Year: 2019

Thanks to David Charney for the suggestion. The early issues of this Gold Key comic seemed to be fairly serious, at least from looking at the covers. By issue 9, however, the comic started looking a lot more like other Gold Key monster-oriented series.

The last film proved to be Army of Darkness. At first I thought that was a little on the nose (whatever happened to ending B-Fest with a Godzilla movie?), but a moment's reflection led me to understand that it would be the perfect antidote to Lisztomania, as Raimi is the anti-Ken Russell. Raimi doesn't…

After that horrid run of (for me) recent dreck, I was feeling pretty battered. Surely the worst was over, though. With time for just two more movies to go, I went to the just-opened pizza place downstairs just for a breather. While in line, though, I heard two fellow attendees behind me discussing the…

Ugh, Showgirls (a pause), Howard the Duck, Nothing But Trouble and then the Brando Island of Dr. Moreau. Netflix used to have the great documentary Lost Souls on the berserk making of the film. I don't know who has it now, but try to find it, its fantastic. The film...not so much.

We'd had Showgirls, and a bit later Howard the Duck, and then these were followed by Dan Ackroyd's legendary awful dark comedy Nothing But Trouble. I will say that after those previous two films, this one came off slightly better, if only because it was shorter at about 90 minutes.

We'd barely recovered from Showgirls when we got one of the most brutal stretches at B-Fest I can ever recall. Things started with Howard the Duck, which I admit I'd never seen. The film was bewildering in that I couldn't figure out who they made it for. The budget was $35 million, a gigantic…

Sorry for the break, we got hit with a lot of weather last week, including a snow storm (exacerbated by my car not starting and having to be towed to my mechanic) followed the now legendary polar vortex that saw actual temps here down to like 27 below. I had decamped to my friends'…

Not Bela! Creeping Terror was followed by it's B-Fest replacement. I personally wouldn't have run those back to back but that's just kibitzing.

After Food of the Gods, we got the cheesy but sleazy Hypnotic Eye, surely the inspiration for Herschell Gordon Lewis' Wizard of Gore. This was followed up by my favorite film this year, Get Crazy, a nutty comedy by Allan "Rock N Roll High School" Arkush that was far funnier than I anticipated. Then…

B-Fest 2019 is in the books, everyone is safely back home, and it's now time to (ugh) start the arduous task of catching up at work. The Fest started out well, although there was much discontent over the deaths of much of the film's rodent cast. I have to admit, however, that this Brit…