large, creepy statue of Ronald McDonald, who is also called He Who Walks between the Arches. This year, we discovered our own B-Fest on-the-road demigod, although I assume he’s a one-time deal. I give you Lester the Satanic Labor Rat.
Seems the Rockford Chuck E Cheese was having some remodeling done and hired out-of-town non-union labor. The local union, understandably upset at being undercut, were picketing outside the restaurant with a guy in a rat suit (which looked more like a pit bull, it wasn’t a very good costume), and a 12-foot-tall inflatable demonic rat, with glowing red eyes, huge claws and, for some unknowable reason, udders. They had blown up the wobbly monstrosity outside in the parking lot to frighten away children. Rockford’s union is heartless and awesome. Bob’s girlfriend Cori sacrificed what was left of her apparently disgusting gas station breakfast biscuit, but, as it lacked cheese, Lester was angered and smote us and we up and drove through Rockford again on the way home.
While standing at the desk getting our parking permit, I heard a familiar voice wafting down the hall toward me – TIM TELSTAR! My brother from a round, beeping, robotic mother! After the girls freshened up, we headed out to hit the Barnes & Noble (actually, we headed out to find a record store which, despite the fact that we were hungry for music and a respite from the chilling wind, remained obstinately out of business no matter how hard we stared at the sign Scanners-style trying to will it back into existence) Not real book shopping, but an incredible corporate simulation! Between used bookstores and things like eBay and Amazon Marketplace, I have a really hard time convincing myself to pay retail for new books, which sucks when you’re confronted with shelves full of great things you want RIGHT NOW but know if you wait just a little bit you can get them for 75% less money. Still, I have no problem giving full retail to Terry Pratchett, so I picked up Moving Pictures and Going Postal, plus a hardcover copy of Lewis Black’s Nothing’s Sacred for two bucks in the clearance bin. If you ask Tim, I lunged for the Taint. I had to grab the Taint. Had to have my hands all over the Taint. Then karma came down and broke his coat zipper. “Katchow!” said Karma. “Aw crap! EXPLODE!” said Tim’s zipper.
Shopping taken care of (we walked, and it was windy and cold, and I forgot my hat, but I work outside and it was -44 degrees wind chill the entire week before the ‘Fest so ‘tweren’t nothin’), we returned to Best Western to make dinner arrangements with the rest of the BMMB contingent. Joining us for dinner were Osco Sean, 3BeerMan, Hiro Protagonist and his brother Pat, Captain Wow (they gave him one job…and I finally had that joke explained to me after three years), Nameless Ray Schaff, Hen Grenade, Bergerjaques, Movie Mike, and possibly someone else that 30-odd hours of no sleep has deleted from my memory. We wound up at a place called Al’s Italian Beef (#1 in Chicago if their logo is to be believed), which was mighty tasty, but was apparently derived from some kind of low-grade biological warfare agent (beef is the asskiller). My stomach is pretty iron clad, and I made it through the beef and tasty onion rings with little difficulty, but mere moments after the repast, Bob and his woman had to beat a hasty, poop-driven retreat to the hotel to spend the rest of the night…well, you’ve all seen that thing with the two girls and the cup, so I’ll let you figure it out.
The rest of us headed for the Hala Kahiki tiki bar. Say that three times fast, and a bartender in a tacky Hawaiian shirt will come out of your mirror and force-feed you Zombies until you die of alcohol poisoning. An extra special thanks to Raven NightDragon here for taking Mal and I on as passengers and following Bergerjaques’s meandering trail to the bar, since our chauffeur’s colon was holding him prisoner and me behind the wheel + big city = Viking berserker rage. Here we got to meet Beggar So’s Hat and his wife Jan all the way from foggy London towne, Marlowe, Edward IX (who did a shady Doctor Who New Adventures deal with me in the parking lot after the bar), Juniper, my screenwriting partner El Santo, Xinfinity, and my also-screenwriting partner, the extra-effervescent Skip, sadly absent from most of this year’s ‘Fest, who hooked me up with some bootlegged Thundarr! the Barbarian. We somehow got banished to the end of the very long table arrangement and wound up out of earshot of a lot of conversation, but Santo and Skip came down to our seats of exile, where the winds of loneliness howl along craggy peaks lit with brightly-burning boozefire and scattered with salty pretzels. The Zombie was indeed a fine drink, but after all the hype and the 45-minute drive, the bar ended up being just kinda okay. Still, it was better than sitting in the hotel room crapping my organs out.
Then it was time to head back to the hotel for drunken nerd debauchery! We invaded BJ’s room with Osco-brand scotch (which I’m sorry to say is now called Heritage Scotch instead of the hilariously straight-forward Osco Scotch of yore), beer, and what appeared to be a jar of moonshine and a traveling mini-bar full of real whiskey and bourbon (which I regret not trying any of). After failing several attempts at setting up some kind of projection system to watch Gamera and kung fu movies, we wound up renting Death Race (2008) on pay per view and then thoroughly ignoring it. Being relegated to the top floor of the hotel, we escaped managerial requests to shut up our loudness, and carried on into the wee hours with a lengthy discourse on the merits of various versions of The Thing and closing with a rousing chorus of “Old Man Rambo” (he don’t know nothin’, he just keeps on shootin’ Viet Cong). My joking abilities may be limited to obscure references and awful puns, but I’m fairly proud of my off-the-cuff lyrical prowess.
Next morning it was up bright and early to go to the Art Institute of Chicago. Except we got sidetracked for nearly an hour and a half trying to find this one guy’s apartment, and it wound up setting us back far enough that the museum was about all we got to do that day. Granted, it’s a damn spiffy museum, and I confirmed my hatred for nearly all modern art and discovered that I really, really like Ivan Albright. Dude took ten years to paint the scariest picture of a door I’ve ever seen. After a hurried bout of shopping at a bookstore that wasn’t nearly as cool as I was told it was (dude was charging $15 for beat-up copies of old Ramsey Campbell paperbacks because they were “first printings”, but I did score another Doctor Who book and the novelization of King Kong (1933 version)), we wound up getting lost once more on the way back to Northwestern, barely had time to stop off at Osco to fill up the coolers with food, and wound up having to call Hen Grenade to save us some seats as we rushed into Norris Auditorium with about five minutes to spare before the movies started. Ah, the movies.
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Firewalker – Chuck Norris and Louis Gosset Jr. fight Sonny Landham’s incredible drifting eye patch and magical dagger with the help of a furiously masturbating Native American shaman and the ever-watchable John Rhys-Davies. I think I would actually buy a VW Bug just to customize it to look like the one in the movie. Despite the disappointing lack of any actual perambulating on fire, B-Fest came roaring off the line with the pedal to the metal on this one. Although the sound level was surprisingly tolerable, and the riffing unusually subdued (normally you can’t hear any of the first movie over every person in the theater screaming their jokes at the top of their lungs), I had a lot of fun with this one. Personally, I find movies like this to be the most enjoyable fare at B-Fest. Not my favorite genre by a long shot, but easily the most fun with a rowdy crowd. Our seats were directly in front of Edward IX and his crew. If you ask me, Ed gets the unofficial “King of B-Fest” crown for 2009. I don’t know how they did it, but he and his group kept up a non-stop stream of A-level riffing through the entire ‘Fest (not counting the movies they skipped for sleep and food) that would have made Mike and the ‘Bots proud.
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf-Man – Hey, didn’t I just review this one? Go read that if you want to know what I thought.
Mystery Short #1 – Oh Christ, is it time for the fucking shorts already? With almost no exceptions I hate these damn things. Except for What Is Communism. I know everyone else is sick of it, but they stopped playing it after my second fest and I miss it. It’s like the A&O crew want to hurt us as badly as possible in 10 to 15 minutes. Granted, it’s not like I’d do any different if I were programming this thing. This time it’s some kind of fucked-up Japanese musical, which starts out kinda kabuki and turns into a hideously racist pastiche of American stage musicals. So this is what the Japanese think we do, huh? No wonder the rest of the world hates us.
Murder In the Air – Ronald Reagan was almost as bad an actor as he was a president. Boring little butt-nugget of a spy movie where Ronnie is a fed trying to capture some vaguely European terrorists aboard a zeppelin. There’s some awful comic relief at the end with his sidekick and some kind of sonic beam weapon. Actually, the whole thing is just awful. It starts out really promising with scene after scene of trains and planes and cars and stuff blowing up and crashing and general motorized mayhem. The only action is in the first five minutes.
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Raffle time! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I didn’t win anything. But I won something last time, so it’s all gravy. I’m going to steal a line from Beggar So’s Hat’s B-Fest diary: “Also, the people who booed when the Clone Wars DVD was presented to the youngest person in the room: fuck you.” Pretty well says it all. As if the 10(I’m guessing)-year-old who got the thing isn’t going to get more enjoyment out of it than any of the adults.
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Mystery Short #2 – Odd student film that looked like test-shots for Flash Gordon serial special effects. It didn’t seem short. Just minute after mind-dulling minute of model rockets with sparklers as the burners.
Mystery Short #3 – They just kept ‘em comin’ this year. Personally, I wouldn’t mind cutting out all the shorts and plugging in an extra movie instead, but some people seem to enjoy ‘em. This one was some retarded propaganda piece about how reading comics will turn your kids into psychopaths who will attack toddlers and blow up their dolls with firecrackers.
Wizard of Speed and Time – Ahhh, back on track. It’s good to see you, old friend. STOMPIN’ THE STAGE LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER! Although she didn’t join me on the stage, this turned out to be one of Malorie’s favorite bits of the ‘Fest. I must agree.
Wizard of Speed and Time – Backwards and upside down. Then right way ‘round again. Then backwards and upside down again. Okay, I love it, but we probably don’t need to do it four times. Once the right way, and once B&U is plenty.
Plan 9 from Outer Space – Not much to say about this one at this point. I still haven’t reached the point some of the other more seasoned ‘Festers have, where I just can’t stand to look at it anymore and have to leave the theater. I love me some plate-throwin’. Some nice tribute plates to Bettie Page and Ricardo Montalban this year, with excellent hand-drawn portraits of them. Other than that, the plate-throwing is a lot weaker than my last ‘Fest in 2007. It was a veritable blizzard of plates that year. 2009 was more of a flurry.
Scream Blacula Scream – Hey, a horror flick in the blaxpo slot! I was fine with this, as I don’t usually much care for blaxploitation. There was still plenty of funkin’ and jivin’ and whatforth. I just sat back and let Ed and co.’s commentary roll over me, and there were plenty of laugh-out-loud goofy moments in this thing already. Definitely my favorite movie I’ve ever seen in the ‘Fest’s blaxpo slot. Blacula was there, and he sure did scream. I haven’t seen the first one, and Santo explained the plot to me, but trust me, it doesn’t make any more sense even if you know what’s going on. On an interesting side note, Sam Arkoff was born in a town called Fort Dodge, Iowa, about a 90 minute drive from where I live. They have a fantastic Frisbee golf course there.
Don’t Knock the Rock – Dull little 1950’s rock ‘n’ roll flick, co-starring Bill Haley, Little Richard, and some other people I didn’t recognize. Holy crap, this movie is weapons-grade boring. Aside from Little Richard performing “Long Tall Sally”, there’s not much to recommend this one. Santo and I discussed whether Little Richard was the first to use, or at least popularize, abrasive shouted vocals in rock music. If so, we owe him a debt of gratitude.
Donovan’s Brain – Mal wasn’t feeling good and at this point had retired to the lounge to get some comfortable sleep on a cushy chair. I spent a lot of the runtime here going back and forth to check on her. I didn’t miss much. What I saw of this was pretty boring, and the riffing was falling off as people were falling asleep. I’m starting to drift myself at this point, so when…
The Tingler – Came on, I went out to the lounge myself and crashed. I kinda wish I’d skipped the previous two flicks instead, for the crowd participation bit in this was reportedly good fun. However, I own it and I’d watched it just a month or two previous, and I was dead tired, so it was time for a power nap to get me through the rest of the ‘Fest.
Captive Wild Woman – After the alarm went off, it took me a moment to drag myself from sleep, so I missed the first five minutes or so of this. A lot of people found it reprehensible because of the real animal violence, but you watch enough Italian cannibal movies and the stuff in this flick seems pretty tame by comparison. On the other hand, it has a fantastic performance by John Carradine. Loyal readers will know I’m a bit of a fan, so anything Carradine is good in my book. I really enjoyed this one, short as it was. Carradine is a scientist who uses some sort of weird gland juice serum to turn an ape into a woman who apparently has the ability to mind-control other animals. She’s the rockin-est animal trainer in the circus until she reverts to a were-ape and kills people. Oops. Mal got up and came back to the theater for a good portion of this as well. Unfortunately, her first fully conscious welcome was…
Mystery Short #4 – What the fuck? Bizarre free-association nonsensical bunch of bullshit, followed by an interview with a spree-murderer who didn’t seem to feel all that bad about killing people, despite the fact he said he did. Away with this.
American Ninja 2: The Confrontation – Ah, now that’s more like it! After a tidal wave of boring old black and white (I want to make it clear that I have no problem with black and white movies in general, just these particular ones) Unisom, we finally get a fast-paced, action-filled, makes-no-sense and takes-no-prisoners action movie! DUDIKOFF! is back, hacking his way through a bunch of Blue Light Special genetically engineered super ninjas with his pal Steve James. Dudikoff sucks. Steve James is cool as hell. This should have been his movie.
The Terror of Tiny Town – I tried to sit through this and join in the joking, I really did. Unfortunately, the restrained hand which mercifully controlled the sound was apparently replaced by Motorhead’s sound guy, and the volume was cranked up to eleven…THOUSAND. High-pitched midget voices at maximum volume coming through large, powerful speakers is not a good combination. Mal and I were forced to flee the theater for about two thirds of this. I can’t remember what we did, which means it probably wasn’t dirty.
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Lunchtime. Now I remember what we did. There was a girl from the school online magazine interviewing ‘Festers, and we talked to her for a while before Bob, BJ, and others came out to answer her questions. I spent most of the time roaming between chatting with BMMBers at lunch, and digging food out of our cooler because I’m too cheap to spring for cafeteria fare.
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Mystery Short #5 - Something called “The Concert”. Apparently it was nominated for an Oscar. It was also ear-blisteringly loud, so I watched from the back of the theater until we got…
The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant – From reading other accounts of B-Fest, I gather I was not the only one who mistook this for the one with Ray Milland and Rosie Grier. Still, it had John Bloom, seen here perfecting the prototype for his role in 1972’s Brain of Blood. A scientist thinks it’s a good idea to graft second heads onto stuff, just ‘cuz. He puts a psycho’s head on the body of a giant retard and wackiness ensues. Included in the fun are a prolapsed monkey butt and a scene implying that the monster rapes a girl while he’s drowning her in a river. Ick. Also, there are not enough movies featuring a guy getting beaten to death with a chain, but this is one of ‘em that delivers the goods.
Megaforce – Skip came! And unfortunately I left. According to all accounts, this was the most fun thing of all the ‘Fest. Next to that stupid midget Western, it was also the loudest. Next to shrill voices, massive and continuous explosions are the least fun thing to have at maximum volume. What I watched, I mostly watched from the back of the theater. Mal was out in the lounge again, and I spent a lot of time back and forth. Eh. The real highlight for me was next. They always save the best for last.
Godzilla vs. Megalon – HELL YES! This is what B-Fest is all about. Now, at this point I was very glad I was sitting directly under one of the big circular air-conditioning vents. Ed and his group were complaining of someone in our vicinity with some foul butt emissions, but thanks to the constant stream of cool air blowing down on me (and also a big kiss of the thumb to whoever decided to turn the A/C on this year instead of letting us roast in our own body heat) I was encased in a protective force-field, and had nothing to disturb my enjoyment of the kaiju mayhem before me. I can’t for the life of me understand why people hate this movie. Sure, it’s about as ridiculous as the series ever got, but boy is it loads of fun. I never noticed how cool the matte painting of Seatopia was until I saw it 30 feet wide. SHUT UP, YOU!
After the traditional paper plate cleanup and group photo on the stage (of which mine once again didn’t turn out, and I’m beginning to think the rest of the BMMB crew are vampires…), it was back to the hotel for a merciful shower, and then off to dinner at Tommy Nevin’s Irish Pub across the street. Their lamb stew is fantastic. Another trip to Barnes and Noble, where I once again grabbed the taint and somehow managed to walk out without it, I discovered the joy that is Stewart’s Lime soda. I loves me some lime flavored stuff. And then, to bed.
The next morning, we were informed that the guy who we were chauffeuring around the night before, and who we were assured would be taking a cab home, was now not going to spring for cab fare. So what should have been a pleasant fare-thee-well breakfast with Tim and Sean was tainted by the fact that we were going to have to tack an extra hour and change on to our journey home. And he never even offered to chip in for gas money. And as far as I know, Bob paid for almost everything for this guy: bought his ticket, bought him food, let him stay in their room – remind me why you like him again?
Although, the blueberry crepes at Mabel’s Pancake House (formerly known to us simply as “the Pancake Nazi” because of Phoenix Comics’ warning to us in years past that if you used her parking lot to shop for comics she’d have you towed) were excellent. Tim also put to words better than I’ve been able to why it is I hate the current pop culture trend of being ironic about everything and not actually seeming to genuinely like anything, summed up in the neat little phrase, “Can we just have some sincerity again, please?”. Hipsters, pay heed. It’s perfectly fine to actually enjoy the entertainment and art that you like without constantly making snide remarks about it and pretending you’re just too cool for everything. And before you ask me why we sit in a theater for 24 hours and fire jokes at crappy movies, it’s not the same thing. We kid because we love, but we’re not afraid or ashamed to admit that despite the riffing, we honestly do like this stuff on its own merits too.
The rest of the trip home was uneventful aside from Lester’s smiting my navigational abilities due to the lack of cheese on his sacrifice two days previous and forcing us once again into Rockford, and due to having to drive back into downtown Chicago and setting back our departure, we missed the stop off at CD’s + before they closed.
Another ‘Fest gone by, another ‘Fest diary turned in weeks after everyone else has their posted and no one cares any more, and another year to wait to get back into that theater to do it all again. I’ll see you all in Coleman Francis’ nightmares. Goodnight.
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