We all know about the blood, sweat and tears that go into Dance Marathon every year. But there’s another marathon each winter quarter that may not be as physically exhausting but is just as difficult to endure mentally.
From Jan. 28 to Jan. 29, A&O Productions’ annual B-Fest will take over McCormick Auditorium for a 24-hour festival of B-movies. Like an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 come to life, audience participation and commentary are not only allowed, they are encouraged.
“I’d really say that almost every attendee at B-Fest is a super-fan,” Abhit Bhandari, co-chair of A&O’s Films Committee, says. “They know the film so well that they plan jokes and bring props and sort of act out the film with the movie.”
B-movies are low-budget films usually in the horror or science fiction genre. These movies are generally plagued with bad acting, poor special effects and plot lines that make little to no sense. Chase Jackson, an A&O member and B-movie fan, says the more faults a film has, the better.
“They’re goofy,” Jackson, a Weinberg junior, says. “You don’t have to take them too seriously.”
B-Fest began in 1981 as the “Twenty-(plus)-Hour B-Movie Horror and Science Fiction Festival.” Since then, it has become an annual event that die-hard B-movie fans from across the country — and possibly around the world — look forward to every year. Famous film critic Roger Ebert even tweeted about B-Fest this year.
“It’s this huge thing that doesn’t get a lot of attention at Northwestern,” Weinberg junior Charlotte Melbinger, co-chair of A&O’s Films Committee, says.
In its almost 30 years, B-Fest has become steeped in tradition. While the film lineup changes from year to year, two films — The Wizard of Speed and Time and Plan 9 from Outer Space — have been shown every year for at least the past 10 years. When The Wizard of Speed and Time, a three-minute short from 1979, appears on the screen, audience members run onto the stage, lie on their backs and put their legs up in the air as if they are running along with the wizard in the film. During the midnight showing of Plan 9 from Outer Space, the audience throws paper plates at the screen to symbolize the makeshift flying saucers in the film.
“The attendees are just really passionate and know the movies inside and out,” Bhandari, a Weinberg junior, says. “That’s why we have to spend so much time choosing the lineup, because we have to find movies that not everyone’s heard of, which is usually hard because they devote so much time” to films.
Brian Thomas, a 50-year-old writer from Chicago, is one of those devoted fans. He began attending B-Fest in the 1980s and has been to the movie marathon at least 20 times. Thomas describes B-Fest as “kind of like Christmas” for B-movie fans, and the audience participation is part of the experience. It is not unusual to see audience members dance along with a dance sequence in a film, dress up like characters from the movie or re-enact fight scenes. Thomas says one audience participant has become known for using a slide whistle to make sound effects along with the films.
“It’s basically a party,” Thomas says. “The audience is part of the entertainment.”
This year’s film lineup includes horror, musical, action, comedy and blaxploitation films. Top Dog, one of the first films at B-Fest this year, is a cop/comedy/action movie starring Chuck Norris and his partner, a dog named Reno. Manos: The Hands of Fate will play halfway through B-Fest. The 1966 horror film about a family who meets a devil-worshiping cult while on vacation is recognized as one of the worst movies ever made. Towards the end of B-Fest, audience members will see Vanilla Ice in Cool As Ice, the rapper’s feature film debut.
While B-Fest may not be getting as much publicity as A&O’s other big winter event that same night (Aziz Ansari, anyone?), B-Fest is no less loved and appreciated by its devoted fans.
“The energy and atmosphere at B-Fest is just incredible,” Bhandari says. “I went for the first time last year and was amazed that I hadn’t heard anything about it. I feel like it’s one of the best-kept secrets at Northwestern.”
A&O Productions’ B-Fest runs from this Friday at 6 p.m. to Saturday at 6 p.m. at McCormick Auditorium in Norris. Tickets are $20 for students or $35 for general admission and can be purchased online from the Norris Box Office.