Monster of the Day #1497

Updated on January 25, 2017 By Ken Begg 15 Comments

B-Fest was great this year; everything went easy-peasy and the schedule was largely pain-free. Maybe too pain-free, as one veteran attendee argued. (And yes, next year a really painful entry would be nice.)

I think this is the only Fest movie I haven’t featured before (maybe), but obviously it’s pretty great. I’m sure whoever sponsored it did so because of Trump, and admittedly that’s part of the problem. Pretending that it doesn’t apply at least as well to Obama or Hillary is laughable and avoids the real problems. The film itself is terrific, though. Man, whatever happened to Carpenter? Artistry is an enigma.

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  • They Live was at B-Fest? The last reasonably good John Carpenter flick at a fest that used to celebrate the worst films had to offer?

    The times they are a changing.

    Carpenter’s made a decent career shift. He’s put out a couple of excellent music albums in recent years.

  • sandra

    I have read reviews of They Live that say the Roddy Piper character is nameless, but I remember him introducing himself to someone as George Nada ( Nada = Nobody). Does anyone else recall this, or was I hallucinating ?

  • bgbear_rnh

    Many don’t understand that a great number of us don’t want any one person or group to have a lot of power whether they agree with us or not.

  • Eric Balzer

    His film scores have inspired a number of electronic music artists in recent years. So he’s now becoming as notable for his music as much as for his films. At least in a small set of the music community.

  • IMDB has his character listed as “Nada”. Wikipedia has him as “John Nada”.

  • bgbear_rnh

    So maybe he should have been played by Terence Hill ;-)

  • I know I’ve been liking his new music stuff. Really good.

  • Amen.

  • Eric Balzer

    I love his first album. Haven’t heard the second.

  • Ken_Begg

    I’d debate that. B-Fest is about B-movies, not bad movies. Bad movies make up a lot of the schedules, but we’ve had many (for example) pretty decent blaxploitation films over the years. Indeed, if you are watching 12 to 14 movies in a row, you want as much variety as you can get.

    Also, In the Mouth of Madness came out quite a while after They Live and it’s dynamite. But yes, after that things went pretty solidly in the crapper.

  • Ken_Begg

    Indeed. The dismantling of our system’s checks and balances is a VERY bad idea.

  • I bow to your experience on B-Fest; I clearly was in the wrong. I’d like to think that was an uncommon thing, but…

    Speaking of being wrong, yeah, In the Mouth of Madness probably could count as the last good Carpenter movie. Didn’t care for it the last time I saw it, but it’s still a better flick than Ghosts of Mars

  • Watching the collective breakdown about the mere possibility of executive orders they don’t like by some of my more stridently leftist acquaintances has me asking “Where the hell were you for the last 8 years when someone you agreed with was running roughshod over the legislative branch with his pen and phone?” I kept pointing out to folks that giving that much power to folks you agree with means it’s still in place and primed for abuse when someone comes along you find reprehensible and it’s then too late to be taken back. At which point I was always soundly ignored because the inevitable march of history would ensure none of those sort of people would ever get into office again. The libertarian Cassadra is me.

  • Eric Hinkle

    “It doesn’t matter how many times this all went wrong before. It won’t happen to /us/, because we’re all speshul.”

  • Flangepart

    And so it goes…to the bottom of the sea…