Monster of the Day #3703
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Monster of the Day #3703

Friday's Watch Party selection was Star Pilot, aka 2 + 5: Mission Hydra. It's delirious '60s Italian sci-fi nonsense, and I've been keeping it in my back pocket for a while. Warning: It may show up at a future T-Fest as well. Other than the usual inexplicable inability to find any attractive actresses in…
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Monster of the Day #3702
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Monster of the Day #3702

Look, obscurities like Cyborg Cop II are fine. It's fun to find new (to us) weird, often foreign, movies to share. But sometimes, you should remember to dance with the girl that brought you. I can't remember if it was because some of the kids were in attendance, but we decided to watch Ebirah…
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Monster of the Day #3701
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Monster of the Day #3701

There comes a point in these long weekend, probably 20 movies in, when memories really start getting fuzzy. I kind of remember Cyborg Cop II, but it's not like the it has the sort of tight narrative that etches itself into your mind. It's no classic, that's for sure. But it's that sort of…
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Not Monster of the Day #21
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Not Monster of the Day #21

Our last full day at T-Fest was Monday. Chad R and I have gotten interested in the work of Douglas Sirk (Magnificent Obsession; All That Heaven Allows). Last time Chad brought some pre-Soap entries--a murder story in a monastery, a movie with Jack Palance playing Genghis Khan (!). For my part, I had obtained…
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Monster of the Day #3700
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Monster of the Day #3700

It's an old English tradition to tell ghost stories on Christmas. Hence the lyric in The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, "There'll be scary ghost stories, and tales of the glories..." M.R. James would generally write a ghost story for Christmas every year, eventually cementing his reputation as the greatest author of them.…
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Monster of the Day #3699
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Monster of the Day #3699

We followed Zontar with the less well know (oddly), The Black Zoo. It's about (duh) a murderous zookeeper, and it's one of Herman Cohen's English films. So if guessed that the murderous zookeeper was played to icy perfection by Michael Gough, and that his character has a troubled teen character he keeps under his…
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Monster of the Day #3698
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Monster of the Day #3698

Sunday is always a good / bad day. The good part; more movies! (And, this time, breakfast at Waffle House!) The bad part, people start leaving right quick. We opened the day with another "classic," Zontar Thing from Venus. Beulah has nothing to worry about, that's for sure.
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Monster of the Day #3697
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Monster of the Day #3697

We ended with our usual Tween-Fest Texas movie. This year's entry was 1983's Play Dead, which was shot in Corpus Christie. This has been hanging around my Blu Ray shelves for a while now, courtesy of one of Vinegar Syndrome's sales. Yvonne DeCarlo (!) plays a woman who's a witch or Satanist of something,…
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Not Monster of the Day #16
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Not Monster of the Day #16

We've had a "classics" slot for several years now, and as long as we have I've been meaning to show The Third Man. Ironically, I don't really want to talk about it because maybe one or two of you haven't seen it. If you haven't...do so. It's a legitimately great film. It's often heralded…
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Monster of the Day #3696
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Monster of the Day #3696

So after returning from dinner (barbecue, yum...the brisket!), we started the evening slate of movies. Sandy, again with his collection packed up in Utah, made only two requests this time around: Curse of the Faceless Man, watched that morning, and the Czech 1983 stop animated film The Pied Piper. Luckily, this was available for…
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