B-FEST 2026 - Bad movies are the safest form of mind transportation

A few weeks late, but it is once again time for my increasingly out-of-place writeup of a movie festival on what is otherwise exclusively a music blog.  Plan is to continue doing this every year until either I or the festival dies. 

Ms. Tweet and I often mockingly proclaim the internet-ism "so tired, y'all" when describing how we're doing.  Well, there are some B-Fests where my main lingering impression is less the fun we had so much as the exhaustion it bore.  This was kinda one of those.  For the first time of which I'm aware, the festival was pushed to March, leading to some schedule scrambling.  I was in the throes of a busy month that wasn't over yet in the midst of a time of great uncertainty, however much I slept it wasn't enough, and I showed up already about ready to nod off in my chair before the first movie had started.  At every chance to talk to those around me between films, I was bothered by the fact that I was dazed, feeling my least interesting, and mostly surrounded by people who also needed a quiet moment more than they needed idle chatter.  When this happened after one of a few challenging movies that just gave nothing with which to engage - still fortunately rare, but happening more than once - well, I wasn't in the best place, mentally.  This is probably the year in which I can most say that my down moments were a me-thing rather than a film lineup thing; I have some quibbles, but seriously, the lineup was fine for the most part.  I just wasn't at the top of my game.

J and Chris made the return trip and each did his first full twenty-four - in J's case barely sleeping at all best I can tell - and both raved about this being their best B-Fest so far.  As you can see from how I chose to start the whole post, it wasn't my best.  

Far from my worst, to be clear!  Still a good time overall, with some really strange things getting projected onto that screen for our dazed questionable pleasure.  Our diminished group of familiar faces rose to the occasion, and I got to spend time with some that I didn't know as well.  Now it's been over a week since the Fest and counting and I haven't even written a word about it yet?*  So tired, y'all...  but let's do this!  Highlights abounded, as they do every year, and I'll try to recount some of them.

Deathstalker II - Duel Of The Titans (1987)

I was thrilled by the fact that Deathstalker II was on my list of suggestions but ended up sponsored by someone else, presumably meaning that the organizers got multiple people requesting this best (not saying much) of this series of unconnected swords-and-schlockery films.  If one is willing to check one's brain at the door and ignore any desire for such things as a plot of any note or for likable characters (including a lead who appears to be built of solid smarm and a pair of good and evil twin princesses both played by someone who, well, what she lacks in actorly gravitas she makes up for in propensity to be filmed with minimal or no clothing), it's an easy movie to enjoy with its cartoony gimmick fights and its borderline embarassing take on meta-commentary.  This was one for the id, less outright "bad" so much as "deeply silly."  I go back and forth on whether it was the perfect B-Fest opener because of how into it people got or whether it was wasted as the opener when it could have provided a jolt of energy when we needed it more.  People seemed to really like the random tribe of faux-amazon warriors who show up mid-movie and save the day a few times, especially the part where Deathstalker's "duel of the titans" mostly involves him in a wrestling ring (really) getting beat up by a character/actor billed as "Queen Kong."  I mean, lest anyone doubt that the filmmakers of Deathstalker II knew what they were making, the movie ends with a gag reel that in turn ends with a freeze-frame of breasts, so, that sums it up.

I felt like I started something - although to be honest it was much more just being part of an obvious thing - when the area outside a tavern where there was an extended scene just had numerous signs saying "BEER" (as well as barrels helpfully labelled similarly).  I was one of a bunch who started a "beer!" chant.  As a crowd we then took to yelling "beer!" over all scenes that included those signs... and all scenes of anyone drinking beer, in any movie over the next day... and "not beer!" when someone was drinking something else...  (I also tried to chant other words that rhymed with "beer," as appropriate, but that part didn't catch on.)

After a homemade short of in-jokes of some sort, I assume, put together by the frequent sponsors known as the Racine Guys, we were supposed to get their movie for the year, Ticks, but B-Fest standard technical snafus led the organizers to quickly move things around, into

Voyage Of The Rock Aliens (1984)

Two goofy '80s comedies in a row don't allow for the highest quality riffing.  WOTRA is a trying movie at times because it's a bunch of random crap thrown together, but it's worth seeing once because it's a bunch of really strange random crap thrown together.  As promised by the sponsors, VOTRA opens with an extended music video (for a fun synth-rock duet with Jermaine Jackson and Pia Zadora playing star-crossed lovers, West Side Story style) that has absolutely fuck-all to do with anything else in the movie.  I wish the musical numbers, which are all over the place, had lived up to the energy of "When The Rain Begins To Fall."  From there, we get a mix of a beach party sendup (with some "Lake Erie is polluted AF" jokes, as was the style at the time) with high school musical sendup with alien invasion sendup with... well, many other things.  Some of the musical numbers are set in bathrooms.  Some characters totally change personalities and say, go from jealous-boyfriend villain to romantic lead halfway through the movie.  As thin as it was, I couldn't help grinning and joining in the enthusiastic response to the escaped chainsaw murderer who really just needs a lady he's trying to menace to turn out to be a grease monkey who knows how to fix his saw.  

I felt like I spent half of the movie trying to patiently explain to a certain one of my companions that the robot disguised as an extremely mobile fire hydrant is supposed to be funny, and that its implausibility as a disguise is the whole point of the joke.  (I didn't say it was a good joke.  I also didn't say that Rock Aliens was a good movie, just that it was a movie worth watching a representative sample of, once.)

Ticks (1993)

Maybe fatigue setting in, maybe it's that I just don't like gory monster movies much, but I didn't click with Ticks, which was one of the consensus crowd favorites of the whole event based on my discussions with others.  Seth Green and a group of racially stereotyped kids go on a mandatory camping excursion - all of the adults in the picture are jerks, because, of course they are - but turns out going outside isn't so great when ticks have grown to giant size.  Boo on the movie for how much it abuses the cannon-fodder dog, and two particular characters whose whole thing is to have misery inflicted upon them.  The visuals of the gruesome infections definitely got people hooked; just not my kind of movie, I guess.  Or maybe I'm mostly just annoyed that with the constant fog effects and overcast sky, you never once see the moon that would have allowed me to make a "luna-tick" pun.  At least I did get to describe one character's well being as "tick-ety boo."  

Cobra Woman (1944)

Here's where I can definitely blame my frequent invocation of fatigue.  I think I was probably drifting in and out on a minute by minute basis, because I just could not stay engaged here.  I fortunately timed things so that most of my "lost" movies were ones I'd seen before - for instance, Cobra Woman was last shown at B-Fest the first time I ever did the full twenty-four, back in 2006.  We got a black and white print that year.  This time, glorious-for-the-'40s color, meaning that for either the first or second time in my era Plan Nine was the only B&W feature, despite Cobra Woman being the oldest movie we've gotten in years.  I'm led to believe that color is where the money went because it didn't go to convincing looking sets or "island natives."  I'd remembered that, like Deathstalker, much of the movie is built around a rather limited actor playing identical twin princesses.  I'd remembered that jungle primitives be doing human sacrifices and cults, as they apparently do.  I hadn't remembered that the limited dialogue amongst the romantic leads so heavily features a non-romantic quote from the Book of Ruth that just keeps coming back and back in the most cloying way possible.  Sabu does a few stunts and "comedically" sidekicks it up, and feels as out of place with the rest of the movie as I remembered.  Nothing about this viewing changed my overall impression that if you want a perfectly servicable movie adventure from this era, sure, Cobra Woman is just fine.

This was one of the years in which it was slightly after midnight before we got around to our twin traditions of the short The Wizard Of Speed And Time (1979), followed by shlock magnum opus Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959).  Pleased to see the Wizard get more on-stage runners-along this year after last year's anemic showing.  I decided it'd be a good year to skip P9FOS and took a nap; they left access to the upper floors this year, so the second floor couches seemed a little quieter, if dirtier, than the first floor with a less crowded nearest bathroom.  Very slightly sad to have missed the ending, because J tells me they had a few folks acting out the Solarmite lecture, which is always a highlight on the rare occasions that it happens.

Elves (1989)

Woke up in time to catch the back half of Elves, so missed some of the setup, but I think I caught a good representative sample.  One of two separate Gremlins knockoffs this year and, also, coincidentally, one of two completely separate Christmas-themed horror movies with that title that exist.  On the surface level, Elves has an appealing little setup - abandoned shopping mall, Christmas elves as monsters, hard-up schlub with a heart of gold as the one responsible adult in the world with the courage to handle the action scenes (we had fun with him - most of his dialogue is barely comprehensible and it's a rare treat in which he makes a non-smoking appearance) on behalf of the chosen teen who needs to learn to use the power of the bullshit magical crystal (spoiler alert: she basically just has to stab things with it).  But it can't leave well enough alone, because it's also quite the twisted little movie.  In the parts I missed, there's apparently a brutal murder of a cat (boo!!) and a subplot involving a child perving and peeping on his sister (inspiring a short-lived "so what if you're my sister?" running audience joke that J gamely tried to explain to me amidst the other weirdness).  There's some really gratuitous violence, and there's some cartoonishly evil abusive (step)family stuff, and there's a whole nonsensical backstory involving Nazis.  Not enough?  Here, have an actual full-on incest plotline (not involving the children, fortunately) that comes out of fucking nowhere!  I pointed out to those in earshot that incest is, generally speaking, not a preferred strategy for those seeking to create a master race.  Weird stuff like what you want to see in those wee hours in which it's hard to be sure it wasn't a fever dream.

The Ice Pirates (1984)

Last shown at B-Fest during one of my first years of attendance, in which I amateurishly left early.  I have, however, seen The Ice Pirates before, on my own time.  So despite my memories of a rare sci-fi comedy that actually made me smile regularly, when I started fading again I just curled up against my pillow and took a surprisingly sound nap in my seat.  No space herpie or time-acceleration fields for me.  I woke up just in time to see the very end, with its discovery that the water-filled planet that they're searching for is exactly the water-filled planet you'd think it is.  You know the one.

Down (2001) [AKA The Shaft]

Unsurprisingly hit by the misfortune of being made just before Americans suddenly developed a distaste for movies about people dying in skyscrapers.  I don't know if I can properly do justice to the fact that, yes, they made a killer-elevator movie.  There's a whole bunch of setup that's low-key deranged including yet another pair of peeping toms (I think at least one of them dies), yet another groper (he dies), yet another brutal killing of a pet, and Naomi Watts in one of her big breakthrough roles accusing the male lead of rape for no goodf reason in what the movie thinks is a wacky comedic moment.  And then once the movie kicks into high gear it's high key deranged as it comes up with ways to make people die in elevator shafts.  You will believe (okay, not really) a man can get sucked up an elevator shaft dozens of floors and then blown out a window!  Things build in action-movie logic to a big gunfight at the top floor of the building with elevator network's 'brain" hanging in the balance; there is a rocket launcher involved.  Down is kind of what Elves can be when it gets a higher budget, a movie that just goes for broke in fairly competently filming and committing to a story apparently written by someone who sustained major head trauma while on both acid and speed 

My understanding is that this was a remake of a well regarded Dutch B-movie that kept some of its original writers.  One comment made by the folks behind us - I forget if it was the duo of CatBusRuss and ThePoeticCritic or someone else near them - was that presumably because of the movie's and screenwriter's non-English-language origin, every line of dialogue in Down sounds like the setup for a joke that never happens.  On the plus side, there's one bit of writing that I actually thought was legitimately clever in which the characters are running down why people could be dying in this skyscraper and they quickly shuffle through all of the standard horror movie explanations - was it because it was built on a native burial ground, or was it because of radiation, or...?  Don't worry, the real explanation is way dumber.

Not necessarily for the group as a whole, but for my particular pod, the biggest running bit of the rest of B-Fest and potentially the rest of our lives to come out of Down was one character's insistence - and he says it multiple times! - that elevators are "the world's safest form of transportation."  Makes one wonder why more people don't commute by elevator.  I got my personal best reaction when speculating whether anyone had ever staged a double feature of Down and Up.

The Pirate Movie (1982)

Pirate ships are decided not the world's safest form of transportation.  Depending on one's particular sense of whimsy, this is one of those movie's that's actually fun and kinda good, or it's just regular bad.  Basically what one needs to know about The Pirate Movie is that it takes the plot and some of the songs from a Gilbert & Sullivan opera as the basis for a girl's fantasy of getting kidnapped and/or romanced by pirates, it's more an assortment of comedic musical bits than it is a movie, and it's really horny in a way where everything's innuendoed rather than shown.  How much any given bit works will be a matter of taste.  I definitely laughed multiple times and liked a few of the songs.  I definitely tuned out quite a few.  Call the experience a stupid but generally amiable haze.

Warlock III - The End Of Innocence (1999)

After a breakfast break, we're back for a taste of the late '90s, an era I unironically love because of when I come from.  Here's when you can have your Final Girl mostly stare pensively into the distance to give the impression that she's thoughtful and deep, and also look so cool (I love the hat!).  Here's when you can throw in a bunch of faux-wicca and S&M stuff just as a background detail of the stuff Kids These Days are doing.  It helps that the movie picked Bruce Payne to be its Julian Sands successor who presumably worked cheaper, because he elevates things with a suave, unaffected performance that mixes ancient menace with quiet confidence.  On rewatching I actually really enjoyed how languid Warlock III is, just cranking up the spookyhouse atmosphere up and up, and generally giving the veneer of being a cerebral, psychological horror movie despite the fact that, well, it's not actually particularly smart.  If you could find a sweet spot of monster movie that just tickles my fancy, it's Warlock III.  What's not to love?  Well, I suppose you could criticize the fairly pedestrian action and kills once the movie finally gets around to doing that.  Or the fact that although fun most of the cannon fodder characters are thinly drawn.  Or the fact that it's a Warlock movie in name only that doesn't even try to match the tone of its predecessors.  Or the fact that the movie doesn't really have a compelling specific reason to exist.  But I say that's just nitpicking.

My picks for Fest tend to get a tepid reception from the crowd as a whole, and Warlock III was no exception.  Although Deathstalker II was also kinda one of my picks as noted above, and people seemed to love that one, so...

I'm not sure whether to treat Monsters Crash The Pajama Party (1965) as more of a short or more of a film; it was a little too long and too slow paced for the former designation.  Bunch of stock alleged high school boys and a different bunch of stock alleged high school girls set up in a haunted house, there's an evil scientist with a fixation on gorillas, blah blah blah.  Apparently it was part of some sort of exhibition, and at screenings monsters would go into the audience to grab audience members, that sort of thing.  On its own, as a thing to watch like a "normal" film, big bunch of nothing.  The sole - and I do mean sole - interesting thing about watching MCTPP was that wherever they were streaming it from included an auto-generated transcript, which did not generally match what was actually being mumbled, and landed us such phrases as "you'll be instant monster fuck."  Watched like half, went to get more caffeine fortification, and by the time I got back it was time for the next thing.

The Dragon Lives Again (1977)

If I had a nickel for every time in the past ten years that B-Fest had a movie featuring professional Bruce Lee impersonator Bruce Li/Bruce Leung, I'd have two nickels.  That still seems like a lot.  I had not known that there was such an industry related to profiting off the Dragon's untimely death - "Brucesploitation."  At first TDLA seems like it's going to be something like that, starting with a dedication to all of Lee's fans, who the filmmakers apparently despise given what follows.  It was kind of an amusing transition as realization gradually dawned on me that this wasn't just going to be standard Hong Kong fight scenes and schlocky dubbed dialogue with characters calling each other things like "you ignorant heap of buffalo dung!"  No, The Dragon Lives Again lulled me quickly out of false sense of security into abject shock and horror.  So, Bruce Lee, the character, is dead (with a lampshading line of dialogue about how sometimes people look a little different in the afterlife), and ends up in a purgatory full of politcking for power populated by the most random assortment of movie/pop culture characters I can imagine, including (not a complete list): Popeye the Sailor Man, the Exorcist, the Man With No Name, James Bond, the Godfather, Dracula, softcore porn character Emanuelle, and Zatoichi the blind swordsman.  The film is evenly divided into samey fight scenes in which these various characters not known for their martial arts prowess default to trying to karate chop and kick Bruce - it doesn't go well for them - and the geriatric King of the underworld inappropriately groping and generally being horny with bare-breasted women a quarter his age.  The move just continues on and on, pummeling the audience (or me, anyway), into a state of wondering if it will ever start making sense, or if watching violence or sex will ever be the slightest bit interesting again.  With the extra level of ickiness coming from dragging the name of a recently deceased legend through the muck like this.

If I had a nickel for every movie I've been exposed to at B-Fest that left me thinking "that just might be the worst movie I've ever seen," well, I'd have like a buck.  Throw another coin into the proverbial jar!  TDLA is incredibly bad in that batshit crazy way that really needs to be seen to be believed, but I can't in good conscience recommend actually doing so.  Unless you're at B-Fest, of course.  B-Fest is supposed to hurt a little bit.

Speaking of pain, on to a short about physical pain.  We spent quite a bit of time before the Fest figuring out WTF For Skin (2024) was, since that's a difficult phrase to Google.  We didn't have the year listed until we got the posters, so multiple people's AIs told them that we might be getting a sex-ed short from the '70s.  But no, this was a thing that I guess was viral or something, featuring a story about an adult circumcision gone wrong enacted through brief parodies of pop songs by the likes of Eminem and Gwen Stefani, by a bunch of actor/singers who, well, are trying their best.  I was wondering whether the For Skin would have an actual point when one song briefly mused about the balance of reducing HPV risk vs concerns for loss of sensation, but no, it's way too slight for that.  Whatever; the thing is only like eleven minutes long, so, I have no strong opinions about it of any sort.  Following the short, we got forty minutes for a combined raffle and lunch break, which seemed efficient since my level of interest in the annual raffle has reached nonexistence, whilst my interest in taking a break away from screens for a little was about as high as it's ever been.

A Gnome Named Gnorm (1990)

The "g" is not silent, because, funny?  I guess?  A cop buddy comedy in which one of the buddies is a puppet-creature and the alleged comedy is just dire (he's good at hiding, so nobody believes human guy!).  And AGNG managed to be yet another movie this year to work in less than great sexual politics, with some unwanted touching for the one woman on the force, played by Claudia Christianson as the straightwoman to the allegedly fun characters (spoiler: yes, the nebbishy hero basically gets awarded her at the end).  I tried to stick it out and didn't technically "gnope out" within minutes the way Tim, whose joke I'm stealing, did.  But I kinda mentally couldn't do this one.  For a film allegedly about action and wacky hijinks, it's beyond dull, and I really did mostly count the minutes until it could end and we could move on to what was gnext.

Demons (1985)

Scott told some of us that he was actively lobbying the organizers to flip the order of the last two movies, so that the Fest would end with Demons rather than Gnome.  I guess it worked, since the first announcement of the show, way back on Friday night, had been that the last two would be swapping spots compared to the posted schedule.  Definitely the right choice, so, thank you; Demons proved to be a better closer than would have been anything else on the lineup save Deathstalker.    

I came into Demons expecting fun action mayhem, but didn't expect it to be quite as gross and nihilistic as it was.  "Demons" (basically indistinguishable from what most movies would call "zombies") break out within a Berlin movie theater, quickly causing a lively cast of "German" Italian characters to quickly become zombie fodder, spurting pus from various wounds and then themselves zombifying as the scenario they're in looks more and more no-win.  Even if I didn't love the gore, the mounting hopelessness works.  Meanwhile, the soundtrack keeps things incredibly lively, featuring what the Kids Those Days might have called a bitchin' collection of rock and metal songs from the likes of Accept, Billy Idol, and Saxon.  The movie even throws in some "punks" on the autobahn outside the haunted theater who seem to exist mostly to give us more peak '80s clothing and hair, more music, and more kills.  We got a last burst of energy in, greeted the American savior characters with a last rousing "U-S-A!" chant, pretty much all yelled "wait for it!" as a group as we anticipated the final "twist" that did not surprise a single one of us, and basked in the joy of another Fest survived.

Miscellaneous points:

- I have not changed my stance, as conveyed last year, that heavy metal fucking RULES!!

- Unfortunately no pre-Fest tiki bar hangout due to a staff inservice at the place.  Let this be a lesson to not do B-Fest in March.

- Really great post-Fest hangout at Omega this time around, making for maybe the most fun** I had all weekend (the decadent breakfast for dinner helped, to be fair). 

- Congrats to another B-Fest newb for making it a full 24 on your first go, and without lineup spoilers no less!  I'm sorry I can't remember your name!  I'm usually like that!

- I don't know if full-on violence against women was quite as prevalent as at certain B-Fests (here I'm thinking specifically of 2011), but B-Fest 2026 felt like it was crammed to the gills with gropers and other sex pests.

- During The Pirate Movie's take on " The Modern Major General's Song," props to whomever it was behind me whose brian had the Mass Effect 3 lyrics just ready to sing for the occasion.

- Chris actually liked A Gnome Named Gnorm.  I will gnever fully respect his taste again.

- This year's C.J. Cherryh book (or short story, in this case):  "Hrunting," as read from the anthology The Book Of Swords (ed: Gardner Dozois)

- Best of Fest (actual movie):  Fuck it, I'll say Deathstalker II, no apologies

- Runner up:  Warlock III, followed by The Ice Pirates

- Best of Fest as a B-Fest movie:  Deathstalker II again, followed by Down

- Worst of Fest:  The Dragon Lives Again

- According to Google's AI, which seems to be pulling from elevator industry websites, "elevators are statistically the safest form of public transportation, often considered even safer than airplanes or taking the stairs."  

 

 

*Writeup finally finished more than two weeks post-Fest.

 

**Confidential to those in my corner of the table:  Truly, the real secret smile is the friends we made along the way.