B-Fest Ho -- Whoa! Hold on?

No where the heck was I?

I'm not sure if was getting brained by those paper plates, the lack of sleep, or the Osco Scotch, but my recall for this year's B-Fest is atrocious. Shrouded in a dark cloud that I'm having a helluva time navigating through, there are several chunks that are just gone, and I don't know where they went, so I'm relying on the program and some help from a few other survivors to get this recap put together. It might not be entirely accurate, but it's close enough.

So after getting some first aid, by placing a cold pop against my eye to staunch the blood flow, I settled back into my seat ready to take on the overnight, realizing we still had about seventeen hours yet to go, and tried not to cry.

She's the "GODMOTHER" of them all.

The Baddest One-Chick Hit-Squad that ever hit town!

She had a body men would die for -- and a lot of them did!

So screams the taglines for Coffy, but Coffy is, in reality, a woman conflicted. A surgical nurse by day, she then spends her nights out, busting up pimps, and offing drug dealers, in her one woman crusade for revenge against those who wronged her sister. But nothing seems to satisfy her need for vengeance, so she keeps at, putting herself in danger, tracing things all the way up to Mr. Big -- Alan Arbus (the psychiatrist on M*A*S*H). Needless to say, all hell breaks loose.

That may sound shallow on the surface, but Coffy is a lot more complex than that; as a person and a movie. Credit to genre veteran Jack Hill, the film's writer and director. This is easily Pam Grier's best movie, and I'd argue with anyone that it should be considered the best blaxploitation movie of all time. 

And if it isn't, it's on a very short list.

We plunge into the deep end of the pool when the next short cues up. Tomb it May Concern is an old burlesque loop concerning two really bad Abbot and Costello wannabes looting said tomb. I'm not sure if the reel broke, or what, but the film ended abruptly before the female mummy could do a semi-strip tease/belly dance/hully-gully/this is sexy? kinda of dance. (Yes, I've seen it before. And no, you didn't miss much.)

Then the next short spooled up and the audience was assaulted, and I mean assaulted, by a shrewish woman with really bad teeth screaming and hopping and jumping and yelling and tormenting some guy who looks like Harry Potter. And while he doesn't seem to mind, the audience sure as heck does. Flash cuts, jump cuts, and a distorted and dissonant soundtrack hammers things into you further, pounding you into your seat like a sledgehammer until it mercifully comes to an end.

Sweet monkey bajeezus -- what the hell was that all about?! I don't know, and I don't wanna know. But I do have a knew definition for Phantasmagoric and Your are what You Eat is it.

Make the bad woman go away...

Make the bad woman go away...

An accident at a bio-weapons lab unleashes a toxic gas that kills everyone over the age of 25. This, of course, leaves a vacuum in the social order that needs to be filled. Our film follows a merry band of folks as they wonder the deserts of west Texas, eluding those who've taken over, and searching for...What?...I honestly have no clue. 

Social satires and hippies just don't mix. Especially at four in the morning.

In the early sixties, schlock legend Roger Corman was at a crossroads in his career. He was in the middle of his Poe cycle, and growing tired of the exploitation racket he wanted to do something a little more poignant. The result was The Intruder, where William Shatner incites a town's racial misgivings to violence. Corman claims it was the only film he ever made that lost money, and after which, he went back into the profitable formulas of monsters, then drugs, then tits and ass. 

There are those that found The Intruder achieved to something more than its budget and creator allowed, and often say it was too bad he didn't try his hand at more films about societies' social ills. 

I say, be careful what you wish for.

Here, we get Roger's take on the failures of the counter-culture movement as the sixties came to a close. And then he asks us to pull his finger with the expected noxious results. This was Corman's last film for AIP, and I gotta kick out of how the whole film basically mirrors Roger's film career for them -- westerns, to sci-fi, to Poe, to outlaw bikers, to drugs, to sex. Our group was split at about fifty/fifty on the film. Some thought it was okay, others hated it with every fiber of their being. I'll admit I'm not that big a fan of it. It's too long, and it blew a golden opportunity at a chance for extreme profundity when the roving band finally find the oracle -- a sign, which reads "There is no answer. Keep searching."

It should have ended right there.

It didn't.

The Montagues and the Capulets are feuding porn-film merchants; so what happens when two members of the warring clans fall in love? Well, since Lloyd Kaufmann's involved, I'd say some gratuitous nudity, a lot of bodily fluids squirting out of every possible orifice, a faint whiff of urine coming from somewhere, and maybe, just maybe, a girl morphing into a cow -- and not just any cow, a hermaphrodite cow. Moo.

I read Romeo and Juliet once -- okay, fine, I read the first three pages and the last three pages, but I saw the movie -- and this film actually sticks closer to the Bard than you'd think possible, except I don't remember all the parts about incest, nipple piercing, lesbian love scenes and the glass encased discipline box. ("What light through yonder Plexiglas breaks?" -- I freely admit I almost pooped myself laughing at that.)

I don't necessarily hate Troma movies. They're mostly harmless, you know, but I definitely don't go out of my way to see them. I mean, if I had a choice between watching Tromeo and Juliet and, say, getting kicked in the nuts; I'd probably watch the film. But I'd have to think about it for awhile first. Moo.

Actually, this film didn't turn out too half bad. Riding with two diehard Troma fanatics on the way to Chicago kinda warmed me up to it. And in the end, dare I say, this thing was kinda cute.

Go figure.

Moo.

When I was about twelve, while working on the old family farm, I got a very accidental, and a very unhealthy, dose of anhydrous ammonia that effectively scorched away every odor receptor in my nose. In other words, I don't smell things all that well, and things have to be pretty damned odious before I get the faintest whiff of anything; but by the time these shorts aired, even I was starting to notice how thick the funk was getting in the theater this year (and I know a sizeable chunk of it was generated by yours truly. Sorry, all. As the old B-Fest joke goes -- You wonder what that smell is until you realize it's you.)

So the air was thick and frothy as these things spooled up, and while they did, I wandered off toward the back of theater trying to get above the haze, so to speak. The first short was kind of an extension of the opening credits of The Fall Guy where stunts go awry and cars and planes crash and burn. At least that's the way I remembered it. The second was an odd piece that was either a morality play, or a perfume ad about a gal being scolded for her promiscuous behavior, consisting mostly of her extended game of grab-fanny on everyone she meets; but the only thing I really remember is when she started thumbing through some vintage nudie-magazines -- some vintage men's nudie-magazines.

And thus begins our musical portion of our program with a resounding dull thud.

His royal purpleness, the artist formerly known as The Squiggly Mark, a/k/a Prince, pooped out this little vanity piece about finding his artistic muse that so totally ripped off High Plains Drifter it's not even funny.

Only it sucks. A lot.

The theater was really starting to close in on me at this point, so I missed the first ten minutes or so of this thing airing out in the lobby. When I went back in, I never caught up with the plot. It didn't matter. Logic does not apply, here. Although I think fellow Graffiti Bridge survivor Sean Frost summed up the film best: "See, it's the tragic story of Morris Day and how his attempt to bring godless joy to the world was destroyed by an insufferable androgyne in hobo makeup."

Brilliant, my friend. Brilliant. Moo. Want some more brilliance? Check out Sean's podcast Web of the Big Damn Spider.

Sometimes insider information is a bad thing. While listening to one of  Stomp Tokyo's Cult Movie Podcasts, I found out  that one of them -- Scott Hamilton, who sponsored this film -- had a choice between this and Tron, my fellow programs, and he chose this. Why? Because he skipped the fest this year.

Lucky for him, or I would have readily pointed him out to everyone.

End of line.

A trio of furry aliens out on deep-space patrol get aroused by watching some Wookie porn -- yes, deep space is a lonely, lonely place. And so excited are they by what they see, they crash land on Earth in Geena Davis's swimming pool. Underneath all that hair, they find Jim Carrey and Damon Wayans, before they were anybody, and Jeff Goldblum. (Jeff Goldblum is supposed to pass as inter-stellar beefsteak? I call no way.)

Long story short, Geena is Judy Jetson and Jeff Goldblum is Jet Screamer and they get down to doing a little Eep'n, Op'n, Ork'n and Ah-Ah'n with Jeff's magic finger -- if you know what I mean, and I think you do. (At least he didn't Kryptonian mind-wipe her when they were done.)

I danged near nodded off during this one. The movie isn't terrible; a middle of the road comedy, saw it in the theater when it first came out, but aside from Geena in a bikini there wasn't a whole to stay up for. But I sucked it up and stuck it out. 24 hours is 24 hours.

Turns out it was worth it to see Skip Mitchell do Bob Dylan, by way of (former MTV VJ) Julie Brown, riffing on "Subterranean Homesick Blues", by holding up an endless stream of posters with the lyrics to Brown's ditzy ode to bleach "Because I'm Blonde." Hands down, the best gag, skit or riff this year. (Way to go Skip, Baby Agatha would be proud.)