The San Francisco Independent Film Festival is just around the corner. The annual pre-opening night/benefit party at the Rickshaw Stop at 155 Fell is on Saturday night, gearing up the local festival goers for the inevitable two week long party that starts on February 8th. This will be the ninth annual Indiefest. In a town literally brimming with successful film festivals, this is the granddaddy of them all.

Laura Dern in INLAND EMPIRE

Opening night starts with Laura Dern starring in the latest offering from film artiste David Lynch called INLAND EMPIRE. As usual, the festival includes a good smattering from my favorite genre (horror!) with offerings like NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH and S&MAN. There will be plenty of fare for the more artsy types out there, including an intriguing film called GREEN MIND, METAL BATS. I got to see this movie at a press junket last week, and as usual it was a film that made me realize there’s more out there than my self-made horror ghetto. It makes me happy that we have this festival in San Francisco, because without it very few of these films would have a chance to be seen by the general public.

Of course, there are some films that will go on to notoriety and you’ll get bragging rights on those films to all your friends as well. In the past Indiefest has been responsible for premiering films like BUBBA HO TEP. The closing film this year is FIDO, a wonderful post apocalyptic tale set in the 50’s featuring zombies as housepets and starring Carrie Ann Moss (THE MATRIX). I’m pretty sure everyone will be hearing about some of these films, and if you attend you can tell them that you saw it first at the SF Indiefest.

San Francisco Indiefest
http://www.sfindie.com
February 8th-20th
Benefit at the Rickshaw Stop, 155 Fell, 8pm on January 27th.

Listen up — if you are a horror movie fan, I am about to give you the hottest tip on a movie you will ever know. I have known about it for a few weeks, but I made some bad assumptions, such as assuming it would play for more than one showing. If you liked Peter Jackson’s DEAD ALIVE, or adored the EVIL DEAD movies, or secretly wish Whitley Streiber would take it up the ass with a giant spinning multi bladed anal probe, then you absolutely need to go down to the Metreon and see Jake West’s EVIL ALIENS for the one showing it will have. They are showing it in FREAKING IMAX, which staggers me to think that I can watch that much gore on a 3 story screen.

I first encountered this movie via Bruce Fletcher of the San Francisco Indiefest. If you want to find gems, this film festival can produce them like no other. Bruce is a huge fan of schlocky films, as is evidenced by his choice of Sean Connery in ZARDOZ for the Saturday matinee of Another Hole in the Head, another SF Indie festival production that recently played at the landmark Roxie Theatre on 16th Street.

EVIL ALIENS is the second film of English director Jake West, who also directed RAZORBLADE SMILE. It stars an all star (at least in England) cast which includes Norman Lovett, also known to true geeks as the floating disembodied head of Holly the Computer in RED DWARF. The movie is basically a campy mixture of the squickiest bits of alien folklore, ley line superstition, and a British sense of humor via the FORTEAN TIMES.

I saw it here in San Francisco at the film festival. I have followed the website at http://www.evilaliensthemovie.co.uk/ since the moment I got home from that first festival. I liked it so much I pirated it the instant I could. I managed to procure a copy of the DVD by pre-ordering theough Amazon.Com.UK a few days ago, and I will be at the IMAX Showing tonight. Or maybe tomorrow night? At any rate, you should disregard the Comic Book Guy’s review of this movie on that Amazon site — the movie is so freakin’ awesome that I’m about to pee my pants just thinking about it. If you are not in San Francisco but still want to see it, go to the official website and see if it’s playing tonight in your town. It’s opening in more places in future weekends, so check on that as well.

Of course, if you don’t like horror movies, carry on with your decidedly blood-free existance and have a nice life.

Last night I had the unabashed privelege of seeing the Charles Band/Full Moon Pictures Traveling Roadshow. For those of you unfamiliar with the films (I use the term loosely) of Charles Band, you are in for a treat. He is singlehanded responsible for the careers of Demi Moore and Lance Hendrickson, giving them their first movie roles. Demi got to star in the insanely bad PARASITE IN 3D and Lance got his start in the Stuart Gordon directorial masterstroke THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM.

Charles (don’t call him Chuck) brought his roadshow to the Rickshaw Stop last night, before an audience of maniacal horror movie fans. Sponsored in part by the San Francisco Indiefest, this show wasn’t so much a plea for people to buy more of Mr. Band’s movies as it was quality entertainment. Although the mysogynistic obsession with ‘hot chicks’ was a little annoying to me, the rest of the crowd loved it. He encouraged (and got) a female member of the audience to flash us, and chopped the head off another female member of the audience. I suspected the girl in the blond wig was a ringer, but covering up that sort of thing was never Mr. Band’s strong suit.

Mr. Band stood on stage and told anecdotes about his travels and working on mvoeis. This is a guy that shoots a full length feature film in TEN DAYS, so he has some stories. Interspersed with these tall tales are clips from his movies. He had an amazing story to tell about my current favorite movie of his, THE GINGERDEAD MAN starring Gary Busey as the voice of a homicidal man-shaped cookie. Of course, all this shilling was for his latest film starring Tommy Chong, entitled THE EVIL BONG. I’ll give you three guesses as to what it’s about.

If you missed this show, don’t worry — he’ll probably be back next year for the San Francisco Horror Fest in February.