When
we last left our
hero, B-Fest had probed
his mettle, looking for weaknesses, but
our
hero was holding up nicely so far.
Little did he know but
B-Fest was about to bring down the
hammer.
And
may
the B-Movie gods have mercy on his soul.
| Naughty
Bits |
| And
I don't mean the Black Hole of Des
Moines! |
After
Plan 9 concluded, the emcee came back out
on stage and warned everyone with weak
constitutions and high moral fiber that
the next few movies were definitely of an
adult nature. (Evanston
has a curfew, so everyone under 18 had to
leave.)
He also warned that if you went outside
the building you were effectively locked
out until the next morning. Not
a problem, I’m not going anywhere.
I’ve made it past the Plan 9
hump, and it’ll be smooth sailing from here on
out. I couldn't have known that two films
away sat a cinematic turd of biblical
proportions that would push
my cinematic sensibilities way beyond
critical mass...
...But
let’s not get ahead of ourselves here,
'cuz we’ve
got Pam Grier on deck. (Rahnnrrrrrrr.)
 |
| Coffy |
| No
cream, but plenty of sugar baby! |
Wocka-chica-wocka-chica-wocka-chica...Pam
Grier is Coffy -- surgical nurse by day,
avenging angel by night. It seems some bad
dudes got her little sister addicted to
drugs, and crippled here cop friend, so Coffy
will stop at nothing to bring those
responsible down. Three minutes into the
film, and Coffy has already blown a pimp’s head
off with a shotgun and forced a drug
pusher to overdose on his own junk. Several
ass-whuppins, cat-fights and gratuitous
boob shots later, Coffy discovers that Alan
Arbus (Dr.
Sidney Friedman from M*A*S*H)
is the head bad guy and she manages to
infiltrate and eliminate them all with
extreme prejudice. Total Body Count: Four
pimps, three pushers, two corrupt cops,
six henchmen, one prostitute, and one
turncoat congressman.
Coffy
is typical Jack Hill and blaxploitation at
it’s most notorious. My
favorite part had to be when Pam hides the
razor blades in her afro while preparing for the
cat fight that she knows is coming with
several other prostitutes. I’d never seen it
before and can say it is better than Black
Mama White Mama and
Foxy
Brown.
And it went
over well with the audience and had them
whipped into a B-Movie frenzy.
Then
that frenzy reached a fever pitch when the next
feature spooled up and told us that the
following motion picture was Rated-X.
Cool!
This
ought to be good...
 |
| Can
Hieronymous Merkin Ever Forget
Mercy Humppe and Find True
Happiness |
| Or
as I like to refer to it: |
| Would
Heinous Butt-Munch Stop Humping
Everything that Moves. And Quit
Singing for Chrissakes! |
You
want a plot description? You can't handle
a plot description! You weren't there,
man. You just weren't there...
Some
clown tries to find fulfillment by
screwing everything that moves. I’m not
kidding -- this guy would screw a bush if he
thought there was a rabbit in it. Then he
tells us all about it in song. Thee biggest, most pretentious piece of
cinematic crap and over indulgence I’ve
ever seen, and all I can say is shame on you Anthony
Newly.
My
knees were starting to give me some pains,
so I began to move around the theater to
stretch my legs, but no matter where I
stopped and started watching again, the
movie still sucked! I wasn’t alone in my
opinion, and you could feel the hate for this
movie oozing from the audience like some
demented plague. One
guy, who I first mistook in the dark for
Joe Bannerman, came to the back and was
trying to block the projector with his
pillow. Claiming he was with A&O, I offered to hoist him up to properly
block it but he respectfully declined. With visions of Woodstock
'
99 filling my head, I inched my way toward the exit.
Luckily, no one started rioting or burning
their seats, but it was starting to get
ugly. Somebody better do something quick
or the screen’s coming down.
 |
| Some
Really BIG Naughty Bits |
| Dude!
That thing is huge! |
A
funny thing happened on the way to the end
of Merkin. When the second to last reel
ended the A&O film crew decided to
appease the masses and interjected
"The Mystery Short" before they
were run out on a rail for subjecting
everyone to the prior piece of crap. While
I cringed in the back, waiting for the end
of Merkin, before my eyes appeared a crude animated short titled
The Further
Adventures of Super Screw. It was like an
old Hustler cartoon come to life and gone
horribly wrong. To keep this site at
it’s PG-13 level I really can't go
into too much detail here, but for those of
us who were there all I can say is
"BAD MONKEY!"
| Stick
a Fork in It -- It's Done |
| Thank
you, lord! |
Super
Screw
served it’s purpose,
diffusing the crowd long enough to finish the last
reel of Merkin.
Hallelujah,
that movie was finally over. You don’t
watch Merkin, you survive it -- and there
should be some kind of medal for those who
do. I know I’ll be carrying some
emotional scars and baggage because of it
for quite some time. After a few, deep
cleansing breaths, I open my last
bag of M&Ms and await the next
feature.
 |
| The
Slime People |
| And
I'm still hungry. |
Ah,
back to the basics. (The
film opens on a beach and we spot a dead
man with a spear sticking out of his chest
-- and I shout out "Look! It's
Merkin!" drawing a few chuckles from
those few who were still conscious at this
hour. Seems some ugly critters have
surfaced in California, and it sounds like
they’ve got Tojo’s Revenge too.
(Gurgle! Gurgle! Gurgle!)
They start terra-forming the surface world
to their own biological specifications
with a fog machine so they can take over.
Several people are trapped inside their
force-dome and must find a way outside
before the Slime People make mince meat
out of them.
I
had just bought this thing on DVD, and the
M&M’s just weren’t lasting, so I
decided I’d hit the vending machines
again hoping it would take my dollar bill
this time. To my horror, the vending
machine area was now fenced off, I assume,
until morning. The trip wasn’t a total
bust. I grabbed a B-Fest poster off the
wall as a souvenir, and snatched the last two
B-Fest cups. I
stretched my legs for a while and then returned
to the theater just in time to see the
Slime People’s infernal fog machine
destroyed and the world saved.
Yay.
 |
| The
Lonely Lady |
| Pia
Zadora in a role that will not shock
and amaze you! |
So
we finally get around to The Lonely
Lady,
the film Bad
Movie Planet sponsored. (Sorry,
everybody.)
Someday, I’m gonna have to ask Chris
and Scott what exactly is the root cause
of their Pia Zadora fixation. I believe
this film is Pia’s answer to her critics
for her dubious Golden Globe win for
Butterfly.
She plays a talented writer who gets tab-A
(a
yellow garden hose) inserted into
slot-B (her naughty bits),
and somehow this starts her down a road of
sexual degradation that helps her climb
the Hollywood ladder. She eventually
writes her autobiography, and when that’s turned
into a movie she’s up for an Oscar
for best screenplay. She wins, but in a
public display of soul cleansing, declines
the award and confesses that she’s basically a slut
and slept her way to the top.
Pia,
Pia, Pia. Alas, The Lonely Lady concludes
the naughty portion of our film-fest. (I
was curious as to why they stuck The
Slime People in the middle of it?)
The lady with the cooler a couple of rows
up is snoring loudly, and I’ll admit it,
I’m starting to get really tired.
| Half
Way There -- And Still Awake.
Barely. |
| I
Think I Can. I Think I Can. I
Think I Can... |
Time
to call up the strategic reserves.
Eleven
films down, ten to go. Time to call up the
strategic reserves. C'mon, pal! Buck-up! You’re half way home.
 |
| Test
Tube Babies |
| Science! |
Oh
my, what we have here is a '50s
exploitation piece disguised, rather
clumsily, as an educational film. A
young couple must have children "to
have a truly content marriage."
Unfortunately, no matter how hard they
try, they can’t seem to make the
miracle happen. So
instead of settling down, they’re
stuck partying with their wild friends.
One party gets out of control as one
girl starts to strip and eventually gets
in to a hair-pulling cat fight with
another gal. A drunken sod strips down
to his pants and passes out in a chair. And
this has what to do with Test-Tube
Babies?
This
debauchery was the last straw, so the couple turns to
SCIENCE! to help them out. They find out
the husband’s shooting blanks, and we get
a nice lecture on a new fangled technique
called artificial insemination. The doctor
balks, and he never does tell us who the
donor is.
(This
might explain the doctor’s sly grin
through most of the proceedings.) Democracy
and the marriage are saved as SCIENCE!
comes through.
The
two things I clearly remember about this
movie was that one scene from it was used
during the voice over game on Who’s Line
is it Anyway,
and the guy who played the
doctor also narrated Glen or
Glenda.
Beyond that -- not a whole lot.
Must
stay awake. What’s
next?
Aaaaugh!
Ted V. Mikels!
 |
| The
Corpse Grinders |
| a/k/a
The Cat Patrol -- In Color! Sort
of. |
The
Haxan Cat Food Company has a new secret
ingredient in their cat chow -- human flesh!
The proprietors pay the local gravedigger
top dollar for fresh corpses. And when there
aren’t any, he goes out and makes some.
We are then entreated to several shots of
dead bodies riding a conveyor belt into
some kind of Dr. Who-Wood-Chipper Machine
where they're processed into some goopy-goop that plops into a bucket at the other
end. When the local kitties eat the tainted cat food,
they go
berserk and attack their owners. This
leads to the biggest laugh I had during
the entire film-fest: The snoring lady with
the cooler had no reaction when a cat
killed its owner, but got very upset when
the dead woman’s husband smashed the
critter against the wall -- only to get even more
upset during the cat autopsy. (Now
I like cats. Have one of my own that is
very dear to me, but this bit of skewered
priorities had me giggling. Maybe it was
the lack of sleep.)
The
local doctor and his snoopy nurse finally
figure it all out. And then the snoopy nurse gets
to play Pearl White and takes a ride on
the conveyor before the bad guys are
hoisted with their own patootie and ground
into cat food themselves. (Oh,
the irony of it all.)
This
entire film looks like it was shot through
one of my dirty socks. Okay! Okay! I
nodded off during this movie, but I saw
enough of it. Unfortunately, during one of
my cat-naps (sorry),
I dreamt that our car got towed away.
Eep!
| Breakfast
Break |
| Food
and Freex! |
I
usually don’t put much stock in dreams,
and I really needed to stretch my legs, so
Paul and I headed outside, and to my
relief, the car was still there. We
returned to the Norris Center and were
happy to find out the bakery was now open. We
got in line, and lo and behold, Dr. Freex
was in line right in front of us. Freex
got the last donut (Curses!)
so I settled on a couple of pieces of
pumpkin bread and a cartoon of milk. We
found a table and he joined us. (I
don’t think he realized how excited I
was to talk to him, and was even happier
that I didn’t make an idiot out of
myself.) We ate and talked about
the riots during Message from Space and
Merkin. The conversation led to the
careers of Sonny Chiba, Vic Morrow, Cheri
Caffaro, the Hastings College advantage,
the one-way streets of New Orleans and bars to
avoid on Bourbon Street.
After
finishing breakfast, I made my way back
into the theater and scouted out the rest
of the gang. Chris Magyar asked how many
beer cans I’d give Merkin, and I told him
it was an 18th Amendment -- hands
down. Again, I don’t think (I
should say I hope) any of
them realized how excited I was to meet
them (or geeked up as I like to put
it.) We talked for a while and I
decided to strategically withdraw back to
my seat before a spontaneously combusted
all over them.
The
lights dimmed and I steeled myself for
B-Fest's back stretch. Good lord, I'm tired...
|
