Encore!

The last night of QT fest. I originally didn't think I would go, but I did, and now already I can't wait for next year. I really had no idea what it was like, but now I can't get enough.

The night was rife with rumor and speculation. "I heard he's going to show us Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair tonight", "I just saw Time League carrying a print that said Shame of the Jungle on it", "They're definitely showing Riptide tonight, there's just no other way.", "Quentin's going to let Harry choose the films tonight". Somehow you get a lot of fanboys, and internet people together and somehow the gossip just flies.

The crowd was huge. So big that I had to wait outside for a while. So big that I had a large amount of people in front of me when they separated AFS people out (which usually gave me a huge jump). A lot of new faces, too, which came into play later - there was a noticeable drop of energy (which could be for many reasons, tiredness, or being a bit jaded after the end of Fistful of Talons). Quentin also didn't show for the first show - which dropped the energy even more.

The first Encore was for No Way Out, which I'd seen just two nights prior. Still a great movie. Picked up more plot, enjoyed some of the kills even more, got horribly depressed at the ending even more than last time.

Quentin showed up with Robert Rodriguez (who is, somehow, speaking at school without me hearing a word about it until now) and decided to take a break from the fest for a little bit extra. Rodriguez's favorite monologue is from "Silent Night, Deadly Night" - a film that played on a night I wasn't there. The two then proceeded to act out the opening monologue from the movie, with Rodriguez giving the speech, while Quentin played a scared little boy. I can't describe what a great thing it was to see. I just know that if I see Santa Claus I'm going to run, run for my life.

"Shame of the Jungle" followed, and I was glad that it did. Ever since the first night, I kept hearing about the movie, just all the time. It didn't disappoint. Shame of the Jungle is a success because everything went wrong with it. They had a script that got beaten up, they got sued by the owners of Tarzan because the original title and name of the main character, "Tarzoon" was just too close. How did they cope with having the main character's name changed? By simply flipping the audio track, so, instead of Tarzoon, the character was Noozrat. Where it was written, they took a big sir-marks-a-lot and scribbled over it. The movie was then heavily edited to where it didn't make a lot of sense and just jumped around from place to place. Because of this it becomes a wonderful trainwreck to watch. If it was untouched it wouldn't have been any good, but because of what a mess up it was, it was great.

The new film was next, nobody had any idea what we were in for. With such an eclectic collection of prints that Quentin and the Drafthouse have combined, there was no telling what it could be. Some Sci-Fi pulp or a black western? What we were treated to was a movie from the invasion genre - where somebody forces their way into somebody else's house and holds the people hostage. There's a few of them around, but I'd never seen one like this. "Fight for your life" is perhaps the best exploitation movie I have seen since "Drum". Take Darryl from the Bob Newhart show (as in, "I'm Darryl, and this is my brother Darryl, and my other brother Darryl" - the talking one) and make him a smoldering racist. He and his two accomplices, a Mexican and Chinese guy take over a Black preacher's house, complete with his family inside. Exploitation films tend to be a little bit predictable at times, but this one wasn't. It lead you on so many times, only to have the extra plot thread go nowhere. In a word, the movie was fucking incredible. Hilarious, gripping, just great all the way through.

After the movie there was a lot of confusion. Quentin had completely disappeared. They waited a while for him, but he was just gone. Only a few people stuck around for that, and they were rewarded with "Johnny Firecloud" - a movie that I'd seen at Weird Wednesday and Quentin hadn't. It was obvious that he hadn't (as he had admitted it), but it's not a 3A.M. Movie. It doesn't have the energy to keep you going, and the ending is a bit of a let down. Whatever energy was left was dead, and so was the night.
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