Before the next film spooled up, officially casting us adrift for a very blue overnight, the A&O folks once more took the stage. It was announced late last year that Stomp Tokyo, as a website, was officially retired. Their influence on the B-Movie community has been nothing but positive. Personally, I owe Chris and Scott a lot for providing me this forum to talk about the movies I love and the movies I don't love. They also offer sage advice to A&O and provide their B-Fest website. And as long as I've been coming to B-Fest, they provided some spiffy B-Fest souvenir cups. Alas, those cups weren't in the budget this year, so A&O took the time to scribble some B-Fest lingo on about 100 plastic cups and handed them out. The audience was very endeared by these efforts.

Once the lights went out and the next film spooled up that sentiment quickly evaporated, when The Em Gee Library credit popped up with a familiar ditty, causing a reflexive shriek from the audience, fearing they were about to be subjected to the French midget-fueled short Gavotte again. Turns out we needn't have worried, for what we got was another animated short about an airplane designer who drafts the perfect airplane, but every time he presents them to his boss, the boss has a few suggestions. These suggestions, in turn, morph the perfect plane into a strange, anthropomorphic effigy of the boss that looks solid enough but isn't exactly fit to fly.

Alas, that would be the end of the Mystery Shorts for the year. And I just hope it was due to all the delays and not because they were slowly being phased out.

Lingering Quaidiation Levels for Ego Trap:

The Room

(I did naht hit her. I did naaaaht.)

Oh, hi everybody. This is a movie about Johnny and Lisa, and their friends Denny and Mark. Lisa no longer loves Johnny and sleeps with Mark. Mark is Johnny's best friend. Denny is addicted to drugs, but that's not important right now. Lisa's mom has breast cancer. Lisa is tearing Johnny apart. Oh, hi everybody. This is a movie about Johnny and Lisa, and their friends Denny and Mark. Lisa no longer loves Johnny and sleeps with Mark. Mark is Johnny's best friend. Denny is addicted to drugs, but that's not important right now. Lisa's mom has breast cancer. Lisa is tearing Johnny apart. Oh, hi everybody. This is a movie about Johnny and Lisa, and their friends Denny and Mark. Lisa no longer loves Johnny and sleeps with Mark. Mark is Johnny's best friend. Denny is addicted to drugs, but that's not important right now. Lisa's mom has breast cancer. Lisa is tearing Johnny apart. Oh, hi everybody ... Oh, hi everybody ... Oh, hi everybody  ... [slaps self in face].

Oh, you should have heard the roar of applause when Johnny stuck that gun in his mouth ... For months people have been screaming at me that I just had to see The Room, the latest midnight movie darling, provided by writer, producer, director and fugitive mental patient, Tommy Wiseau. It was worth the wait, and I'm glad my first experience was with this crowd. When it ended, I commented to Scott, the enigmatic El Santo of 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting, that what we just witnessed was perhaps the worst Zalman King's Red Shoes Diaries ever. He agreed, but extrapolated further by suggesting it was a Red Shoes Diaries scripted as an episode of Seinfield, where nothing happens and everyone suffers from anterograde amnesia, like that guy from Memento, which would go a long way in explaining the film's repetitive, serpent devouring its own tail, plot that just repeats and repeats and repeats the same damn thing over and over again. If you haven't seen it yet everything you've heard about this movie is true. Whether that makes you want to see it or not, well, I'll leave it up to you. Just be careful, as it's Wiseaunian influence is highly infectious. I mean, we've already lost Tim.

Lingering Quaidiation Levels for The Room:

Hard Ticket to Hawaii

(I [heart] T&E flicks.)

When a couple of buxom secret-agents working undercover as pilots for a Hawaiian air-freight service stumble upon a cache of smuggled diamonds, not only do they have to deal with an assortment of thugs determined to get those hot stones back but they must also deal with a giant snake, whose bite, after eating several cancer-infected rats, will kill almost instantly and reduce your body to a pile of goo. And when one of their fellow operatives is captured as leverage, our heroines call in the cavalry in the form of a dope that can't shoot straight and what could quite possibly be the world's worst martial-arts expert to help save the day. Much exposed boobage, killer Frisbees, dumb-fu, mayhem and explosions follow in their wake. Just watch and boggle as we take a look at what happens when you bring a shotgun to a bazooka fight -- especially around the 2:20 mark:

Nobody represented the 1980's action movie esthetic better than producer/director Andy Sidaris -- the undisputed King of T&E flicks [...that's Tits & Explosions for those of you who aren't hip to the vernacular], so it was with much accompanying glee when I read that Hard Ticket to Hawaii was on the docket this year; part two of the Cody Abilene trilogy that began with Malibu Express and concluded with The Picasso Trigger. All of the Sidaris staples are present and accounted for: Lots of boob shots? Check. Lots of nonsensical nudie-inserts to link other scenes together? Check. At least three Playboy Playmates? Check. A hero who can't shoot straight? Check. A turncoat transvestite? Check. An exploding fat guy? Check [...he was in the helicopter, remember] -- with the greatest round of skeet-shooting ever thrown in as a bonus. And if you thought them blowing up the sex-doll was insane, well, wait until the climax when that giant snake explodes -- and I mean explodes, out of a toilet, saving our heroine from a knife-wielding bad guy, who is then saved from the snake when our lunk-head hero crashes his motorcycle through a wall and takes the rogue reptile out with his trusty bazooka. Ah, Mr. Sidaris, you magnificent bastard ... I'm telling ya folks, at this point, I have reached some kind of B-Movie Nirvana that I did not want to end.

Lingering Quaidiation Levels for Hard Ticket to Hawaii:

Black Shampoo

(For external use only.)

Seems there's a long waiting list to see Mr. Jonathon of Mr. Jonathan's Beauty Salon and Boutique. And the reason for this is not only is he good with a hair-dryer, but Mr. Jonathon's prowess at lather, rinsin' and repeatin' is legendary. And when I say lather, rinsin' and repeatin' I mean he has a special back room in his shop when those clients want more than just a trim. And when I say they want more than just a trim, I mean they want to have s-e-x that our Lovin' Machine is happy to oblige. Hell, he's even available for house calls if the money's right. Yeah, life is pretty good for old Jonathon and his blow-drier right now, but his life is soon complicated when he starts making the goo-goo with his new receptionist, who just happens to be hiding out from her old boyfriend; a very jealous boyfriend, turns out, who runs the local mob and is currently turning the city upside down looking for her. And when the bad guys find her, roughing up Jonathan's co-workers in the process, our hero flips the switch from bad to mad, thus switching him from lovin' mode to killing machine.

Greydon Clark's Black Shampoo is about 65 minutes of exactly what you'd expect with a title like that from the era it was made but then it makes a drastic, 180-degree turn where it dumps the softcore for a bloody climax involving a secluded cabin and a chainsaw that left me boggling at the severity of the switch in tone. I also never realized how much super-stud John Holmes, who would go on to play The Candy Tangerine Man, looked like Lou Ferrigno. And I believe the quip of the year goes to the fellow who barked out "That's for external use only!" when the bad guys give one of Johnny's co-workers a forced rectal exam with a hot curling iron, officially marking that switch in tone I referred to earlier.

Originally, Black Shampoo was on the docket for B-Fest 2010 but was later dropped, which mad me sad, only to be reinstated when something happened with the print for Earth vs. the Spider, which made me happy and sad because I would love to have seen them both. All of this, coupled with the numerous delays and false starts resulted in a massive, seismic shift in the schedule, bumping Sextette into an afternoon slot. And as I giggle about those poor souls who think they're napping through that musical horror show, I begin to realize how tired I was and start to have thoughts about a nap of my own. Uh-oh...

Lingering Quaidiation Levels for Black Shampoo:

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai

(Yes on one. No on two.)

Buckaroo Banzai is kind of like Michael Mann's '80s pop-version of Doc Savage. And together, with his trusted companions, The Hong Kong Cavaliers, must put a stop to the nefarious Dr. Emil Lizardo, who is conspiring with some marooned Red Lectroids from the Planet 10 to punch a hole into the 8th Dimension so they can return home. To do this, they steal Banzai's dimension-cracking Over-Thruster and his girl, Penny. And not only must he stop them and rescue his girlfriend, he only has a few hours to accomplish this or some other Lectroids, who don't want the Red Renegades to come back, will nuke the planet.

I'll admit I wasn't a big fan of Buckaroo Banzai when I first saw it back in 1984 but over the years since it has grown on me and now feels like a pair of comfortable old slippers. Weird and all kinds of wonky, in the end, it's the cast that sells it -- with a special shout-out to Christopher Lloyd as the Red Lectroid John "It's not my goddamned planet, Monkey Boy" Bootay. When you purposefully set out to make a quirky cult film, like Earl Rauch and W.D. Richter were attempting here, you're only asking for trouble. Cult movies aren't made, they happen after the fact and for whatever reason its particular audience gloms onto. And with Banzai, there's a lot to glom onto. So, in a sense, Rauch and Richter got exactly what they wanted, but it's initial box-office failure means we will probably never get that sequel where Banzai takes on The World Crime League. *sigh*

They ran the first two reels out of order on this, but I didn't mind at all. I also caught myself nodding off a few times, but for every instance where I almost conked out someone behind me yelled the exact same joke three or four times that rocked me awake. Thanks, I guess. But, man, am I tired. And I'm not sure I like what I'm thinking right now, especially with what's next on the schedule...

Lingering Quaidiation Levels for Buckaroo Banzai:

Troll 2

(Holy crap. Nilbog spelled backward is ... Not Troll.)

Troll 2 was a last minute addition that knocked At the Earth's Core out of the proposed line-up. And the fact that I could have been watching Caroline Munro in a leather bikini and a whole array of goofy-assed rubberized monsters thundering around and eating Barbie dolls didn't improve my feelings toward its replacement. Yes, Troll 2 is awful with plenty to make fun of but while most folks find it laughable, I find it to be exhaustively annoying. Combine all that with the number of times I almost nodded off during the last film led me to a monumental conclusion: the world would not end if I did not stay awake for the whole festival.

I stuck it out long enough to watch our young hero, at the behest of the ghost of his dead grandfather, drop trou and urinate all over the Goblin-goo contaminated food, bringing the family dinner to a screeching halt, and then, with that, for the first time in seven years, I left the theater with the express purpose of not returning for awhile. It was almost 9am, and the coffee shop and lounge area outside the theater was positively buzzing and bustling, and so, wanting to find someplace a little less crowded, I jumped in the elevator and decided to go exploring. Turns out I didn't have to explore far, as one floor up the doors opened and revealed a small and empty waiting area with six empty over-sized chairs. Also of note: this mini-lounge was near the projection booth and I could still hear the movie and the wailing of those I left behind filtering through the walls. Picking the chair furthest away, he typed ominously, I kicked off my shoes, sat and stretched out, giving my knees and rear end a much needed break. How's that old joke go about fitting 40lbs of butt into a 20lbs seat? Anyways, the next thing I knew a horrible racket jerked me awake. Startled, I opened my eyes and looked around but saw nothing. I was till alone. With a shrug, I settled back down and drifted off ... And when that same horrible noise woke me again, I realized it was my own snoring. Good thing you're alone, I thought, as I once more closed my eyes and nodded off to dreamland, where Ms. Munro took my hand and led me to a realm of psychic pterodactyls and fire-breathing hippos, where a ham-fisted Doug McClure was throwing roundhouse haymakers at anything with a beard... 

Man, I could be watching At the Earth's Core right now. Lingering Quaidiation Levels for Troll 2: