My Monday at FF: Nikkatsu, the Victory of America and the Karaoke Experiment

So Monday got really tough for me because I have a full-time job here too and it was a particularly trying day. Thus I only watched one feature, but man was it good.

I actually rewatched the Phil Chambliss program of shorts and those got a great reaction. We had more time for the Q&A and it went into more depth. For instance, the guy who plays the Devil's Helper apparently threatened to kill everyone at the gravel pit where he and Chambliss worked if he was fired. Phil said that at his funeral there were only six cars. Phil's Q&As are full of little details about rural Arkansas, which seems like a whole other planet.

Then over to the first part of the Nikkatsu retrospective, A COLT IS MY PASSPORT. It's dificult to describe what makes it so great. Words don't seem to convey the mix of stripped down pulp elements and new wave influenced film style. The whole thing is really glued together by Jo Shishido's performance as a highly professional assassin who is cornered by two mobs and forced to use all his resourcefulness to fight back. No time or motion is wasted. It's a pure film, and the audience would have injected it directly into their brains if they could. Average rating on this site from people who were there: 4.5 of 5. And there are two more screenings. It's in the big theater 1 so there's room for everyone at tonight's insane juvenile delinquent film THE WARPED ONES (aka WEIRD LOVEMAKERS). And just as at the first showing, expert and author Mark Schilling will be there to answer questions and sign copies of his FAB Press book NO BORDERS, NO LIMITS: NIKKATSU ACTION CINEMA, which are for sale in the lobby before and after the show. And the great Marc Walkow of the New York Asian Film Fest will be there to run live subtitles again. Don't count on seeing these films in a theater ever again.

Then it was time to play the Fantastic Feud, a trivia game show hosted by the diabolical Scott Weinberg pitting the horror nerds of USA against the horror nerds of all the terrorist countries. It was pretty loose and was fairly close throughout but we freedom-lovers pulled away from the pack with a flurry of Matt Kiernan madness. Fangoria and AMC Monsterfest Blogger Kiernan was like George Washington, General Patton and the 1980 United States Hockey Team rolled into one trivia machine, and even though the Haters Of Our Freedom had some pretty spectacular players like Hasko Baumann and turncoat John Carpenter, the Patriots rallied behind Kiernan, Zack Carlson and Terror Thursday hero Daniel Kerr to keep the flame of liberty burning over the Earth.

Then there was karaoke, which was fun, then strange, then fun again, then disturbing, then even funner, then darkly disturbing. I'll leave it for the authorities to decide who did what. And I'll leave it for the philosophers to try to tell us why. All I know is that I am a different person. Stronger in some ways. Weaker in others.

Sayonara.