2005 – My son Phoenix was born. Still in college, I couldn’t justify spending a couple hundred bucks on a road trip, regardless how awesome.
2006 – Having started a full-time job less than a year before, I had no vacation built up, and once again couldn’t afford to take unpaid time off.
2007 – The year of my triumphant return to the Mecca of b-movie geekdom, McCormick Auditorium at Northwestern university, a veritable Thunderdome of cinemasochism, home of the legendary B-Fest.
The alarm went off at 5:15a.m., a time of morning I haven’t seen since the last time I stayed up all night at college to be first in line for breakfast (dude, breakfast at Wartburg was totally fuckin’ worth it). Rolling to Bob’s house in pj’s to shower and dress so as to not wake the slumbering spawn, I arrived to see him just finishing up cleaning out his car. If you’d ever seen the inside of Bob’s car on any given day, you would wonder how early he had to get up to just finish cleaning it at 5:30.
A quick for-the-road breakfast at Orte’s Danish Bakery (one of my fondest fantasies is that I win a coupon entitling me to a gallon of milk and two hours free reign in Orte’s – I would probably die of spontaneous diabetic shock followed by massive heart failure and stomach rupture, but it would so be worth it), followed by a couple “crap, I forgot something, we have to go back to the apartment” stops, and we were on the way to Evanston.
The trip began in earnest in a rather creepy way, and those more bent toward superstition may have seen it as an ill omen. A cloud formation in the sky formed a face something like what it would look like if the guy who did all the artwork for those “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” books drew a picture of Tim Curry as Pennywise the clown. This intensely disturbing apparition followed us for about twenty minutes before floating off to terrify travelers elsewhere.
A smooth, construction detour-free trip across the Mississippi river (ha!) led us past Family Beer and Liquor and into the part of Illinois that pretty much looks like Missouri had a wild night with too much Southern Comfort and barfed on the Midwest.
The trip taking us to the Chicagoland area was fairly uneventful. Good conversation time, including a rousing debate on the policies of new Iowa governor Chet Culver (who has, in his first month in office, more than tripled the tobacco tax [garnering an estimated $125 million a year for the state], started initiatives to make Iowa lead the country in renewable fuels [we grow the stuff, why the hell not?], and raised the minimum wage to $7.25/hour by next January). It was also the inaugural spin of the new Melechesh CD, “Emissaries”. For those not familiar, Melechesh are a black metal band from Israel (now based in the Netherlands after tiring of fleeing Israeli authorities accusing them of illegal occult practices, apparently black metal is frowned upon in the Holy City). They are one of the greatest metal bands I’ve ever heard (and I’ve heard a few), and if you dig heavy music, check ‘em out.
The traditional stop at Phoenix Comics yielded three “Doctor Who New Adventures” (the good Virgin ones) that I needed for my collection. The traditional stop at Second Hand Tunes, located about five minutes away from Northwestern, offered up a Pogues CD single for a song called “Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah” that I didn’t know existed.
Then it was time. Carrying two coolers freshly loaded up at Osco Drug, we approached Valhalla. I joined the B-Movie Message Board three years ago, shortly after returning from B-Fest 2004. Finally, I got to meet in person some of the people I’d had a three-year electronic relationship with but never seen, and of course reunite with my friends from whom I’d been absent too long (much love to Tim, Skip, Chris, Christian, Chad, Joe, and Dr. Freex).
It was great to catch up with El Santo, Icrywolf, Fillerbunny, Hugazombie, Bergerjacques, Billydaking, Movie Mike, and Nameless Ray Schaff, plus others that I a)didn’t get nearly enough time to talk to and b)have blanked on just for that reason because I suck at remembering names.
Another fantastic B-Fest mix CD is handed out by Tim, a few more hands are shaken, but before long it’s time to find our seats. The announcements are made, the lights dim, and the movies roll. There were a bunch of schedule flip-flops this year due to breaking film reels and what have you. Unfortunately, I forgot to bring a notebook, so I couldn’t properly keep track of what went where. The following rundown is taken from the final printed schedule on the back of the poster. All the right movies are here, but they’re not all in the right timeslot. So I’m not including the time slots either. Deal with it.
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die – Unfortunately, we got stuck watching the edited version. This means we sat through a lot of boring crap, and a lot of bad porn music, and a lot of Creepy Leering Doctor Guy, but we didn’t get to see the assistant’s arm ripped off, smearing blood all over the lab, and we didn’t get to see the giant monster bite Creepy Leering Doctor Guy’s throat out at the end (which I didn’t even know happened until El Santo told me about it). Of course, there may have been throat biting at the end, but the film broke about ten minutes before the climax. Surprisingly few “MST3K” jokes thrown at this one.
The Beastmaster – It’s been a long time since I saw this last. It’s not quite as good as I remember it, and there’s really no reason for it to be a solid two hours long. Then again, there’s not much reason for any sword’n’sorcery flick to be two hours long, but they always are. Don’t take that to mean I didn’t like it. It still kicks a fair amount of ass. It’s hard not to like anything that Don Cosciarelli makes. However, my mind had blocked out just how much man-ass there is in this movie…some of it jailbait man-ass. AWUUGH! I CAN STILL SEE IT! GET THE BORAX, GET THE BORAX!
Flip the Frog short – Worst. Cartoon. Ever.
Revenge of the Creature 3D – Worst. 3D print. Ever. I own this movie, I’ve seen it at least ten times, and the 3D was melting my retinas. Myself, Fistula, and Bob went for a walk around campus to get some fresh air and wake up.
Prize raffle time. I actually won something this year! I am now the proud owner of Creepshow on DVD. It was also time for this year’s best joke. There’s always a prize for whoever came the farthest. There was a guy from Germany here this year. When the A&O crew asked what they should give the guy from Germany, someone in front of us shouted, “Poland!”
Wizard of Speed and Time – Somehow, the short played the first time around with no sound. Meaning we didn’t get to hear the song. Someone busted out a harmonica. Then we watched it again. And again, upside down and backwards. That’s a lot of Wizard.
Plan 9 From Outer Space – Not much to say about this movie by now. This year’s paper plate throwing was the best I’ve ever had. Don’t know exactly why, but it was way more hyper and energetic than every other year.
Savage Sisters – This was one I’d never even heard of. Then I saw John Ashley’s name. Then I saw Sid Haig’s name. Then I saw Eddie Romero’s name. Then I was a happy Incarnation of Doom. Nothing says third-rate Philippine exploitation trash like Eddie Romero and John Ashley, and no one loves third-rate exploitation trash from anywhere like I do. This movie is a fucking blast. It’s like a Benny Hill episode with machine guns. For an exploitation flick, it’s surprisingly tame on the nudity. Never have I almost seen so many boobs in my life. Luckily, this is made up for by the jaw-droppingly inappropriate and flippantly comedic way this movie treats the deaths of major characters. Awesome.
Invasion of the Star Creatures – Ho – ly – shit, this movie WAS FUCKING UNBEARABLE. For some strange reason, a few people enjoyed it. Take a bunch of Roger Corman lackies, give them an unused script from that awful Andy Griffith spinoff where Gomer Pile joins the army, and tell them to add monsters. This is what happens. These elements should not be mixed in the same way that large blocks of sodium should not be mixed with your bathwater while you’re sitting in it. Kill it, kill it with fire!
Awful Free-association Feminist short – I don’t know what the hell happened here. Someone reached into the dripping maw of hell, punched it in the uvula, and it barfed up this short. Barring all the other man-ass and flopping wang previously and to come, this short alone put the male nudity count way ahead of the female. This year’s B-Fest was definitely one for the ladies.
Street Trash – Wanna-be Troma flick from the mid-80’s. Some bums get ahold of a batch of poisonous booze that makes the drinker instantaneously melt/explode in spectacular fashion. There are a bunch of little vignettes of plot, but there’s actually very little coherent anything stringing the splatter sequences together. Much longer than it needed to be, but when it rocked, it fucking rocked. I was part of an on-stage skit wherein myself and Bergerjacques played penis keep away with El Santo. Unfortunately, at this late time of night/early time of morning, neither one of us had the hand-eye coordination to properly catch the six-inch recorder we were using as a penis. That day, we truly mourned the loss of the Ballsy Supercock. Yes, that’s a real item, and yes, that’s it’s real name.
The Hypnotic Eye – Sort of a precursor to H.G. Lewis’s Wizard of Gore. This would be a great movie to start B-Fest with. Not such a great movie to play near the halfway mark. It put most people to sleep. What the hell was that thing he had at the end? I mean, I know it was the Hypnotic Eye, but why did he have it? Where did he get it from? Was it a machine? An alien creature? A magical object? WHAT THE FUCK WAS THE POINT OF THIS MOVIE!? I wound up sitting with 3BeerMan, making obnoxious farting noises with some balloons and causing each other to giggle like schoolgirls.
Krull – The second two-hour-long sword’n’sorcery epic. Two in one fest? Seriously, Wyatt, were you trying to kill us all? Much less entertaining than Beastmaster. In fact, it’s only slightly less stupid than Labyrinth. Honestly, though, I can’t figure out why it’s so stupid and goofy. It has all the right elements to kick some serious ass. Mostly, it’s just handled too light-heartedly. If it was serious and dark, it would rock. The evil alien overlord has a very cool can’t-see-all-of-him-at-once Lovecraft vibe about him.
Tarantula – Good to have you back, old friend. It was at my first ever B-Fest, and it was like a welcome home hug to have it there the year of my return. Big damn spider indeed.
Chow time! Unfortunately, my planning had gone awry and I didn’t bring enough cash to get food from the cafeteria. Thankfully, we still had a cooler full of meat and cheese and buns and energy drinks. A bit of leg-stretching, and some more chatting, and it was time to dive back in for the home stretch.
Teenage Doll – Stupid Roger Corman teen delinquent movie. I hate teen delinquent movies, with the exception of The Beatniks, because it has so many lines that are fun to shout at both relevant and irrelevant moments. Go away, movie. You didn’t kill that fat barkeep, and I hate you for it.
Hypnotic Clown short – Part animation, part live-action, all Kodos’s fault. Curse you, clown, curse you. I’ll get you next B-Fest.
Invasion U.S.A. – Chuck Norris blows up a bunch of Cubans, and Richard Lynch, with a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. Shockingly racist, shockingly egotistic, shockingly fucking awesome. If you want a stupid movie where nothing happens but explosions and the occasional cute armadillo antic, this one’s for you. I’d watch it again.
The Incredible Melting Man – I never noticed while watching it as an “MST3K” episode, but this movie is UNBELIEVABLY FUCKING BORING. And how did they manage to stretch the decapitated fisherman subplot out for the entire middle reel? That’s some talented editing, right there. Still, you have to love how gory it is, and how, at the end, the monster just gets shoveled into a garbage can by the janitor. Possibly the greatest ending in horror history. ATCHKA!
King Kong vs. Godzilla/ – B-Fest always ends with kaiju. KKv.G is the highest grossing Godzilla flick of them all. It’s also, oddly, one of the less Godzillaful. Most of it follows that god-awful monkey suit. Seriously, The Beast That Killed Women was a more convincing gorilla than this. It’s intensely goofy, but not one of my favorites. Still, you can’t really go wrong with Godzilla.
I did it! I stayed up through the whole thing! I closed my eyes a couple of times, but never for more than five or ten minutes at a time. I can safely say that I didn’t get more than 45 minutes of sleep through the whole thing. Couple that with getting up at 5:30 the morning of, and the drive there, and all the stuff after we went back to the hotel and out for supper, and Ragnarok’s stay-awake count topped out at 41 hours. That’s a long fucking time to stay awake, kids.
The lights go up one last time. Everyone picks up their area of garbage and paper plates. The BMMB crew hits the stage for a group photo (mine’s all shitty and blurry, could someone e-mail me a copy of theirs?). Then it’s back to Best Western for a shower. We usually stay at this little motel in Mt. Prospect, but this year I wanted to be in the same place as the rest of the BMMB bunch so’s we could have some more hangout time. Plus, we didn’t see that little motel on the way in, and we never made call-ahead reservations, so we could very well have made a return to our first B-Fest and driven straight home after (I don’t recommend a seven hour drive after 24 solid hours of B-Fest).
We gathered in the lobby of Best Western after cleaning the nerd funk off, and went for burgers at Niven’s Irish Pub across the street. Fan-fucking-tastic food, and the first Boddington’s I’ve had since I was in England three years ago. Nectar of the gods. Then Fistula, Tim, El Santo, and myself hit Barnes & Noble, where a buy-one-get-one-free sale yielded the 7th and 8th seasons of “Red Dwarf”.
Sleep can only be fought off for so long. Time for go to bed.
9:00 rolls around, and we’re waving goodbye to Evanston for another year. I ate myself into an intensely painful food coma at Old Country Buffet around noon. No stops but for gas were made the rest of the way, for we were trying to get back to Waterloo (about an hour and twenty minutes from home) before CD’s + (used CD’s, DVD’s, and games for those so inclined) closed. Found a lot of good stuff, but didn’t have much money left, so I got away with Tales of Voodoo Vol. 1. It contains what look to be two Asian exploitation movies from the 70’s that I’ve never heard of. Reviews pending.
Now it’s time to go into withdrawals for another year, jonesing for a fix of that sweet nerd funk, and all the great times at McCormick Auditorium. With Cthulhu as my witness, I will not miss B-Fest for another three years before going back. See you all in Chicago in 2008!
The Moral of the Story: When you wake up at 5:30 Friday morning, stay awake until 11:30 Saturday night, get up at 9:00 Sunday morning, go to bed at 11:00 Sunday night, and start a brand new job (Iowa Ethanol, for those wondering) that requires you to get up at 7:00 in the morning Monday (and that was just for training, now I get up at 6:00), you will feel like a dinosaur swallowed you whole and shit you out into a pile of rusty nails covered in salt and vomit. And I’d do it all over again. That’s the power of B-Fest, baby!
See What Fistula Had To Say About B-Fest 2007
FEEDBACK
All materials found within this review are the intellectual properties and opinions of the original writer. The Tomb of Anubis claims no responsibility for the views expressed in this review, but we do lay a copyright claim on it beeyotch, so don't steal from this shit or we'll have to go all Farmer Vincent on your silly asses. © March 5th 2006 and beyond, not to be reproduced in any way without the express written consent of the reviewer and the Tomb of Anubis or pain of a physical and legal nature will follow. Touch not lest ye be touched.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
