After Plan 9 ended, the crowd settled down for a long night.  Next up was Sex Madness, although I recall that wasn't the title used in the film.  To tell you the truth, after the excitement of Plan 9, the film wasn't all that enjoyable.  Very little happened to make fun of -- if you'd seen it on MST3k, it would have been the kind where they snap a lot of snide character lines back and forth.  That's hard to imitate in a loud auditorium with at least 10 people talking at any given time.  We had to go for the straightforward joke everytime, where the main substance was the word "syphillis" and every adjective, noun and phrase we could form from it, e.g. : "syphilltastic"; "syphillicious"; "we can't have sex if you don't have a rubber syphillactic." 

Thankfully, the fiasco ended quickly and gave way to Jason and the Argonauts which elicited a general bemoaning from the crowd, although I was quite ready to see it.  I'd probably forgotten how long it was, but just about then I was more than happy to see a real classical age brawl-em-up.  A lot of the audience took this opportunity to slumber, and if they ever show it at B-FEST!!! again, I'll probably do likewise.  Still, this time I was barbed and ready, waiting patiently for my first chance of the night to lambast Ray Harryhausen effects, against which (and whom) I have a strong personal grudge. 

About half-way through, the audience got real quiet so that even the few marathoners that were still awake were stupefied into silence.  There would be almost total silence for a couple minutes, but then a hearty soul would pipe up with a joke, and suddenly several bon-mots (and I use this term in the least French sense of the word -- Confusion to the French!) would fly all at once from across the theater.  There was a great comradery, and a single joke could be heard by all, and those who could afford the strength to laugh, did.

Let My Puppets Come. 

Let me just stop shivering -- almmooosttt...noottt quiiitee...  Okay, I'm better now. 

I don't think you'll find a single B-FEST!!! attendee who will want to talk about Let My Puppets Come -- and that's for the best, trust us.  I'm not even going to tell you what it's about.  If you feel the need, look it up at the IMDB -- I'm not going to.  We were all sickened and distraught watching this thing.  We all wanted to flee that damnable hell theater and rush to the safety of the bathrooms or parking lots or whatever we finally slammed against in our blind terror.   I mean, the other movies were awful -- and I still wanted more.  But this -- this was not to be enjoyed, even in its horror.  And that is probably the one good thing about Let My Puppets Come.  I absolutely did not want to sit and watch that movie, but I did, and so did everyone else in that theater.  You want to talk about sharing common experiences?  Forget Joe McSchmoeson, your best friend since Kindergarten -- this is the sort of bond that lasts. 

I breathed much easier when IT was over.  I was also getting a little sad because I knew we'd need to leave soon to make it home on time.  But Rob had napped a bit during Jason and the Argonauts and NOBODY wanted to leave with the unpalatable taste of My Puppets in their mouth, so we determined to stay just a little bit longer. 

Next up on the schedule was the bald listing of "Short".  I heard some rustling around us and someone in front mumbled something like "4:45 -- Guess what's coming up?"  I didn't know what was coming up.  Maybe someone got an inside tip that I'd missed.  I found out when half the audience jumped to their feet, lay themselves down right in front of the screen and began thumping their legs in time. 

The Wizard of Speed and Time hit the screen.  If you've never seen WOSAT (as we in the biz call it), then it might be a little hard to understand.  The entire short is shot in stop-motion.  Not claymation or models, but stop-motion live action, with the prominent persona of Mike Jittlov as the Wizard racing down highways and ... well, you know, through speed and time and stuff.  Music and singing takes the place of dialogue, and if you look fast enough (the Flash sort of fast), you'll see various subliminal messages worked in between the frames.  Of course, despite popular belief, subliminal messages don't work at  MUST BUY COKE!  MUST BUY POPCORN!  MUST SPEAK DESIRES IN SLOW MONOTONE! 

Immediately after WOSAT (as you laymen call it) ended, the audience members retook their seats.  Next was the ponderously slow Terror of Tiny Town.  This is, of course, the famous all-midget cast western.  Unfortunately that idea doesn't make up for the movie's many short-comings (SHORT-comings??? GET IT???).  Well, you can see how we used up most of the short jokes right away and had little to say.  There were some bizarre items in the flick, though -- like the fact that the credits implied the midget cast was somehow owned by Jed Bule (or someone equally as Beverly Hillbillies sounding).  Or that there was supposed to be a vampire (?) -- or so the credits want us to believe!  I also had a tough time believing that one of the main characters was a man because he sure looked like a woman to me.  Rob was convinced it was a man, though, and I have to trust his judgement --  he's never steered me wrong when it comes to picking up women who might have been born men. 

We'd already put off leaving too long, and as Terror ended, we started putting on our coats and gathering our things.  The schedule listed a short next, and then Reefer Madness, which we'd never seen but didn't seem like something to get speeding tickets over.  If only the short hadn't been La Folie Du Docteur Tube, a sub-title b/w French bit (Death to the Frogs!), we might have been tempted beyond human withstanding, but alas, we remembered our responsibilities and got up from our seats. 

We took our leave silently -- Ken and crew were mostly sleeping and everyone else was lulled into inaction.  As I turned back to look at the paper plate-encrusted stage, I looked fondly at the tents, at that blinking bike light that one guy had for no apparent reason, and especially at the guys with the inflatable couch.  And I knew, I knew that next year we would return -- to stay the entire B-FEST!!! and bring to McCormick Auditorium in Evanston, Illinois our very own air-pump inflatable device!  And next time, I'm taking a change of underwear! 

'Til next time, 
Alan 

Alan Gallauresi is a weekly columnist for Entertainment Weekly, where he dispenses ultra-wordy devil-may-care editorials and utterly  jejune commentary on the supremely important subject of network television.