At long last, Northwestern University’s A&O Productions has announced the lineup for B-Fest 2006!
A bit of history: starting in 1981, B-Fest is an annual 24 hour festival of the worst cinema the world has to offer (“worst” is a fairly absolute term here: every year I’ve been, there was at least one film that made me want to tear my skin off). It’s fairly famous in the world of genre film fandom, with people coming to Evanston from all around the country. I have, for the last five years, lived within a mile of the auditorium where it’s screened, which has proven very convenient.
Last year’s fest sold out for the first time ever, well ahead of the actual event, so I probably shouldn’t shill for it, but I will: it takes place January 27-28, starting at 6:00 PM on Friday. Tickets go on sale the 13th. It has proven to be just about the best experience of my year for four consecutive years now, and if you can possibly make it for at least a little bit, you should try. It’s like nothing else on earth. $35 a ticket, which seems steep; I’m fairly sure it’s because last year it sould out so! damn! early! and they want to separate the men from the boys, as it were.
Thoughts on the schedule after the jump, in deference to those who don’t care or want to go “stud.”
Friday, January 27 2006
6:00 p.m. Intro
6:05 Creature from the Black Lagoon
7:30 Earth Girls Are Easy
9:15 Mystery Short
9:30 King Kong (1933)
11:25 Raffle for Door Prizes
11:45 The Wizard of Speed and Time (short)
Saturday, January 28 2006
midnight Plan 9 From Outer Space
1:20 a.m. Coffy
3:00 GAS-S-S-S!
4:25 Tromeo and Juliet
6:20 Mystery Short
6:40 Graffiti Bridge
8:20 Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
10:00 breakfast break
10:30 Rhinestone
12:30 p.m. Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2
2:00 Queen of Outer Space
3:25 Mystery Short
3:40 Godzilla (1998)
Great start this year – two objectively good monster pictures that the whole audience has already seen wrapped around a Jeff Goldblum movie. That might sound like I’m being sarcastic, but I’m not: Creature from the Black Lagoon is the perfect movie to get everybody’s energy level up, and as The Apple proved last year, the second slot is a perfect place for 80’s trash. I also like putting in King Kong, because while it is a masterpiece, it is most decidedly a b-picture, and it’s a nice way of reminding everybody that it’s not all tinfoil UFOs. I just hope they’re able to find the gorilla-rape cartoon as the mystery short – it would be such nice lead-in.
The inevitable-but-why-would-we-want-to-evade-it combo of “Wizard of Speed and Time” and Plan 9 from Outer Space is next up. These two are always screened, always in this order, always at this time. You have all heard of Plan 9, but “Wizard is an awesome little short, made by Mike Jittlov for no money, using some incredible stop-motion animation of human beings.
The naughty movie bloc begins with Coffy, which I remember well from my first B-Fest as the most tit-ridden of all blaxploitation films. An audience favorite here, and frankly after some of the blaxploitation they’ve tried to foist on us recently, something of a relief. The two films afterward are likely to be my sleep break – Gas-s-s-s is a Roger Corman comedy, and last year proved (with a movie whose title I have forgotten, and which I do not wish to search for) that nothing is less enjoyable than an unfunny comedy. As for Tromeo and Juliet, well, frankly I just don’t care much for Troma.
Graffiti Bridge is the one great mistake of the festival this year. Not because it is on the schedule, but because at 6:40, everyone will be asleep. This is, I hasten to remind you, the sequel to Purple Rain. I don’t like that it will be me and a dozen other people awake.
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace is infamous, of course, and I look forward to the return of a superhero film to B-Fest, but I wonder how we’re expected to navigate the “dead Chris Reeve” angle. Tastelessly, I hope. Rhinestone and Baby Geniuses 2 are great choices to take us back from breakfast: the first, an 80’s film with Stallone and Dolly Parton, is…come on it’s an 80’s film with Stallone and Dolly Parton! What about that doesn’t scream “energy!” Superbabies speaks for itself.
Prior to now, I had not heard of Queen of Outer Space, but apparently it stars Zsa Zsa Gabor. Which is good. And the final film marks a happy return to the tradition of ending with Godzilla, last seen in 2003.
As with 2004, I think there’s a bit of an overreliance on the 1980’s here. Last year seemed to be a much-welcome return to the core of B-Fest: 50’s sci-fi. Here we’re down to just four B&W films, period, and Plan 9 doesn’t count (and King Kong is really too good to count). Nevertheless, I shall go and enjoy myself throroughly, and report back in exhaustive detail.