Georgia Young Previews The Boston Underground Film Festival
[Our thanks to Georgia Young for the following advance peek at the upcoming Boston Underground Film Festival.]
A boatload of bowel-churning short films, outsider-focused documentaries, lots of (usually ill-treated) dick, and even a gonzo '70s Japanese horror flick fill the slate of the 2009 Boston Underground Film Festival, which kicks off this Thursday. The fest, bumped up from four to eight days (March 19-26) for the first time in its 11 year history (giving the audience multiple shots at seeing most screenings), brings edgy, smart, terrifying, hilarious filmmaking to the Brattle Theater and the Kendall Square Cinema (all events are in Cambridge, Boston's northerly neighbor).
Frank Hennenlotter's first feature in 15 years, a horror comedy collaboration with rapper R.A. the Rugged Man, Bad Biology kicks off the fest on Thursday. The creator of the delightfully sleazy Basket Case, Brain Damage and Frankenhooker should satisfy his fans with this tale of two sexual freaks: Jennifer is a photographer whose anatomical oddities include multiple clitorises and a 2-hour gestation period for freakishly malformed babies. She's fiercely independent, has an insatiable sexual appetite, and believes her unique body is meant to be impregnated by God. Batz lives alone in a huge Victorian house, surrounded by constantly-running porno videos as he tries to appease his 24-inch, drug-addicted monster of a penis, plying it with animal tranquilizers and a masturbation machine as terrifying as any medieval torture device. The two meet when Jennifer works a photo shoot in his house, and she soon discovers his secret. Jennifer thinks their meeting is kismet, but if they copulate, will anybody live to tell the tale? Expect to cringe and laugh, especially when Batz' wayward member takes matters into its own, uh, hands. This sure ain't Shakespeare, and it's definitely more funny than scary (and wasn't that usually Henenlotter's point?) but with solid production values and special-effects that especially reminded me of Brain Damage, Bad Biology is the perfect opener for a festival that prides itself on showcasing the wild, weird, and hilarious. Justin Decloux reviewed the film for ScreenAnarchy here.
For a smaller festival, BUFF has a large slate of short films, shown in themed programs and before most features. Psychedelicinema offers up two hours of video and film-based experimental works. Tapas of Terror taps the taste of Boston's best-known zombie enthusiast, J. Cannibal, with a slate of horror shorts including the crowd-pleasing Christmas story Treevenge and the intriguing 'still' photograph exploration, The Facts in the Case of
Mister Hollow, and local queer cinema programmers Aliza Shapiro and James Nadeau share selections in Cinemental Does BUFF. More extreme fare characterizes the Midnight Transgressions program, which includes the member-maiming shorts Electric Fence and Snip, as well as the scatalogical dark comedy Mi Amor Vive en las Alcantarillas. BUFF Family Values explores the twisted side of familial relations, including Excision's tense, moving story of a girl who channels her surgical obsession into a gruesome solution to a family medical emergency, and The Gingerbread House, a drug-addled retelling of an Italian folktale. There are also programs focusing on recent music videos, paranoid explorations, people-in-animal-costumes, and an animation series that includes the sweet comedy of Zombie Gets a Date and my personal favorite animated short in recent memory, Fantaisie in Bubblewrap.
Don't think documentaries are left out, either. With a slightly (just slightly) sweeter bent than most of the fest, The Rock-afire Explosion explores the personalities behind the childhood fast food entertainment-turned-Youtube sensation, the Showbiz Pizza Band, and I Think We're Alone Now follows two outcasts who are obsessed with the 80s pop star Tiffany, to the point of stalking her.
Other must-sees include Golgotha, young director Karla Jean Davis' homage to German Expressionist cinema that tells the story of a sorceress' obsession with a mythical sword, mixing stylized silent-film era acting with more modern techniques. Modern Love is Automatic examines a disaffected young woman who moonlights as a dominatrix - here, a strong script and two solid female leads manage to rise above some amateurish lighting and audio problems to tell a story of love, longing, and emptiness in modern mid-twenties life. There'll even be a rare showing of the bonkers 70s Japanese slapstick-horror, Hausu. But my favorite film of the fest is Gadi Harel and Marcel Sarmiento's fantastic Deadgirl, which reads like Stand
By Me for the zombie set - two teenage outsiders discover a gorgeous woman in the basement of an abandoned mental institution, chained to a gurney, naked. The discovery sparks a moral struggle in one of the boys, Ricky, and a descent into amorality for the other, J.T. This gorgeously shot movie is an uncomfortable, sickening, fascinating look at morality, sexual desire, and, of course, a little dick chomping for good measure.
Individual tickets for BUFF are $8, but the festival pass gives attendees admission to all screenings and parties for $75. And if you're broke, the budget pass, good for screenings during the second half of the festival (March 23-26, Monday-Thursday) is just $25. The Boston Underground Film Festival is a great way for fans of the wild and weird to kick off springtime in Massachusetts.
