Current Affairs Shockproof Film Festival: the very best of B-movies
A Bucket of Blood, The Bride of the Monster and Blood Feast: what do these rather unusual titles have in common? Apparently they’re some of the worst movies ever made, and this week you have the rare chance of seeing them on the big screen. The Shockproof Film Festival got underway at Prague’s Aero cinema on Tuesday; I spoke to the festival’s organiser Petr Šaroch.
“The Shockproof film festival is already in its fourth year. It started
basically as a joke between a group of friends. We always liked these kinds
of films and we thought it would be a good idea to show them in regular
cinemas. So we had a talk with the guys from Kino Aero and they said: OK,
do it. We were quite surprised that people were really interested so we
tried it for the second year, for the third year and now we are trying for
the fourth year.”
Can you specify a bit more what kind of films one can see at the festival?
Ed Wood in “Glen or Glenda”
“It depends on the programme for each year but this year there are two
main thematic lines: pornography and bad-taste films, such as Ed Wood and
the likes. The pornographic films will all be shown on Saturday and there
will be two Japanese so-called pinku films, than a French movie The Beast
from 1975 by Walerian Borowczyk, which caused a big scandal at the time of
its release. The highlight, if I may say so, we will be the legendary Deep
Throat, a hard core porn movie from 1972 with lovely Linda Lovelace.
Which films would you recommend?
Photo: CTK
I think each film is interesting in its own way, but I would suggest the
very first movie by Francis Ford Coppola called Dementia 13 or the very
first gory film ever made Blood Feast by Herschell Gordon Lewis. But there
is also an interesting Czech film called Revue na zakázku. It’s a very
obscure film made in the 1980s in co-production with Kazakhstan, the
homeland of Borat. There is also an Italian movie Starcrash with lovely
Caroline Munro and the very lovely David Hasselhoff and of course there is
the profile of the supposedly worst director of all times Edward D. Wood
junior. We are showing his three best-known movies, so it should be fun.”
Is there any competition or is it just a film show?
Aero Cinema
“It’s just a film show but there is a competition for the viewers.
This year they could send crazy pictures of themselves and the best photo
was awarded free admission to the festival. On the final day, when we are
showing Ed Wood movies, everyone who comes dressed-up as a character from
any of his movies will also get admission for free and the best costume
will be awarded special prize.”
And if you want to check out some of those movies for yourself, you’ll
find them at the Aero cinema in Žižkov – but remember to bring your ID,
most of the films are for adults only…
