Truthfully, Live it Up! plays out like an extended version of those old vintage Scopitone shorts that they used to show on AMC during their American Pop days. It's also a nice time capsule for the sights and sounds of the burgeoning mod-scene of 1960's Britain. But beyond the musical showcases, well, it's rather mercilessly silly in a tut-tut, cheerio and a blimey, eh, wot kind of vein. I returned to theater in time to assure Tim, who had sponsored the film, and who was trying to explain away the spontaneous combustions into song, with the mystery accompanying music from out of nowhere, that that kind of shit happened to Elvis all the time and not to sweat the fine details like that. And with that, I'll let The Smart Alecs play us out.

The Italians have a long and somewhat storied history of attaching onto whatever block Hollywood was currently busting and then milking that particular species of film for all it was worth until bled dry. And in some cases, westerns and certain thrillers immediately spring to mind, they surpassed their American counterparts. In the realm of science-fiction, however, especially post-Star Wars, most folks find them sorely lacking. Me, I usually find this breed of cinematic lunacy to be an absolute riot in their, for lack of a better term, hair-brained and kit-bashed nature. Alas, the next film in the line-up would threaten to push even folks like me, who usually eat this crap up like pudding with 'nanners in it, past their limits for such nonsense.

Do you like war? Do you like robots? If the answer to both is yes, despite the title, you might want to give War of the Robots a pass. As for the plot, well, I think a couple of scientists are kidnapped by an alien race who are at war with a planet of robots and its up to Captain Kirkini and his crew aboard the Commodore 64 to rescue them from ... You know what? It doesn't matter, as that plot is abandoned about a third of the way through the movie. All of that is irrelevant, anyway, if you, like me, are easily distracted by Yanti Summer as the perky Ensign Crewcut and Licinia Lentini as Admiral's Assistant Oops Forgotmybra. And aside from them, from there, the movie just kind of grinds up in its own gears, splashed with some Mario Bava gel-lighting and a strange fascination with cave exploring. Sure, there are a few running laser battles where a ridiculously large amount of golden Dutch-Boy androids meet their doom, and a couple of *ahem* rousing laser-sword fights, but about 90% of the movie is people looking concerned at the Light-Brite and Simon touch-pad controls of the spaceship. And then, just when you think it's almost over, you realize they haven't had a pseudo-X-Wing fight yet. But, Who could have guessed their closing space-battle would last six or seven hours?

Despite the rumor of a futched video transfer that mistakenly showed us a reel of that final space battle twice, the film had obviously lost the audience well before the android's faulty Cylon-programming had them veering into the good-guy's firing pattern again and again and again. And then again and again and again. I'm not sure if that glitch is true, because director Alfonso Brescia was notorious for that kind of repetitiveness. And it will be a long, long time before I take a look at it again to find out for sure.

Lingering Quaidiation Levels for War of the Robots:

The Giant Claw

(A turd. A turd as big as a battleship.)

Lingering Quaidiation Levels for The Giant Claw:

This is the End

(The end of nights we tried to die. The end.)

After the giant anti-matter goony-bird bites the big one, crashes into the ocean and gives the audience the middle talon as it slowly sinks beneath the waves, the lights came up, officially marking the end of B-Fest 2010. *sigh* And after a rousing chorus of "Happy Birthday" for B-Fest newbie KO Rob, who, along with his brother, KO Mike, were absolutely hilarious (-- between the Trojan dumpling steamer and the pooping 40lbs. of parachutes gag, you, sir, a quipping god), the last few standing began cleaning up their rows and packing up their gear. Despite the nap, I was still dead-dog tired and did my best to get the bits of Doritos picked up around my seat. Before vacating back to the hotel, our mass of B-Movie Humanity congregated on the stage for the annual BMMB group photo, where I also put a bug in Sgt. Andrew's ear about Badmovies.org doing another giant super-soaker roundtable like he did a few years ago -- and if anybody has the juice to pull that off, it's that guy. 

About a dozen camera flashes later, a long walk to the parking garage followed, and then a quick drive back to the hotel for a much a needed shower. Our original thought was to just grab something to eat on the way back and just crash, and then meet everyone the following morning for breakfast to say goodbyes. But some confusion on the restaurant's name on my part got me the [wrong] directions to a bar called Delilah's when I was really looking for a pancake house called Marylyn's ... Have I mentioned I'd been up for 42 of the last 48 hours. Anyways, knowing that much of detour wouldn't work for us in the morning, we changed plans and met everyone at The Seven Brothers for a post-fest grub-session. Now, Seven Brothers would be an awesome name for a Chinese restaurant but what it really is is kind of a mom and pop version of Perkins, only the food is much, much better. My brain is fried at this point, but I enjoy the dinner conversation that ranges from the limited malleability of matter and its consequences across the universe, the scenic tourist attractions of Budapest, and the impending death of the newspaper industry. And it was while waiting in line to pay up did I realize my mix-up on Marylyn's location, which has me smacking my head all the way to the van. Most folks had walked to the restaurant, but since Mike and I drove, Mal Ragnarok decided to take her life into her own hands by hitching a ride with us back to the hotel -- a mere two to three blocks away, but, remember who she's riding with.

We actually made it back to the hotel in one piece, but the only available parking spot near our room would be a tight fit for a VW bug, which is why our van really wouldn't fit. But we tried anyway. Unsuccessfully, as it turns out. And five minutes later, Mike has us high-centered on a frozen snowdrift with the van listing and teetering at about a 45-degree angle. Perfect. To the room we go for one last toast of paint-thinner to B-Fest 2010, and then, finally, to bed.

The trip home was relatively uneventful except for a few instances that come to mind. It started out innocently enough with the usual frozen Soft Batch Cookies and Tim's mix-tape to escort us out of Chicago. Alas, it took us about five minutes to realize my disc was defective when it kept skipping during Big Daddy's rendition of "Star Wars" but Mike's copy played fine, which led to a pretty comical incident when we pulled up to a tollbooth with Joe Esposito screaming "You're the Best" at max volume. We also kicked around an idea to shoot a self-help educational video to deprogram people who had been infected by Tommy Wiseau that would have ended with a spokesman making a sales pitch while a line of people in black wigs marched into a revolving door and then come out without them. We also figured the odds of how many times Mike would get away with saying "Oh, hi Sara" before his wife killed him. The answer: No more than three. And I'm happy to report that we had another cheeseburger incident in Iowa City, when more stunt-driving sent our sack of McDoubles flying, leaving the sack empty and all efforts to locate them proving pretty much fruitless until Mike locates all of them under his seat near the door, which led to more stunt-driving as he tried to unearth them, which led me to ask "Does this kind of shit happen to you all the time, or just when I'm around?" "Yeah, pretty much," Mike replied. "Only it seems to be more amplified when you're around."

Beyond that, nothing major as we screened Moon, which was fantastic, Halloween II, which had us openly rooting for Lori Strode's death and giggling at the unicorn motif, The Cottage, which we could barely hear due to a DVD audio defect, and Crank 2, which was completely bat-shit insane and took us all the way home.

Greatest B-Fest Ever? Nah, not quite -- but it'll do.

It was a blast as always, folks. A nice mix of regulars and newbies made for a fantastic 24-hour movie watching experience, Fabreeze bath and all. Thanks also to A&O films for putting up with us again. Thanks to all the sponsors, and to Mitch O'Connell for another fantastic poster.

Now, with that out of the way, there's a couple of things I'd like to address. Firstly, it appears to me that B-Fest is at a crossroads. I'm hard-pressed to think of more than two films shown this year that were actually films and not digitally projected DVDs. I know the digital revolution would allow a wider library to choose from, but, to me, there's a thin-nerd line between a raucous film festival and just gathering my friends in a basement to watch stuff on a big screen TV, a switch that doesn't seem like much on the surface but if you look a little harder you'll realize what I'm talking about. I mean, was I the only who thought watching a pristine and re-mastered print of Black Shampoo kinda weird? And was I the only one heartened when Buckaroo Banzai was shown out of order? I'll roll with it, whichever way the wind blows on this, but, again, to me, B-Fest is about futched up reels, broken and bad splices, bad audio, and prints that are beaten to an absolute pulp -- and no, technical glitches and twenty minute waits while the riddle of the digital projector is solved don't count. 

And whatever tech-geek decided to make that infernal contraption more complicated than an on/off switch and a play button needs a rear-admiral PDQ. And please tell me the lack of shorts this year was due to these delays and that they're not being phased out completely.

And lastly, I'd like to talk about the line-up and how it comes to be. When the original slate for 2010 was posted I thought it was fantastic and pretty well-balanced between old and new, but then there was some last minute, sponsor-dictated dickering that by no means ruined things but didn't necessarily improve them, either. That's another slippery slope to be wary of as it appears history is about to repeat itself. Remember a few years ago, when they started letting sponsors pick a few of the films, which led to the free-for-all that was B-Fest 2006, which, no matter how much I want to force Change of Habit or Two of a Kind on you all, I never want to sit through that pile of suck again. I was also disheartened by the backlash against older films on the board I frequent, which has me leery of a future B-Fest consisting of nothing but made for Scy-Fy originals.

In the end, despite all of my misgivings, we just have to remember this is not my B-Fest, our your B-Fest, but A&O's B-Fest and we're just along for the ride. When you try to please everyone, nine times out of ten you please nobody. They've been doing this for over 20 years, they do it pretty darn well, and have earned the right to do it however they want. How 'bout we let them. And five bucks says no matter what way that is, I'll probably still be there.

Thank you, and goodnight.