Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Three Weeks of B-Fest: CatBusRuss & ThePoeticCritic & "There's Nothing Out There"

I Dig Crazy Flicks with @CatBusRuss

Episode 205: B-Fest 2025: #Beepfest with ThePoeticCritic

Double Team Poster: JCVD and the Worm

CatBusRuss and ThePoeticCritic discuss B-Fest 2025. This is perhaps the best B-Fest line up CatBus has seen, and from the sound of it, the best his big sister has attended. And A&O Productions earned these accolades because the line up did not make it out to the public until at least an hour and a half before this 24-hour movie marathon kicked off. I Dig Crazy Flicks was able to be the last minute sponsor of B-Fest Traditions, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" and "The Wizard of Speed and Time", but with that being the case, our host had low expectations for the kids at Northwestern to high jump over. He did not know that they were going to bring a pole vault.

If a movie was bad like "Truth or Dare? Critical Madness", it was so bonkers that you could not help but enjoy it with the crowd. If a film was morally corrupt like the gory Christian-exploitation flick, "If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?", the audience bonded together with the insults and riffs that all fascists deserve. And B-Fest did not miss when it came to nostalgia movies to amuse the audience. We're talking about the animated, "The Transformers: The Movie", JCVD and Dennis Rodman teaming up to stop Mickey Rourke in "Double Team", and two movies featured devious characters portrayed by B-Movie royalty, Mary Woronov.

It was a comedy of errors. A fire alarm went off as Pam Grier was smoldering. Sponsors were failing to show up when scheduled resulting in constant reshuffling of the line up. One of the DVDs refused to let the crew skip 20-minutes of no-budget movie trailers, resulting in them turning to YouTube to projecting it with pop-up ads. Honestly, when you are celebrating the best of the worst films ever made, this all seems quite appropriate.


Episode 207 - There's Nothing Out There...Except Nix Eclips

Pinterest.com @Biter8331

The primary audience for horror movies has been told to laugh at itself once Kevin Williamson penned "Scream" in 1996. But as L7 wrote four years prior, "The Masses are Asses". Horror nerds were being treated to this message since the founding of Troma Films, but never so directly as in the Rolfe Kanefsky horror comedy, "There's Nothing Out There".

Nix Eclips from the "Cinema Shitshow" podcast suggested that CatBusRuss give the 1991 film a watch. He felt it had that vibe of "Scream". Our host would disagree with that since the film's hero is essentially the Jamie Kennedy character from the Wes Craven feature. It is more along the lines of "Final Girls" or "Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon". We have a lead who knows this is a horror movie, but will anyone else believe him. The boom mic "Gymkata" suggests they should, but the feature needs a body count.

Aside from splitting hairs in regards to what "There's Nothing Out There" is trying to be, this episode is a first time meeting of two podcasters. We find out about Nix's experience in entertainment and his surprise on how wrestling and podcasting has taken CatBusRuss on a tour as far west as Rolla, MO, as far north as Milwaukee, WI, as far east as Jacksonville, FL, and as far south as New Orleans, LA. Give it a listen if you want to hear about similar trauma caused by PG Eddie Murphy cinema. There will be tangents, so prepare yourself.

 

Follow me on Twitter @catbusruss. If you want to be on the show, contact me on Twitter or send an email to russthebus07@gmail.com. All we need is a theme, movie, director, or actor and a focus on sub 100-minute material. As long as the credits start before the 1:39:59 mark on the runtime bar, the movie qualifies.