Enchilada Relaunch

A week has passed since the 31st Boston Science Fiction Festival and I think I've recovered enough to order my thoughts in something readable. For more information on the festival, see the post below this one. (I guess there’s some advantages to updating this blog so infrequently!) This year the madness took place at the West Newton Cinemas, just a half-hour or so west of Boston.

(Despite the title, the festival has never actually taken place in Boston.)

What separated SF31 from the two other times I’ve attended was my lack of sleep. Due to a then minor cold, I took some Sudafed the night before in the hope of getting a good night’s rest. Hah! It ended up keeping me up the whole time, meaning I had an hour and a half of sleep under my belt before the four hour car ride down to Massachusetts and the 24 hours of movies. More on that later...


Short: BAMBI MEETS GODZILLA (1969)
Absolutely hilarious short subject. Imagine really pretty, pastoral music playing as images of Bambi frolicking in a field float by. The opening credits roll on and on for minutes, deliberately stretching out the inevitable. Then, after the director’s name finally fades away, a giant scaled foot descends from the sky and obliterates Bambi. “The End” comes up and then long, drawn-out ending credits precede for a minute. I’m not sure if this short is supposed to be making fun of Godzilla, Bambi or film credits, but it’s a gem nonetheless.

Movie: SERENITY (2005)
Firefly: The Movie. I really wanted to hate this one, as Firefly fans are some of the most annoying residents of the online sci-fi community. Alas, it was actually a pretty enjoyable action romp. I do think it suffers from some of the same problems as the Trek movies, with too many characters and in-jokes. But it was enjoyable, and I’ll probably check out the TV show at some point.

Movie: KONGA (1961)
Oh, boy. Michael Gough plays a British scientist who takes a chimpanzee named Konga, gives him some injections of genuine Mad Scientist Formula Growth Serum and watches as Konga turns into a giant ape. Yes, I wrote that correctly -- the “growth process” inexplicably turns Konga from a chimpanzee to an ape. Then Konga goes on a rampage and gets shot to death next to Big Ben. Not on top of Big Ben, just standing next to it. Apparently this film was first titled “I Was A Teenage Gorilla”. Says it all, really.

Movie: THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION (1984)
The cast is incredible: Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Jeff Goldblum, Christoper Lloyd, Robert Ito, Vincent Schiavelli, Yakoff Smirnoff and about a dozen other recognizable faces. There are fast cars (including one REALLY fast car), space ships, alien Lectroids, mad scientists, rock’n’roll, watermelons and endless chase scenes. Take all of these elements, roll them together and what do you get? A genuine mess, that’s what. Nothing in this two hours makes any sense at all, but it’s sort of enjoyable for the first two-thirds. “Just remember wherever you go, there you are…”

Movie: THE TINGLER (1959)
Vincent Price figures out that every human in the world has a lobster-like creature called the Tingler attached to his or her spine. He extricates one woman’s Tingler, which then goes on a rampage. After reading that, I’ll forgive you for not believing me that this is a really good movie. The best part is a scene which breaks the fourth wall: the Tingler gets loose in a theater and Price turns off the theater lights (i.e. the screen goes blank). He then instructs the “theater” to scream at the top of their lungs so as to paralyze the creature. Everyone does, of course. When this film was first released, certain theaters were hooked up so that the seats would deliver mild electrical shocks at this moment. I can’t imagine any filmmaker getting away with that nowadays…

Contest: TIN FOIL HAT CONTEST
“Make a hat out of tin foil to keep out the alien rays!” I didn’t participate in this, mainly for reasons of exhaustion. Some of the hats were very impressive, though.

Short: THE BATMAN, EPISODE I (1943)
The first episode of 15-part serial featuring “The Batman” fighting evil Axis agents over a supply of radium. Complete nonsense, brought down even further by some really racist anti-Japanese comments made by the main characters. The funniest part of this episode was the inside look at “The Bats Cave”, which was just a cave wall with a desk in front of it!

Movie: STEAMBOY (2004)
A recent anime film, depicting an alternate Victorian England in which advances in steam technology have allowed huge, hulking monstrosities of machines to be built; these are mainly used to fight other huge, hulking monstrosities of machines. This is a Japanese film, so of course our hero is a boy genius who wants to topple every baddie this side of Toky... err, the Thames. Steamboy is beautifully rendered and very imaginative, but slows to a mind-numbing pace as the final hour descends into “Oh, you think your machine is cool? Well, let me show you what mine can do!” over and over again.

Movie: KING KONG (1933)
Oh, man, this one sucked. I’d much rather watch the 2005 version, or better yet the definitive 1976 remake, than this crap.

Movie: THE CRAZIES (1973)
One of George Romero’s first films. It’s about a town under siege from transformed humans and the civilians' attempts to survive. Where have I seen this plot before? OH YEAH, EVERY SINGLE OTHER GEORGE ROMERO FILM EVER MADE! I guess you have to credit the guy with consistency, at least. This time the threat is in the form of the “Crazies”: regular townsfolk who have been exposed to a bioweapon that causes hysteria. Most people express this by running around screaming, but one woman takes to sweeping the outdoors! Romero must have realized this wasn’t the most compelling menace ever, since he basically ignores the Crazies for much of the film to concentrate on the tensions between the U.S. Army and their quarantine program and the uninfected who are trying to escape. The absolute low point of this film is when a father rapes his own Crazie daughter and it is left to the viewer to decide whether he is infected or just perverted. Not of Romero’s better efforts.

Movie: NAKED MONSTER (1985-2005)
Movie: EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS (2002)
At this point my body told me to stop watching movies and to go get some sleep. I complied, finding an unoccupied corner on the upper level of the theater. I slept for five hours, a complete turnaround from last year’s festival when I stayed up the entire 24 hours. Again, no regrets on this – I was beginning to get a little delusional from lack of sleep, and had convinced myself that when you sleep you need to “dream through a book”. This was causing me angst, as I couldn’t think of any books to dream through. I think I finally decided on a cookbook, before collapsing.

Movie: THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (1964)
The benefit to taking such a long nap is that I was totally awake for the final four films. I’d seen this Vincent Price feature before and enjoyed it greatly. The plot is the natural endgame of a Romero “Living Dead” movie: the entire Earth has died and been reborn as “vampires” (basically zombies). Only one person is still human, holed up in his house from the constant threat outside and fighting daily for survival. It’s a really compelling and grim film. Recommended.

Movie: ANDROID (1982)
A charming tale of Max 404, the robotic boy who dreams of living as a normal human. His dreary and lonely life aboard a space station is disrupted when three escaped convicts land and start engaging in less-than-polite behavior. This film really surprises with its quality; all of the actors turn in good-to-great performances and the geeky, awkward Max 404 is a protagonist I couldn’t help cheering for. Not quite a classic, but surprisingly close.

Movie: 12 MONKEYS (1995)
What needs to be said about this Terry Gilliam classic? Bruce Willis does his sullen thing as a reluctant time traveller and Brad Pitt fires on all cylinders as Jeffrey Goines, spoiled rich kid/complete psychotic/founder of “The Army of the 12 Monkeys”. This was the fourth or fifth time I’ve seen the film and I enjoyed it as much as ever. This is the first and last time I'll ever say the following: Brad Pitt can be awesome when he wants to be. He really can.

Movie: FIRE MAIDENS FROM OUTER SPACE (1956)
A direct quote from the SF31 program: “A crew of stiff upper lip Brits lands on the 13th moon of Jupiter to discover the descendants of Atlantis – beautiful women in short skirts, one doddering old guy (pre-Viagra), and “The Creature”. But that’s not the weird part: all the astronauts want to do is go home!” What else can be said about Fire Maidens? It is very possibly the most inept movie I have ever had the (dis)pleasure to see – we’re talking Manos: Hands of Fate level of badness here. Come to think of it, the monsters in those two films are about equally frightening -- which is to say, not at all!


So, that was SF31. An exhausting, exhiliarating trip to the stars and back.

Bring on SF32!