Monster of the Day

The Plan 9 slot (Basement Fest basically follows the old B-Fest template, although B-Fest itself no longer does) this year was filled by the terrifically dumb King Dinosaur. This was a life-changer for young Sandy Petersen, since watching it revealed to him for the first time that a film could have all things he…

The second film was host Holly's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I'm not sure I'd seen that since it came out--I was kind of allergic of The Special Edition after they made that The Official Edition. We watched the Director's Cut, because it skips the awful see-inside-the-alien-ship/shopping mall climax. Say what you will,…

So the weekend after B-Fest we started Basement Fest, our private Fest we started when B-Fest was knocked out by Covid. We always start with Joe Bannerman's movie because he's a dick and always shows something really awful, like Things. This year's choice was 1981's The Pit, which I've never liked at all. Indeed,…

I don't use the word "hero" very often. However, the person on the A&O Film staff who decided to swap the last two films on the schedule is the greatest hero in American history. Orginally, the last film was scheduled to be A Gnome Named Gnorm. That would have been a TERRIBLE choice. You…

The penultimate film (more on that tomorrow) at this year's B-Fest was A Gnome Named Gnorm. A couple of years ago they showed the similar To Catch a Yeti with Meatloaf, which I thought was worse, but mileage varied in our group. With the titular animatronic provided by director (!) Stan Winston, Chad R's…

"Rah. I'm a Monsta." The Friday Discord Watch Party feature was The Monster of the Piedras Blancas. It's pretty fun, barely over an hour long and, as you can see, has a pretty cool monster. It's one of the more successful attempts to alter the instantly iconic Creature of the Black Lagoon design. The…

The next movie was sponsored by Telstar Man, the Mayor of B-Fest. A most beloved figure. It was the extremely goofy The Dragon Lives Again, a sort of cheapie kung fu movie featuring a cast of famous (and blatantly stolen) characters; Popeye, Cain from Kung Fu, "Bruce Lee," James Bond, Zatoichi, etc. And, as…

Next up was the spookshow feature Monsters Crash the Pajama Party. Basically around Halloween people would rent a theater and have a late-night horror show, usually mixing old horror movies and campy shorts. This was around 40 minutes (I think) and featured a mad scientists and girls in nightgowns. I had no complaints, although…

Boy, something spooky in a mirror. That's fresh.Following Elves, we got Ice Pirates. Sadly, I couldn't find a still of the Space Herpes. I always found this film more dumb than entertaining--it's big gag, after all, is "space herpes"--but sometimes you come back to a film expecting it to be terrible and it's not…

Following Plan 9, we got arguably the Fest's one traditional stinker (Plan 9 is its own thing), Elves. A classic '80s DTV mix of incest, mysticism, Nazi, Dan Haggarty and really inexpressive puppets, it's the real deal. And hey, if you want to see a guy in a Santa suit get stabbed in the…