And now, the fourth and final installment of the Sci-Fi Marathon recap...

The next movie was The Apple, and the only way I can describe it is this: “If the Book of Revelation was a ‘70s disco musical, this would be it.” Yet another movie that must have been made while on drugs, the setting is 1994 (“the future”) and a record company headed by a stereotyped gay version of Satan has taken over the world. Everyone has to wear the company’s logo (a prismatic triangle) somewhere on their bodies, and the only group who opposes this are hippies who live under a bridge (although they don’t show up until quite late in the film). Most of the “plot” concerns a Canadian-who-sounds-kinda-British guy who is trying to “save” his girlfriend, who has signed with the evil record company. The most amusing part is the end, when any shred of subtlety this movie had is completely cast aside. I think about 90% of the movie’s budget was spent on glitter. What surprised me was that it was on an extremely good film print. All the images were really crisp. I thought it was a great movie to make fun of, but Chris genuinely liked it.

Following The Apple was a dance contest, which was somewhat amusing because the participants had to dance to 30 seconds of a random TV or movie theme. Chris was going to participate, but then dropped out so he could go to the bathroom. If he had stayed in, he would’ve had to dance to the Star Wars theme. There was one guy who could dance really well, as well as a fat guy who did ballet to the Twilight Zone theme, which was just amusing. After the dance contest there were more trailers, this time mostly for movies that haven’t come out yet (There were exceptions; they played the trailer for Thunderbirds, and most of the audience booed it). The teaser trailer for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was played and had a good reception, but everyone cheered the trailer for Revenge of the Sith.

The last movie that we stayed there for was Code 46. I had heard it was interesting and I had wanted to see it, but it ended up being kind of boring. Maybe it was because it was very late and I was getting tired. It’s got a very slow pace to it, but Tim Robbins is still good.

We left right after Code 46 ended, and so missed The Abyss (which was the Surprise Movie), At the Earth’s Core (a B movie), Helix…Loaded (a spoof of The Matrix starring Vanilla Ice, and a bad one at that, from what I’ve heard), Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (which I still want to see, although I figured I wouldn’t be awake enough for it if I stayed) and First Men in the Moon (an old Harryhausen movie). So that’s it for this year’s Sci-Fi Marathon. Hopefully I’ll be able to go next year, although it will be harder to do so.

Now, here's Part 3 of the Sci-Fi Marathon Recap:

Chris returned shortly after the movie ended, and we enjoyed another half-hour of trailers, ‘50s fire safety PSAs (one of which was a badly-animated cartoon starring Sparky the Fire Dog), and ‘50s refreshment stand ads (including the same ad that plays incessantly on the drive-in movie screen in the background while John Travolta sings in Grease). Apparently, people had a much different sight/taste correspondence in the ‘50s because any time those ads show hamburgers, sloppy joes, or other meat product, it just looks disgusting. Most of the trailers were for ‘50s B movies, including Assignment: Outer Space, Rocketship XC-1, First Spaceship on Venus, and Queen of Blood (which had Dennis Hopper in it). Immediately after the trailer for Queen of Blood was Spaceboy (which, I noticed, stars the same woman who was the Queen of Blood). Don’t ask me to explain Spaceboy, because I seriously can’t beyond telling you that it could very possibly be mistaken for a student film & that everyone involved in this film was probably on drugs. Chris was somewhere between traumatized and amused, and merely said that it surpassed Pink Floyd’s The Wall in terms of making you feel like you’re on drugs (I maintain that the top spot belongs to Excel Saga).

After the trailers Chris and I went back over to Panera to hang out with Darby until the place closed. We ended up having a lengthy discussion with some woman about military inefficiency. After that was over, we walked Darby back to her car (on the way, we passed a CPA office that had a cat inside, and we weren’t sure why it was in an accountant’s office). Chris and I then returned to the Drexel and caught the last half hour of Fire Maidens From Outer Space, which is your average ‘50s B movie.

After that we were treated to another half-hour of trailers and ads, which proved to be some of the more…”interesting” of the night. The round led off with the trailer for Masters of the Universe, a live-action He-Man movie that features a then-unknown Courtney Cox (I never knew this movie existed, but I kind of remember the cartoon). There was also the trailer for the early ‘80s bomb Flash Gordon, which has Timothy Dalton in one of the supporting roles (this is another movie besides Highlander with music by Queen: “Flash…AAAAAAHHHH”). Following that was the trailer for Flesh Gordon, an X-rated parody, although the trailer doesn’t really have anything X-rated in it. The same can’t be said for the next one, Café Flesh. That’s right, we were shown a genuine ‘80s porno trailer. After the initial surprise wore off, Bob shouted out, “Thank you Bruce!” (Bruce is the guy who runs the Sci-Fi Marathon). Between these 3 trailers were portions of a concession stand ad that featured pictures of the food on top of footage of ‘50s-style ancient Greek women dancing. Nobody could understand how the two were related. Bob’s comment was, “Subliminal advertising’s gotten too obvious.”

Next up was the trailer for the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which would’ve seemed tame next to Café Flesh if not for the fact that every single person in the entire audience (except me) had the entire thing memorized and kept shouting out all the lines (I’ve never seen Rocky Horror, so I guess I have an excuse for not knowing the words to the trailer). This was followed by trailers for Privilege (some ‘60s British “controversial” movie about rock music that looked boring), Roller Boogie (an entire movie about roller skating), Can’t Stop the Music (starring the Village People), and Xanadu (another movie about roller skating; this one stars Olivia Newton-John). Somewhere in this mess was a bit for the “AMC Midnight Express.” I believe Jerry O’Connell was in this bit as a nerdy moviegoer, but I can’t figure out when it was made (the clothes, fashions, and special effects look old, but Jerry O’Connell looked pretty much the same as he does now).

The end of the trailers was marked by “The Chubbchubbs,” a cartoon that they showed two years ago and one I found to be pretty entertaining. However, someone messed up on the film spool and so we had to watch the whole thing upside-down and backwards.

Here's Part 2 of my Sci-Fi Marathon recap:

Our first feature was Mothra, featuring all the classic cheese you expect from a Japanese monster movie (my B movies of choice). This one was apparently the uncut and restored Japanese version complete with English subtitles-except when a character spoke English; then we would occasionally get very large Japanese subtitles (one time they messed up and gave English subtitles to a person speaking English). There was actually a lot of English for a movie made in Japan, especially when Mothra goes to destroy a nonexistent place called New Kirk City (which spawned a bunch of William Shatner jokes from the audience), located in a nonexistent country that seemed to be populated with bad American actors. I like to make fun of bad movies, but I usually can’t think of anything funny, so I resign myself to enjoying the heckles coming from the rest of the audience. There was a guy about 3 rows behind us (I think his name was “Bob”) who shouted out several gems throughout the entire marathon. Example: A bunch of scientists venture to an island that is supposed to be radioactive. On the back of the radiation suits they each have a bright red tank and a bright yellow tank. Bob shouted, “They brought ketchup & mustard!” Anyways, it’s hard to go wrong with a Japanese monster movie (although it’s possible: 1995’s Godzilla vs. Destroyah and 1996’s Rebirth of Mothra come to mind; they’re so awful you don’t even want to watch them to make fun of them).

The next movie was Primer, which from what I can tell is a recent movie about time travel that is hard to understand, but Chris and I didn’t see it because we went to Barnes & Noble and P.F. Chang’s with Darby. While we were gone, I thought I had missed the short film “Gravity,” which is a Sci-Fi Marathon regular & which I had also missed two years ago, but apparently they never showed it at all (“due to technical problems”).

We got back to the Drexel just after Steamboy started. Chris left to go move his car closer to the theater and to hang out with Darby at Panera Bread (maybe it was just me, but he seemed to have Darby on the brain for the entire weekend), while I watched the movie, even though I didn’t particularly want to. Steamboy is an anime movie made by the same people who did Akira. It takes place in London during the Exhibition of 1851. I’m not much of an anime fan (with the exception of Inuyasha, Ranma, Spirited Away, and a couple other random things), but this movie was at least watchable, even though the dubbing was a bit odd (and that’s a very unusual statement to be coming from me, since I normally prefer the English dubs). Anna Paquin (Rogue in X-Men) was the voice of the main character, who was supposed to be a boy about 12 or 13 years old, and her voice just doesn’t sound like a 12-or-13-year-old boy’s. Alfred Molina and Patrick Stewart also provided voices.

Once again, I have not posted in a long time. I’ve been hard at work on senior project. In the meantime, the Sci-Fi Marathon was Saturday, so I have something to report on. I discovered that to post on the Marathon all in one go would be way too long, so I've broken it up into four parts. This is Part 1.

First, though, I have a bit of Sci-Fi Marathon nostalgia (not much, though, since this year’s was only my second marathon). I found some old posts on Drexel’s message board about the 2003 marathon (the first one I went to; I wasn’t able to go last year), as well as a blog on Ain’t It Cool News. Apparently, both Carol (Liz’s friend) and Corey (Liz’s brother) left lasting impressions, at least at the time. People remembered Carol as “Big Sister” in the costume contest (they were sad that she lost because of a “stupid double entendre”). Corey left a less favorable impression (and one person blamed Carol’s loss on the fact that she was “associated with” Corey). One person described him as the “drunk Cowboy Bebop guy,” while most referred to him as the “Springer reject” (and I know they were talking about him because they mentioned the fact that he was wearing a cowboy hat and he was the only one shouting weird stuff to the audience before Cowboy Bebop started). Nobody really liked him. I wonder if they still remember him. Now, onto this year’s marathon…

I wasn’t able to stay the whole time because I was with Chris (who was my ride), and he didn’t want to stay for the whole thing (this may or may not have something to do with the fact that I have roommates this year). Oh, well. I probably would have slept through the morning movies anyways (this is what happened two years ago).

The marathon was at a different theater this year, the Drexel Grandview (as opposed to the Arena Grand; I decided I like the Grand better, even though there was only one screen at the Grandview, so we had the entire place to ourselves). Saturday also had some of the nastiest weather to walk/drive around in (cold, windy, rainy, and snowy). There was also virtually no place to park near the theater. We ended up parking at a church about five or six blocks down (as a result, my hair was a frizzy mess for the next 24 hours).