They may call it the Big Easy, but those movies surely weren't, or...

The Tenth 
New Orleans 
World's Worst 
Film Festival (2000)

(A.K.A. NOWFF X)

As remembered by Apostic, with the kind assistance of Mrs. Apostic

The worst returns to laughter. Welcome, then, 
Thou unsubstantial air that I embrace.
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)

Prologue

Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be brief.  No, really!

Most of the dreaded B-Masters Cabal came to this event.  So you'll know who I'm talking about...

But I won't tell you about how Mrs. Apostic and I arrived in New Orleans ahead of everyone else. Nor will I tell you about how we went back to the airport and ran into the Stomp Tokyo crew, who was still waiting for Dr. Freex. Nor will you hear from me how we greeted Ken at the airport by holding up a "Jabootu" sign. You won't even get a hint from this author about the wild party at the hotel after the Borntregers arrived.

Nope. Not going to tell you any of this. The others will be covering this stuff, and I'd rather leave travelogues like that to people who tell 'em better.

Therefore, this article is going to focus on the event.

For the past ten years the New Orleans World's Worst Film Festival (NOWFF) has been entertaining audiences with the some of the most astoundingly bad feature films ever made.  Within the last two years, they've broadened their advertising to the Internet, and thanks to Crystal Guillory (their vice president and ambassador to the 'net), we decided to head over to New Orleans for a visit.

So there we were in New Orleans, on 10 June 2000, at high noon, for twelve hours of delicious cinematic hell....

On With the Show!

Opening Ceremonies

This is best explained by a series of pictures.

	NOWFF president Alfred Richards takes the stage and announces what follows. A marching band enters from the left lead by Crystal. She takes the stage to the right of Alfred.
	The marching band enters.  They're followed by a bubble-wrap version of the monster from The Creeping Terror.
	The bubble-wrap terror attacks the podium and is ceremonially killed.

After a few introductions and other opening notes, they began running the movies.  Those movies 

First Leg: Uphill

Serpent Island (1954) - Ah! Pain! Pain! Mrs. Apostic called this stock footage laden loser "Jungle Hell's cousin." Bert I. Gordon, before he was Mr. BIG and made movies about giant critters, made this loser about a manly sailor (played by the manly (?) Sonny Tufts) and a gal (Mary Munday) and their adventures across the ocean to find an island inhabited by a cult and a snake. When the snake finally shows up three-quarters of the way through, it's handicapped; it can't attack people without their help. (Think rubber octopus in Bride of the Monster (1956).)

My Son the Vampire (1952) - More pain, but not as bad. Just as a quick molar extraction without anesthesia is better than a slow arm amputation, this movie is better than Serpent Island. Arthur Lucan drags it out as the title character in the last of the "Old Mother Riley" series of films, which was about the misadventures of an elderly British cleaning woman. Bela Lugosi plays a mad scientist who likes to sleep in a coffin. He plans on taking over the world with an army of robots, but his prototype is delivered to Mother Riley. Annoying attempts at zaniness and agonizing slapstick follows, and as Mrs. Apostic reminds me, who the heck was the "son" the title hinted at?

Hillbillys [sic] in a Haunted House (1967) - Oh, God, someone just slowly amputated my arm. Title sums up the plot, but contains no warnings, like "Not meant for human consumption." Two singers and their manager are introduced to us while they sing a country tune. They're in a car that would gross out even the strongest NRA member; it's decorated with various firearms on the hood and sides, but we suppose it's because they didn't have room for a gun rack. 

Anyway, they have to stop for the night in a house with a bad reputation. So they sing a country tune. And then there's a knock at the door. Enter a band, which sings a couple of country tunes and leaves. So our heroes explore the house. And they sing a country tune. They call it a night, so the manager watches TV, where people are singing country tunes. (Pattern? Could be. Taken as they are, the songs aren't too bad. Presented as plot drop-ins, they're endlessly excruciating.) 

The haunts of the house include John Carridine, Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney, Jr., and a gorilla. The gorilla has a habit of getting out of his cage and running away. Maybe the other haunts should've done the same thing and ran out of the movie. Mrs. Apostic adds, "What the hell was that ending? Fifteen minutes of bad country! Arrgh!"

Notes - Afterwards, Ken and I were talking about how grueling this was. He noted two things that were different from a B-Fest. For one thing, each movie at the NOWFF was formally introduced to the audience, vice B-Fest where they show the movies back to back with occasional breaks. Somehow, the NOWFF format tested more of our mettle. Secondly, at a B-Fest you get some relatively watchable movies up-front, with Serpent Island and Hillbillys playing after the audience has been numbed; at NOWFF, they hit us with the tough ones in the first round.

Alan and Rob from Oh, the Humanity! were sitting behind me. Their one-liners were devastating. One left me laughing so hard I couldn't breath. Thanks, guys.

Second Leg: Leveling Off

Seven Dwarfs to the Rescue (1951) - We had a lot of build up on how bad this one was. However, after torture tests like Serpent Island and Hillbillys, this one was starting to look like Gone with the Wind. Italian live action sequel to the "Snow White" story. After Prince Charming goes off to war, a mystic tyrant called the Prince of Darkness captures Snow White. Since Donald Pleasence isn't around to knock him back to his home dimension, it's up to the dwarfs to go on a quest to find and rescue Snow. 

Not too bad, but it's hard to be subjective at this point. Has the same internal logic as the average Italian sword-and-sandal adventure, but aimed at the kiddies, so it's less boring and less pretentious. Some interesting sets and a couple of cool effects. Plus a lot of short people if you're into that sort of thing.

Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957) - An ode to shellfish with an attitude, written by Charles B. Griffith and directed by Roger Corman. Nuclear testing causes a crab (singular) to mutate into a crab catcher's nightmare. Not only is this sucker big, it's telepathic and acquires the memories of those it eats. (Cf. the problematic plant in Little Shop of Horrors (1960), which talks to its victim, shows unusual signs of its meals, and was a Corman/Griffith thing.) Features Russell Johnson, later of Gilligan's Island fame, as a technician-not-a-scientist.

Notes - There were several presentations by the NOWFF staff throughout the event, and one of them was moving. I won't recount it here. Better they should do it.

During the movies, a small girl came around selling popcorn. Although it was a cute addition to the festivities and a welcome source of complex carbohydrates, this became surprisingly problematic. During a scene in Seven Dwarfs, a matronly character was having problems with her donkey. "Yeah," I quipped in a raspy voice, "She's having problems with her ass." I looked over just in time to see the innocent face of the popcorn girl and felt so guilty….

Austin horror host Prof. Griffin performed a lively introduction for Crab Monsters, which included a parody of the "Ballad of Gilligan's Isle."

Although the sequence in the program said Seven Dwarfs followed Crab Monsters, I would've sworn the reverse was true. Perhaps yours truly was suffering from information overload by this point.

Mrs. Apostic asked me if I wanted some food because she was inclined to go get some carry out. But just as she (an ER nurse) is unlikely to leave the scene of a disaster, she couldn't bring herself to leave the show.

At the NOWFF website, they recommended pillows for the wooden theater seats. They weren't kidding. By this time, not only was my backside sore, but so was my left arm, because I'd been sitting through all this with my arm around the brave Mrs. Apostic. I had to lie down during a big chunk of Crab Monsters to take the pressure off my seat and stretch out my arm. Afterwards, we joked with some of the Stomp Tokyo crew about merchandising cushions with their logo at future events. (How badly would you want random strangers to press their backsides on your logo?)

Third Leg: Downhill Racers

Monster Zero (1965, US cut 1970) - Chris and Scott of Stomp Tokyo sponsored and introduced this one. A civilization that dresses like Devo is living on Planet X and wants to borrow Godzilla and Rodan to fight Ghidora (or Gidora or Gidorha or Ghidohra or how ever you want to transliterate it). Then they threaten Earth with their newly acquired pet monsters. Lots of fun. Whenever the Big G hit the screen, several audience members shouted "Wassup!"

The Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1966) - Not a legal case, but might've been more exciting as one. Scientists bring a tree sized plant sample from the Antarctic to a tropical island. The plant thaws, and before you can shout "Aiee! Tabanga!" it rampages at night. (Cf. Day of the Triffids (1962).) Actually, "rampages" isn't quite the word. More like it stands still until someone is stupid enough to lean against it, which happens a lot. The tree monster isn't the only motionless thing here; the plot moves at the speed of a glacier. Mamie Van Doren puts in a surprisingly unemotional performance as a nurse.

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1958) - If you've seen this film at an appropriate occasion, you know the drill. ("Bela!" "Tor!" "Chiropractor! "Wicker! Rattan! Wicker! Rattan!" "Day! Night!") Paper plates for flinging during the saucer scenes were provided.

Duck Dodgers in the 24½ Century (1953) - For the finale, we return to Planet X and see Daffy Duck go toe to toe with Marvin the Martin.

Notes - We got a music video from horror host Svengouli of Chicago. He sang a cute parody of "Soul Man" called "Ro-Man," with footage from Robot Monster (1953).

A horror hostess from Australia called Tabitha introduced Plan 9. Couldn't hear a word she said because of her quiet voice plus the noise around my seat. Liz at And You Call Yourself a Scientist asked us to play nice with her, but leaning forward with my hand to my ear was the best I could do.

Epilogue

Nope. I promised to be brief.

I'm not going to tell you about the champagne brunch the next morning. Nor how most of the others went shopping afterwards. Nor will you hear from me about how the others (Ken, Andrew Mulchoney, and myself) went to the newly opened D-Day museum, but couldn't get tickets because it was sold out that day.

	Nor will I tell you about how Chris, Jeff, Mrs. Apostic, and I went to a tourist trap for hurricanes. Nor will I tell you that those Stomp Tokyo guys can drink like fish. And I certainly won't tell you how Jeff may have gone from "Film Boy" to "Reel Man" that night. (It's a lot more wholesome than it sounds. Honest!)
	And don't even expect me to tell you about my sensory overload.  For example, that cloud over there was starting to look like Godzilla.

Nah. For us B-Masters, the camaraderie was essential. But for you, the reader who wasn't at NOWFF X and might want to put NOWFF XI into your travel plans, the event was (and is) the thing.

Originally published 17 June 2000

Be sure to check out the other websites that covered this event.