Enchilada Relaunch

This past weekend I attended the 30th Annual Boston Science Fiction Film Festival. This yearly torture fest involves sitting in a movie theater seat from noon one day until noon the next day while watching a bunch of sci-fi classics and a couple of real turkeys. It was my second time doing so, after Kim-Loi, my brother Peter and his then girlfriend (now wife) Rebecca braved all 24+ hours of SF29 last February.

There are many issues to tackle here, so I’ll start with the most basic: staying awake for twenty-four hours. I’ve always enjoyed sleep -- maybe not as much as others, but I need at least four hours to be able to understand anything that’s going on the next day, and seven to really feel well-rested. In fact, before this last Saturday night, I’d never gone a whole night without any sleep. At SF29 I slept for twenty to thirty minutes, but was drowsy and generally unaware for two or three of those hours. I didn’t want that to happen this year. Either I would be awake and watching the films attentively, or asleep and getting enough rest to appreciate the ones I did see. I opted for the former approach. I skipped caffeine on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and then began drinking it regularly about 1:00 AM Sunday. This method worked marvelously. I saw and comprehended everything on the screen. Naturally I felt like garbage on Sunday (Kim-Loi did all the driving home, thankfully), but a long night of sleep and I was more or less recovered by Monday.

The next big issue beyond staying awake is the question of exactly WHY someone would want to skip a whole night’s sleep to watch thirteen consecutive films and a handful of short subjects. The answer is the audience. If I just wanted to watch these movies I could do it more easily and restfully by renting them for home viewing. But watching these films with fellow science fiction fans is more than just watching these films with a crowd of people. These are folks who really love stories of rocket ships and giant monsters, who show up every February with their pillows and plastic ray guns to cheer on the adventures of Superman, Sky Captain and an ape-hating Charlton Heston. These people love their movies and are not afraid to show it. Similiarly, when they hate a film, they hate it vociferously, as well, and that can be just as entertaining.

I'm not just referring to the sub-MST3K comments some individual folks shout out during certain cheesier or less well-written films. Sometimes those sorts of jokes are hilarious, as often not. What I am really mean are those moments when the entire audience reacts in unison to an event on the screen. Everyone cheered when Godzilla appeared for the first time this year in the original 1954 Gojira. Everyone booed when a new 70’s disco tune started up in the 1980 science fiction disco-musical-disaster The Apple. It’s just an indescribable spirit that this movie festival has. I guess the best word is the one that is often used to describe this Boston marathon... “community.”

The last element beyond sleep deprivation and a room full of science fiction fans is of course the films. Here’s the SF30 line-up with some brief comments:

Short: DUCK DODGERS IN THE 24 1/2 CENTURY
The one constant at the movie festival over its many years. This tale of Daffy Duck fighting Marvin the Martian for control of Planet X may not be a classic, but even just watching it for a second year in a row has given me a certain affection for it. Little did I know this would be just the beginning of the Looney Tunes shorts...

Movie: SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW (2004)
My second viewing of this thing in a half-year. Actually, it came off better for me the second time around, since I didn’t have as huge expectations. I still think the second half of the movie is a bit of a let-down, with far too much time spent out of the cockpit (or in the cockpit, but with the plane underwater). Enjoyable, though, and the only recent movie besides Primer that didn’t stink up the joint.

Movie: GODZILLA (GOJIRA) (1954)
Before there was Mothra and King Ghidorah and the rest of the Toho movie monsters, there was Godzilla. This debut is a surprisingly dark film, with humanity being powerless in the face of a great destructive force. People are always kind of feeble in these films, but in Gojira there isn’t even another monster to distract Godzilla from his destruction of urban Japan. He just stomps away on humans and breathes his horrible weapon on Tokyo and nothing can be done to stop him (though some joker’s quip about getting a giant breath mint might be a good place to start). Quite a different film from the later entries in the series. I loved it.

Short: HARDWARE WARS
Fans of Star Wars, rejoice! The Millenium Falcon is replaced with a clothes iron and the Death Star with a waffle maker, but otherwise this is A New Hope done in 15 minutes. Not as funny as I’d been led to believe, but worth a viewing.

Movie: PRIMER (2004)
Where the heck did this come from? Never heard of the director, producer or any of the actors, but this is one of the most believable science fiction films in memory. Two anonymous engineers looking like they climbed right out of Office Space invent a time machine and start reliving days from their lives in order to lay bets on stocks and so hopefully retire early. Problems ensue when they find they can fit one of their machines inside another another, however... This is a mind-bending film and I won’t claim to have understood the paradoxes involved completely the first time through. If you like these sorts of movies and haven’t seen this, it’s a sure-fire rental (and 12 Monkeys and the original The Time Machine, for good measure).

Movie: SUPERMAN (1978)
One of the best superhero movies ever and a timely and fitting tribute to Christoper Reeve. There’s a lot of other really good performances in this one: Marlon Brando as Jor-El, Margot Kidder as Lois Lane and of course Gene Hackman as the magnificient Lex Luthor. One of the real highlights of the marathon.

Short: CHUBB CHUBB
Arghhh! I missed something! Ran out to Subway for five minutes (mmm, philly cheese steak) and so only caught the ending of this. Looked like an okay Pixary type of thing.

Movie: THX 1138 (1970)
Wow, George Lucas made something for me! I’ve never been a big fan of Star Wars (though I like the first three films), but THX 1138 is quite different from that revered trilogy. In a dystopian future, people are catalogued (the title is also the protagonist’s name) and choices are made by remote robotic voices. Donald Pleasence turns in a star performance as a sort of wonderfully ambigious sexual predator (though it’s only hinted that that’s what he’s after). An often slow film that was okay at 10PM but would have been murder at 3AM.

Short: OUTER SPACE JITTERS
Don’t get me wrong: I like the Three Stooges. As a kid, I loved them, even to the point of owning Moe Howard’s autobiography! This film is a disaster, though. Shemp is gone (and hence Curly is long gone), so we’re treated to 17 minutes of Joe “Oww.. that hurt!” DeRita giving it all he had. Which isn’t much. I think it’s a toss-up which late Stooge was worse, Joe or Curly Joe, and we were given the latter in the full-length Have Rocket, Will Travel at last year’s marathon! This one had a script that sucked even for a Stooges short, with the unholy three being sent to Venus as Earth’s ambassadors (!!) and fighting zombies. Completely wretched, and STILL substantially better than the Mr. Magoo short later on!

Movie: INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956)
Returning from vacation, a small town doctor finds out things haven’t been going too well in his abscence. Several people complain of a strange feeling that their closest love ones aren’t really as they appear. Fifties science fiction thrived on this sort of paranoia. Where it worked then, it still works now. Well worth watching.

Short: ANIMATRIX: FINAL FLIGHT OF THE OSIRIS
Don't remember a lot about this. Seemed as good as anything Matrix-related, I guess.

Movie: PLANET OF THE APES (1968)
“Get your filthy paws off me, you damned dirty ape!” What more needs to be said?

Movie: THE APPLE (1980)
If The Apple is to be believed, the world will end in neither fire or ice, but in disco. For in the far-future world of 1994, disco record labels will have merged with the government and their beat-filled leadership will guide us all. But look! There’s our hero, a guy who looks like he’s in Foreigner but sings like he’s in the Carpenters! This disco musical is pretty much a complete fiasco from beginning to end, but terrific entertainment at 2:30 in the morning with a room full of screaming fans. A rousing chorus of “That sucked! That sucked!” over the closing credits indicates to me that I enjoyed this one more than many people in the audience.

Movie: STARSHIP TROOPERS 2: HERO OF THE FEDERATION (2004)
The plot revolves around a bunch of marines stuck on another world. They’re getting slaughtered by the giant bugs they’ve sent to destroy, so they decide to give up the fight and hide away in an abandoned fortress until rescue arrives. But is there a traitor in their midst? Does anyone care? The first film in this franchise was made on a budget of 170 million dollars. The second had a budget of 7 million dollars. Appropriately enough, the proportion of my level of enjoyment of the two films is about 170:7. The first film was a passable use of two hours. I can’t say the same for this movie, which has a direct-to-video ethic all over it. The worst movie of the marathon for me.

Short: HAREWAY TO THE STARS
An enjoyable bit of Looney Tunes, but this time it’s Bugs Bunny that fights Marvin and his Martian minions instead of Duck Dodgers. Don’t remember a lot about this one.

Movie: CHARLY (1968)
I just read the Hugo-winning novellete “Flowers for Algernon” a few months ago, so this was good timing. The plot concerns a mentally-retarded man who has his intelligence boosted by an experimental procedure. The central question of the novellete was whether he was better off before the surgery or not. The film ignored that question to focus on the effect of a human having high intelligence without a corresponding emotional maturity. Charly is a depressing movie, but there’s no question that it is also a very good one.

Movie: EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS (1956)
Flying saucers! Ray Harryhausen! Hugh Marlowe as a dashing action hero/scientist! Like Planet of the Apes, there’s not a lot to say about this. It’s a classic sci-fi movie.

Short: MR. MAGOO IN “SOME HORRIBLE LITTLE SHORT I HATED AND DON’T REMEMBER THE TITLE OF AND BASICALLY WANTED TO SCREAM THE WHOLE TIME IT WAS ON CAUSE IT’S REALLY NOT AT ALL FUNNY THAT SOME OLD GUY CAN’T SEE WELL”

Movie: THE FORGOTTEN (2004)
The premise of this film is a good one: missing children are being erased from history and the memories of them removed from their loved ones. Julianne Moore gives a good performance as the mother that refuses to believe her son never existed. The cast for this film is solid, with Moore, Anthony Edwards and three quality actors from the HBO dramas Oz and The Wire. There are many good elements to this film, but unfortunately it all falls apart in the second half of this film for two reasons. The first is that the producers/writers/director/whoever tried to make this a happy ending film -- a fatal mistake, in my opinion. The other problem is that the central mystery of the missing children is substantially more interesting than its solution. I won’t comment further for fear of spoliage.

Short: JUMPING JUPITER
If I had to send a third Looney Tune to do battle with Marvin the Martian after Duck Dodgers and Bugs Bunny, it probably wouldn’t be Porky Pig. This was similiar to the other two Warner Brothers cartoons shown.

Movie: THE TIME MACHINE (1960)
Time travel and/or altering recorded history appears to have been a SF30 theme, evident in Primer, Superman, Planet of the Apes and The Forgotten. And so The Time Machine seems like an appropriate closer to the festival. No, it’s not 100% faithful to the H. G. Wells original, nor is it filled with really memorable performances, but there’s still something quite endearing about the film. Maybe it’s the Morlocks. I remember them terrifying me as a child, but now they seem just kind of pathetic. And so I laughed as our intrepid time traveller punched the Morlocks, kicked them, burned them, pushed them into pits and just generally treated them like the buggy-eyed cannabilistic freaks they were. I kind of wish he'd have gone on to do the same to the Eloi, but that’s just me. A great closer to the ‘thon.

In summary, liking eleven of the thirteen films shown and all but one of the shorts is a darned good ratio. This was a stellar year for the festival in terms of line-up and audience reaction. I tip my hat to the organizers. I also curse them for making me wait 364 days until SF31!