B-Fest ’02 (Lianna’s take)

[Note:  Contents slightly edited for language.  Why?
 Because that’s what The Man does.  Mwahahahah!]

BEST EVENT EVER.

Of course, this is my first B-Fest, so I don’t know how good it was in previous years, but this experience totally blew my mind. I’m running on maybe ten hours of sleep in a seventy-two-hour period, my voice is shot, my ass and legs and back and brain hurt, I’m out about a hundred dollars, but I’ve never been so glad to have done something in my life.

Ken Begg invited me to B-Fest because I wrote a review of Battlefield Earth for him, and in fact suggested he watch it in the first place. I was terribly excited but not sure I could make it; I go to school in Kalamazoo (go K-College!) and I didn’t know how my schedule would work out. Plus, I’ve never traveled anywhere alone in my life. Not that I thought Ken or anyone else would kidnap me or force me to watch Sextette, but I wasn’t too wild about roaming Chicago all by my lonesome.

The schedule problem was real — I had Spanish class at 2:40 on Friday and my train left at 3:15 — but what am I in college for if not the privilege to skip class if I damn well feel like it? As for the other, I was fully prepared to go alone and brave the assorted freaks and geeks, but then I hit on the brilliant (for me, anyway) idea of asking my best friend Kirsten. She agreed, and we were all set. There was a slight panic when she ICQed me to say “THE AMTRAK TICKETS ARE SOLD OUT I CAN’T GO WAAAAH!” but it turned out only the return train was full, so both of us switched to an earlier one.

I was bouncing off the walls by the time we got to Chicago — Kirsten can attest to this, poor thing, since she had to put up with me. After a ludicrously expensive cab ride and some difficulty finding the auditorium, we arrived in the middle of The Crawling Eye (our stupid train was an hour late). My very first impression of B-Fest was of a dark room full of people screaming “AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!” at a picture of a mountain. This became the first running joke of B-Fest, and showed up in later movies as well.

After standing around at loose ends for a few minutes, I made my way down to the front and found Ken Begg, HPoJ, presiding in royal state over the Tower of Snacks. He was very happy to see me, and I was happy to see the cooler of Diet Coke. (Ken — bring more next year :) Kirsten and I staked out spots, and we were ready to rock.

Well, they’re not crawling eyes so much as they are crawling gelatinous things with one very distinct eye in a socket. Whatever. Somehow (I missed this part of the plot) they made dead people come alive again and attack people, or something.

Well, this seemed like it would be a normal fighting movie about a weenie guy who can somehow kick the asses of twenty people who are bigger and stronger than him — through the power of Gymkata, of course, a fighting style of mixed gymnastics and karate. The convenient pommel-horse substitute was ridiculously funny. Several people ran across the stage doing cartwheels and flips; I attacked one and got cartwheeled to death, as somehow happened several times in the movie. There were some incredibly strange scenes in a mountain town (where the aforementioned pommel-horse showed up); a man with a lifelike mask on the back of his head, a dog licking up blood, and a beckoning man in priest’s robes that turned out to be backless (someone just had to imitate that, too). Good fun for all. This one also inspired a running joke — any fighting scene in any movie became “GYMKATA!”

Unfortunately, I missed this one. A couple of B-Fest workers ran up to the stage after Gymkata and asked for volunteers who had seen Battlefield Earth many times. I won the contest (more than 10, baby, yeah!) and got pressed into service in the projection booth with the help of someone whose name I should remember but can’t. Turns out the reels were out of order, or they thought they were, and we had to figure out what went where. The movie was delayed until later to make sure things kept flowing smoothly. I got a free t-shirt for helping :)

I got back shortly after the beginning of this one, and I liked it a lot. Star Wars parody, not an original idea, but some nice touches — I especially enjoyed the Wookiee Monster eating one of the Princess’s cinnamon buns.

END! END! END! END!

I didn’t really understand this movie. Probably because I wasn’t paying attention. Something about Japanese people and a princess with fake plastic gems on her white robes and magic glowing walnuts. This, of course, led to every nut joke you could possibly think of.

Kirsten was asleep.

Raffle Break

Didn’t win anything. However, since I helped with the Battlefield Earth thing, the nice nice people gave me a free T-shirt. Yay!

Now, I knew nothing about this film when I came in. So when a whole bunch of people ran up to the stage and lay down, I was totally confused, but I went up anyway. Andy Borntreger is a born leader, what can I say? So I went along. The Wizard runs really really fast, and we all tried to keep up with our feet (it got really tiring — my calves still hurt). Then he sang a song and we stomped in time. And stuff happened and things moved and it was really weird and… and…

Wow. BEST MOVIE EVER. I’m very tempted to order the full-length version, though I understand the main actor got screwed pretty badly. Still, it’d be worth it. He was just so friendly and psychotic! He is now, in my opinion, the coolest guy ever in the entire world (a position formerly reserved for Jackie Chan — sorry, Jackie.) My only quibble was that the sound wasn’t high enough for me to hear the neat music. Kirsten says we looked pretty neat with our legs all up in the air, though.

Plan 9 from Outer Space

A B-Fest classic. I made damn sure Kirsten was awake for this. Paper plates flew like nobody’s business, and the days passed in the blink of an eye — either that or Ed Wood hadn’t heard of continuity. I had to go up on stage and bow down to Tor as he rose from the grave — he’s right up there with Jackie Chan and The Wizard. TOR!

And by the way, I think the furniture is polyurethane.

I made Kirsten wake up.

Pam Grier topless. Dear sweet God, thank you. Classic blaxploitation with plenty of topless ladies, a Sister with a Mission (Pam killing off a bunch of drug dealers because her little sister got hooked on smack) and a guy taking a bullet to the junk.

The only problem I had with this was that a black man got dragged to death behind a car — a painful scene, but not as painful as the people who decided dragging a dummy around behind two flashlights meant to be headlights would be funny. Too reminiscent of that Texas incident for my taste. Of course, a lot of jokes fall flat at B-Fest (I was responsible for more than my share) but that one was just tacky.

Better question: can I ever forget this goddamned movie? According to the IMDB, it runs about an hour and forty minutes, but it felt like at least three hours. It featured Anthony Newley (I told my mom about this, and she said “Oh yeah, I know him” in the “I don’t want to think about it” voice), first dressed up as The Terrifying Mime-Clown, then with his naked ass hanging out, and then trying to seduce a Lolita figure (Mercy Humppe, one of many idiotic names), and if I never see Anthony Newley again it’ll be too soon. There was a sketch about a princess who liked to get naked and rub her body up against a donkey. There was a guy who tried to molest Merkin’s three-year-old daughter. There was nudity, which was okay, but too often came in contexts in which it couldn’t be enjoyed — like the donkey scene.

Someone had brought posterboard and was making it into signs. My contribution was “MAKE THE BAD MAN GO AWAY”, and that sign came up a LOT during the film. There were also numerous simulated suicide attempts, screamed obscenities (Andy Borntreger yelling “[sexually-oriented expletive deleted] YOU, MOVIE!”), and an attack with a double-bladed lightsaber (that was me). A lot of people wimped out, either sleeping or fleeing the theater. It is a source of dubious pride to me that I managed to survive the entire thing, leaving only once for a necessary bathroom break.

The “Mystery Short” came in between reels, when the projectionists were having a bit of trouble. It featured a man with an enormous penis (bigger than him, it was) that got run over and stamped on. Then a nurse tried to screw him and it didn’t work, so he had a reduction. He ran around screwing everything in sight until he pissed off a gorilla, who unveiled a huge monster (scientifically inaccurate — man has the largest penis of all the primates) and raped him. Then the man went and got his big penis back (not sure how that works) and raped the gorilla. The end.

It’s a good index of Merkin‘s quality that a lot of us thought the short was just part of the movie. As someone — I think it was the esteemed and cuddly Dr. Freex — said, it was a graphic illustration of just what the movie was doing to us, i.e. DEEP HURTING.

Kirsten was asleep again. Damn her luck.

I didn’t really sleep through this, but I didn’t pay much attention either. The female characters annoyed the living [scatological expletive deleted] out of me, so most of my time was spent encouraging the slime monsters (who had neat suits) to kill them, or encouraging the women to actually ferChrissakesDOSOMETHING.

Kirsten was asleep again.

I’d read a review of this, and it was every bit as sleazy as the review implied. Pia Zadora gets raped with a garden hose and recovers in a week to marry a man about forty years her senior. Then she keeps sleeping with the biggest [anatomically-oriented plural expletive deleted] in Hollywood, looking like a twelve-year-old the entire time. At the end, she wins something for writing at “The Awards” and stands up for herself or something by saying “I guess I’m not the only one who’s had to [sexually-oriented expletive deleted] her way to the top”.

What I don’t understand is that she had a chance for lesbian sex with the extremely hot Salma Hayek-esque wife of a producer (good for her career, of course) and turned it down. [Editor Ken: Actually, she didn’t turn the woman down. She tearfully went along, only to learn the next morning that despite her travails the couple had no intension of producing her screenplay.] Then later she apparently accepted the offer of Roseanne Rosannadanna. Thank God it was offscreen.

Pia Zadora’s breasts turned in a great performance here, but it was all very disconcerting considering she looked about twelve years old. And yes, she really is that bad an actress, although I did enjoy her breakdown scene where she tore around her apartment and smashed stuff. Smashing stuff is always good cinema.

Kirsten was still asleep. Shoulda woken her up, now that I think of it — she’s a feminist, she would’ve loved it *ahem*.

This one must’ve gotten past the Hayes Commission. What is supposedly an informative film about the benefits of artificial insemination has a strange backstory about a party that goes terribly wrong and ends up in a catfight where a woman’s blouse gets ripped off — and her breasts actually show. Wow. The wife tends to wear filmy nightgowns that show her nipples quite clearly. The doctor performing the “operation” lights a cigarette after leaving the examination room. Either it was a dead-on parody or whoever was directing it was weird as all hell.

People grind up corpses. Really, that’s about it. But the corpse mush goes into catfood, and the cats develop a taste for human flesh and start eating people. Yep, that confirms my suspicion: cats are EVIL! EEEEEEEE-VIL!

Fun Trivia: This film was directed by Ted V. Mikels, who has just finished production on Mark of the Astro-Zombies, which happens to co-star someone on my MST3K mailing list. And now you know!

Yummy. Actually, I didn’t eat anything, since the Tower of Snacks had me full, but it was a perfect time for about five cigarettes.

Now, I’d heard about Andy’s midget obsession. I just didn’t know how, well, non-midget it was. At random points during the weekend he’d just yell “MIDGET!” for no apparent reason. There was a midget in Hieronymus Merkin, which was probably the high point for Andy. Anyway, a tradition at B-Fest, one probably forced to continue by Andy, is to show a short film with midgets in it at some point. This one was quite amusing, showing a big-people director trying to get some midgets to do something on camera. A midget dressed as Charlie Chaplin got drunk, and then they went on a boat and he was dressed as a sailor, though he still had the mustache.

The absolute best was when the film suddenly sped up and the drunken sailor Hitler midget, as we called him, started running incredibly fast. Andy LEAPED onto the stage, got on his back, and started doing the “running feet” from Wizard of Speed and Time! From then on, the film was about the Drunken Sailor Hitler Midget OF SPEED AND TIME!!!

Well, I thought it was funny.

A film about breakdancing, and the movie that inspired the sequel — Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. Everyone uses “Electric Boogaloo” as the joke name for sequels, but this one ACTUALLY DID IT. Of course, we didn’t see that movie, more’s the pity. Anyway, it’s about some white chick who’s a jazz dancer, and the incredibly gay black guy in her class introduces her to the wild world of breakdancing. She teams up with some people with weird names, they enlighten the White Man with the power of dance, and blah blah. I like watching people spin on their heads. Yay.

Battlefield Earth

FINALLY! Too bad a lot of people were tired by this time. I was pumped, though. HPoJ Ken had to leave for a memorial service, so I was the official Jabootu Representative (can I be a priestess, Ken? Please?) And, of course, I was merciless, having seen the damn movie more than anyone in the world ever should.

In this I had special help from Andy, for whom this movie caused some definite Deep Hurting. The numerous inaccuracies — guns that fire after a thousand years, cavemen learning to fly Harriers in a week — made him groan and hold his head in his hands. However, I had a good talk with him about these ridiculous things, and he confirmed all my suspicions. So, to add authority to my statements, I made up a sign that said “SSGT. BORNTREGER SAYS: THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE”. Believe me, I didn’t use it as often as I could have.

Oh yeah, this movie is about John Travolta as a GWAR reject with KISS boots, dreadlocks and a codpiece with Jabootu hiding inside, channeling Vincent Price by way of Peewee Herman. And a bunch of cavemen who learn to fly Harriers in a week (!!!!) and defeat the evil aliens who are meant to represent psychiatrists. Goddamn you, L. Ron Hubbard! GODDAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!

I made Kirsten wake up when it started, but I think she went back to sleep again.

Where was I during this? I think I took a lunch break.

I came back somewhere about a third into this one, but it was one of the few movies I’d actually seen, so that’s okay. It was like I’d remembered it — big spider. That’s about all.

Kirsten was still asleep.

Christopher Lee looked like an Oompa-Loompa in this, when he wasn’t wasted under bandages. And has anyone else noticed that Peter Cushing has never looked young in his life?

I slept through a good deal of this, but it was the first time I fell asleep, and I think that’s pretty good for my first B-Fest. Besides, I don’t think I missed much — from what I saw the plot was quite similar to both the Boris Karloff film and the Brendan Fraser remake. Mummy, princess, eternal love, icky things. Yep.

Godzilla ROCKS. He smashed a bunch of stuff and then defeated an icky monster in KAIJU BIG BATTLE!!! I kept singing along with the music and it got in my head… duhn dunh DUNH DUNH DUNH… anyway, I managed to get Kirsten to wake up for the ending. And then I danced with someone’s blow-up Bruckheimer Godzilla. And it was good.

Things I Learned:

— Don’t try to beat up Andrew Borntreger, even if he does make a sexist comment. It won’t work.

— Impromptu costuming doesn’t really work — i.e., a shirt is not a wig.

— World Trade Center jokes are not funny yet. (sorry!)

— There’s a door you can prop open so you can go out and smoke. This really helps you stay awake.

— Nobody at B-Fest smokes except me.

— Tor Johnson is really scary.

— Anthony Newley is even scarier. “Tom Servo, if you don’t stop doing your Anthony Newley imitation right now I’m going to throw you against the wall!”

— Laser pointers suck, except the one that had a mouse.

— Ken needs to bring more Diet Coke next year. [Editor Ken: Will do.]

— At B-Fest, as at all other places, there are [extremely accurate anatomically-oriented expletive deleted].

This last one I learned when I was helping clean up the paper plates from Plan 9. Some of them had writing — mostly stuff like “TOR!” or “Purple Monkey Dishwasher” — but one had something that caught my eye. The front said:

“KILL all GEEKY GIRLS with short black hair and eyebrow rings!”

and the back said:

“GET A CLUE, retard, you’re NOT FUNNY, so do us all a favor and SHUT your CAKEHOLE!”

Now, seeing as how the male-to-female ratio was about 10 to 1, and seeing that I have short black hair and an eyebrow ring, AND seeing as how some of my jokes fell flat… well, what was I to think?

There were other examples, which may or may not have been written by the same person (I’m not a handwriting analyst, but they did look similar). One said: “Get a CLUE — camo is so last year — you’re a disgrace even to the army!” This was probably aimed at Tim (I think that was his name), who says he’s worn camouflage pants two years in a row. I was wearing a camo t-shirt, but I think I’ll pretend I wasn’t. Another said: “If you are INJURED by this plate, call 1-900-I-DON’T-GIVE-A-[unimaginative expletive deleted].” It was one of the harder plates that you aren’t supposed to bring. This was especially odd because Andy had taken a plate to the nose and was sporting a cut. I don’t appreciate this kind of anonymous insult, but I’d really feel sorry for whoever wrote that if Andy got hold of them.

Fortunately, all the B-Masters and a bunch of other people were really nice to me about it. I wasn’t particularly worried — one jerk’s opinion doesn’t mean everybody hated me — but it was nice to know that they appreciated me being there.

Best Movie Besides WoSaT: Coffy, though I’ll always have a special place somewhere in my lower intestine for Battlefield Earth.

Worst Movie Besides Plan 9: Hieronymus Merkin. Message from Space was pretty bad, but it didn’t cause deliberate Deep Hurting like Merkin did.

Best Quote: “MIDGET OF SPEED AND TIME!” — I forget who said that first, it might even have been me.

And… okay. After the show I went over to the house of some really nice people whose names I forget (dammit! I’m so bad with names!) and we ate pizza and drank more Diet Coke (okay, I drank more Diet Coke) and watched Brainiac and some Weird Al Yankovic videos. There was also some weird as hell Baby Godzilla cartoon, but it scared me too much. Then Kirsten and I went to sleep. The next day we caught an El and went to the station and got on the train, which was really cushy, and got home and went to sleep. Huzzah!