B-Fest '05 Part II

Electric Boogaloo

Okay, where were we? 

Oh, yes. Plan 9 was over, the audience was slowly digging their way out of the avalanche of paper plates, and we'd already cored The Apple. The Norris Center was now under lock down. (You can get out but you can't get back in.) So that's six films down, with 14 to go. Whoa, we're gonna need some more Twinkies. Stat! And where the heck did I put the Slim Jims?

Fred "The Hammer" Williamson stars in Larry "Commando Filmmaker" Cohen's thinly veiled remake of Edward G Robinson's Little Caesar. As the Hammer works his way up through the syndicate, leaving dead bodies and dismembered ears in his wake, he reaches the top but pays a heavy price as everyone he didn't kill during his quest for power are now conspiring against him -- including his former best friend and his wife. (But who can blame her after that forced rape scene. Gah!)

Then the hammer drops on the Hammer and the conclusion really should have wrapped up after the "shoe polish" scene. Instead, in the end, the Hammer is bitten in the ass -- and whomped on the head -- by bitter irony when he finally, and I mean finally, dies.

* * * *

Black Caesar is blaxploitation but its tone is 180-degrees the opposite of the originally scheduled film, Black Belt Jones. There's still plenty to make fun of, but some scenes are more than a little disturbing. I do love all the shots where Cohen was probably filming without a permit, and as Hammer stumbles around on the streets, wounded, several people, unaware of what's going on, try to help him.

The chili on pancakes gag rears itself when Sean shouts it out after Hammer orders something in Italian. And the ending does go on too long as the audience's patience was getting stretched way beyond the point of credulity. But I don't know; I still like to think that out there, somewhere, the Hammer is still stumbling around, mortally wounded, going no place in particular. (In fact, he was miraculously saved for a sequel Hell Up in Harlem.)

Did you know you, girls, that you can get syphilis from jitterbugging? You can also contract it just by sitting around and talking. Of course you're just sitting around in your underwear! In fact, all anti-social behavior will eventually lead to body parts rotting off unless you never come into physical human contact ever again! Well, that'll happen if you believe that old yahoo who berated us for a good fifteen minutes -- but he could never remember which camera he was supposed to be looking at, so I don't trust him. So there; *nyeah*!

* * * *

This short was part of a promotion for Phil Gladstone's Forbidden Desire a/k/a Damaged Goods that's based on a novel by Upton Sinclair (who also wrote The Jungle). It was one of those "educational films" that toured towns where the producers really made a killing selling "How To" and "How Not To" guides and brochures after scaring the audience with the film and a lecture by a ringer posing as an expert. (See also Mom & Dad.)

"One Moment of Ecstasy. A Lifetime of Sorrow!" With the deadly threats of juvenile delinquents, white slavery rings, and venereal disease, it really makes you long for the days of What is Communism?.

Mamie Van Doren is the two-gun-toting-tassel-twirler from Tallahassee. She's also an ex-stripper who's trying to escape her past by becoming a college professor who discharges firearms in public as not to draw attention to herself. Meanwhile, there's a refrigerator box robot handicapping the horse races; Tuesday Weld breaks her bra strap to seduce Norm Grabowski; while two bumbling gangsters stumble around with a Thompson hidden in a violin case, but as far as I can tell they're pretty irrelevant to the plot; there's also a monkey banging on a typewriter (I assume he's working on the script); then Uncle Fester shows up; and John Carradine is dancing the Charleston; Louis Nye is running amok; I think I just saw Vampira; and Martin Milner looks just as confused as I am (One-Adam-12. One-Adam-12. See the man about a crappy movie). And, oddly enough, Conway Twitty was there summing it all up in song. Gah.

There is something about the college trying to get some super-grant, and it's up to Mamie and the monkey to seduce the benefactors, which she does through hypnosis, and soon she has them doing the Charleston. And then the whole thing train wrecks after an extended chase scene with a fire truck. After which, Mamie decides to go back to being a stripper, rendering the entire movie pointless.

Eyegitty-eyegitty-eyegitty-eyegitty-eyegitty-eyegitty-eyegitty-eyegitty!

* * * *

This thing didn't make one damn bit of sense. I'm convinced that several chunks of the film were missing. There had to be. It's the only possible explanation. And the film's schizoid nature really prevents any pleasure being rung from it beyond the sassiness of its star and John Carradine enjoying the hell out of himself.

I got a pretty big laugh when the producer's credit appeared: "You mean Touch of Evil Albert Zugsmith?"

This one hit Jessica pretty hard, scaring her back from the front of theater toward us, and I spent half the movie trying to "talk her down." Then together, we limped to the end where she bluntly told the movie what it could do with itself. I'm not going to argue with her.

Okay. I, uh -- wow. 

In between the last two reels of Beauty and the Robot, A&O Films sprung another short on us. Now it's been my experience that when this happens, the short is of a very pornographic nature. Sometimes I hate being right.

This nonsensical experiment in animation debauchery sees the very, well, blessed Mr. Harton screwing everything that moves -- and some things that don't move; be it animal, vegetable or mineral. And most get sloppy seconds. Machines or knotholes, it just doesn't matter. Unfortunately, Mr. Harton's "equipment" has a mind of its own and has a tendency to run off by itself, much to his chagrin. And as we get deeper and deeper into inexplicable weirdness, and we cringe as to what Mr. Harton will do with "it" next, the short unfortunately/mercifully comes to an end.

* * * *

The folks sitting behind me couldn't believe that I was snapping pictures of this, but, dammit, I needed proof that this wasn't some kind of sleep deprived delusion. While not as patently offensive as The Further Adventures of Super Screw, which they showed a few years ago, Buried Treasure was scurvy enough.

Rumored to be the first animated porn film ever made back in 1928, the same source alleges that the likes of Max Fleischer (Betty Boop), Paul Terry (Mighty Mouse) and Walter Lantz (Woody Wood*gack*pecker) had a hand in making it as gag for Windsor McCay (Gertie the Dinosaur) as a birthday present or for his stag film. Wow.

Charles Bronson's Paul Kersey returns to kill more bad guys, and this time, he has the full backing of the local police precinct because he can do what they can't! Here, Kersey comes to the defense of a tenement besieged by local street punks that I assume are leftover extras from The Apple. Things come to a boil after Counselor Troi from ST: The Next Generation is stripped and gang raped, Martin Balsam gets his head kicked in, and Kersey's new girlfriend takes a one-way trip down a very steep hill in a very combustible Buick.

Kersey starts out small, using a board with a nail in it, then a bigger board with a bigger nail it but then gets serious with a 50-caliber machine gun and a LAW rocket in his one-man crusade for urban renewal.

Murder! Murder! Murder! Murder!

* * * *

If watching bad movies teaches us anything, we know we shouldn't meddle with an Indian burial ground, get on a plane if William Shatner's on board, and to never, ever, become romantically involved with Charles Bronson in a Death Wish movie or your sentence is an immediate and ludicrous death.

Something in my right knee popped about half-way through, so I moved out into the aisle to stretch my legs. Mike returned from wherever he went to sack out, and I break it to him that he missed the Toon Porn. Tim wanders over and Jessica returns and we tear into this one unmercifully. The abundance of punks getting shot off of rooftops brings the very much appreciated multiple appearances of the B-Fest Dummy being thrown from off stage, and the official Bronson-o-Meter to gauge how much he's kicking ass at the moment. (And while I'm thinking about it, a big shout out to Slide-Whistle Guy, whoever you are. It wouldn't be B-Fest without you.)

There are some days that I really wish that I could live in the Golan/Globus universe where crap like this, The Apple and Breakin' can happen. Actually, it would be kind of cool if all of those were in the same universe. As Ms. Ritchey so eloquently put it "This is like Sam Peckinpah's Breakin' 3". But the riff of the overnight goes to Tim, though, commenting on the film's villain: "Is it possible to be a poor man's Jake Busey?"

In the far flung future of 1974, evil forces conspire to blow up America's orbiting space satellite by sneaking a secret-agent on board, posing as some scientist. Meanwhile, Captain Cranky is mad because he's been bumped from the pilot's chair for the new lunar mission by a chick; Colonel Perky. (Yeah, but watch Captain Cranky scream like a little sissy during the launch.)

The sound of everyone that was still awake's jaw hitting the floor resonated throughout the theater when the astronauts mounted their rockets in very short shorts, t-shirts, and rubber skull-caps. When the spy makes his move, the ensuing fight results in an emergency landing on the moon. After the bad guy is killed, contact with Earth is re-established. Then it's suggested that since they're stuck there until help arrives, why don't Captain Cranky and Colonel Perky just get married?

Sure, why the hell not. Wait. They're going to do it?!

* * * *

Project Moonbase falls into the serious sci-fi category -- meaning no rubber-suited monsters, and lots and lots of narration -- but every attempt at scientific accuracy only adds to the film's high hilarity; and the scenes of the ships docking and coupling with the satellite are made even funnier for those of us with an Eveready Harton hangover.

Jessica officially gives up and heads off to parts unknown, while I, in my Twinkie and caffeine induced fugue state, can't stop staring at Colonel Perky's perkiness. 

Rocky, Cole and Tum Tum must save their new girlfriends from a Loni Anderson led terrorist organization that has taken an entire amusement park hostage for ransom. Luckily for them, Hulk Hogan is there as a washed up Power Ranger to pitch in.

There is much raping and pillaging, and odd hesitations from the bad guys so the 3 Ninjas can make their moves. (How were we going to attack them? All at once. And what did we do? Attacked one at a time.)

* * * *

I think you know you're in trouble when Jim Varney steals your movie.

Nothing says fun to me like putting pre-adolescent bratlings in mortal danger for my bemusement. And I will argue with anyone that films like this, Home Alone and Ferris Bueller's Day Off are more detrimental to the youth of America than any horror movie or Satan record ever made.

You know, I'm always amazed at what goes over well at B-Fest. If I was watching this thing at home alone I'd probably have thrown a brick at the screen. Here, though, the audience eats it up. It was awful, make no mistake about it, but at this hour I think I'd be ready to laugh at singing monkeys in soiled diapers.

And I think we can all agree the most terrifying thing shown this year was all those close-ups of Loni Anderson's surgically altered cheeks and skinned-pulled-taut face. (Jennifer? What happened to you?)

Due to a few, slight technical-glitches, and the inclusion of an unscheduled ten-minute reel of vintage toon porn, the program was running long. Meaning there was only about a 20 minute window to round up some grub before B-Fest headed down the back stretch.

I'm holding up pretty well: Awake and alert and not really all that hungry. (Along with all the other junk, I'd woofed down a foot-long turkey sub during Project Moonbase.) The survivors gathered at a table and shared war stories and compared notes from the overnight endurance test. But the best part of the break is to get out of the funk of the theater for awhile and get some fresh air; but it's only a brief respite. We've barely passed the half-way point with EIGHT more films to go. 

I wandered back to theater early, not wanting to miss any of one of my favorite films off all time: Robot Monster. Then I tracked Jessica down for a little pre-game warm up for a bit we concocted during Death Wish III. 

That's right. I'm going on the stage. 

I'm going to get to play Ro-Man.

Posted: 02/03/05. Copy and paste at your own legal risk.

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