One thing about having a group of, shall we say, knowable B-movie experts making the selections is that we end up with a very please mix of eras and genres. Not everyone is defaulting to ‘50s sci fi or ‘80s action flicks. Everyone was meant to have a pick (I had two; I picked ‘my’ movie and the traditional kaiju movie to end the Fest). However, it turned out shortly before Basement Fest that our friends Kirk and Patty couldn’t attend. So I ended up with blank slots, which I ruthlessly exploited my role as Fest runner to grab.
Traditionally at B-Fest I considered the post-midnight “Plan 9” slot (so a film starting around 1:30 – 2:00 AM) to be the “Brain Melter” slot. At this point in B-Fest—which Basement Fest emulates—the audience is about 8 hours in and has seen enough movies that their tired brains are starting to lose coherency. Therefore it’s a great time for a weird, surreal film to really take advantage of that state of mind. Greasers Palace and Skidoo! were classic examples of movies that got played in this time slot at B-Fest back in the day.
Meanwhile, I was a little annoyed that Joe Bannerman (and God love that fellow) would walk in for the first time and just automatically grab the Worst Film title with Things. The fact is, nearly all the rest of the movies were pretty good. So I felt a need to defend that ground and thus went mean: I showed Candy. Yep, the one with Richard Burton, James Coburn, Ringo Starr, Walter Matthau, Marlon Brando, etc. Just horrible. Given the time slot, only two people stayed awake for the whole thing. So congrats (I guess) to Mr. GalaxyJane and Holly.
Having weathered that, we went short and sweet with another of my choices, Think Fast Mr. Moto. This was the first of the six films about the mysterious Japanese…adventurer?—played by Peter Lorre. And the best one. Mr. Moto was obviously introduced in this film and the audience is kept guessing as to what his deal was. Was he a hero? Maybe, but about halfway through he just callously murders a more overt bad guy, so you tell me. Anyway, running not much over an hour, and in pleasing black and white, this was a nice palette cleanser to get the taste of rancid Candy out of one’s mouth.
Meanwhile, the overnight shift ended with ANOTHER choice by me, Five Fingers of Death. FFD (aka King Boxer) was the film that ignited the Chinese kung fu movie craze in American drive-ins and urban grindhouses. One of our group has vision problems and has trouble with subtitles, so a lot of foreign films are off the table, as I generally can’t stand dubbed movies. However, with Kung Fu movies the dubbing has a lot of wacky charm. Anyway, this went over well, I think, and with the market getting flooded with wonderful blu ray editions and sets of classic Shaw Brothers movies, such a kung fu film might well become an annual addition.
Then it was time to run out and take a leisurely breakfast at upscale pancake house Walker Bros., so as to pull our wits back together.
That accomplished, we returned to watch Jeff’s contribution, although sadly personal issues also kept him from attending. He picked Hammer’s oddball space western Moon Zero Two. It’s not awful, but I think several of us scratched our heads at this pick. Still, it was entertaining enough.
Then, finally, we got back into monster territory (sort of) with 1977’s The Pack with Joe Don Baker. We usually skirt the rules of Monster of the Day to include killer animals, and of course Joe Don Baker probably also qualifies. So this is today’s subject, and was shown courtesy of Jamie, GalaxyJane’s lesser if more hirsute half.
