It’s 12:15 p.m. on Saturday in Norris and people are shuffling out of McCormick Auditorium, groggily heading toward Starbucks for a caffeine kick. At first glance, the sleep-deprived zombies seem like typical campus-dwellers, but, on closer look, there’s something slightly different. Many of them are wearing comic-printed T-shirts, and they seem a little old, on the whole, to be just another group of students. The reason? It’s B-Fest 2009, and these people have come from all over the country, even the world, to watch the 24-hour B-movie marathon.
Presented by A&O productions, B-Fest has been a tradition since 1981. But times have changed since ’81’s “The First Annual Twenty-(plus)-Hour B-Movie Horror and Science Fiction Festival,” where tickets were only $3. B-Fest is held on campus and follows Evanston law, kicking out viewers under 18 at 11:45 p.m. and letting them back in at 8 a.m. Despite the fact that student tickets are significantly discounted ($20 vs. $35), “it tends to be a lot more people from out of town,” B-Fest Coordinator Laura Lozano said.
Even though A&O doesn’t heavily publicize the event on campus, the Internet draws a large proportion of out-of-towners. The event, widely known in B-movie fan circles, has sold out or gotten close to it for the past six years. This year, A&O sold 224 tickets to B-Fest, not including compensated sponsor seats.
The B-movie originated as the second, lesser half of a double feature, according to this explainer from Duane L. Martin of B-Movie Central, which bills itself as “your home for the best b-movie reviews, information and more.”
“If you’ve ever seen one of those cheesy sci-fi movies from the 50’s, or seen a goofy old monster movie where the monster looks like something out of a Sid and Marty Krofft Saturday morning kid’s show,” Martin writes, “then you’ve seen a b-movie.” Still, people love these low-budget films.
Josh Shepherd, who came to B-Fest for the past five years from Carlisle, Ky., didn’t come just to watch awful movies. He came to see people that he met and interacts with online. “It’s an opportunity to meet people I know all across the country,” Shepherd said. “It’s a convention-like atmosphere.” Shepherd sees the people from his forum on Badmoviezone.com as “an extended family” and they all joke around as if they’ve known one another for years.
Dave Thomas, who lives just outside of London, came all the way here for B-Fest. While he promised his wife a vacation, Thomas came mainly for the festival. He described his first B-Fest as a mix of “sleep deprivation and mind-blowing terribleness.” While it is a long way to come for movies, Thomas said that it is worth it to meet everyone he knows from online.
Surviving mostly on energy drinks, B-Fest attendees are known to take naps during the particularly bad movies — and, with these films, that’s really saying something. A particularly beloved part of the day is 12 a.m. the first night when Plan 9 From Outer Space comes on. As a tradition, viewers throw paper plates at the screen every time a flying saucer comes on.
In fact, the seventh guideline on “The Rules” section of the advertisement specifically says, “If you throw any plate that isn’t made out of paper during Plan 9 From Outer Space, you will be beaten twice.”
Along with Plan 9, fans eagerly anticipate the last movie of the event. This year’s movie, Godzilla vs. Megalon (originally a Japanese film), was no exception. Though B-fest was a long 24 hours, the last movie let the day end on a high note. All throughout, the crowd cheered and clapped, enjoying the final stretch.
But for many, B-Fest isn’t about the movies — it’s about who you’re watching them with. At the end of the day, everyone helps clean the auditorium together, and people slowly file out with coolers and pillows in hand. A man started leaving the auditorium, stopped and shouted, “See you next year, everyone!” –- and he probably will.