The Prague Post
September 6th, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Hotel Prague Centre

Home » Archives » Tempo

My bloody valentine

A film festival for lovers of sexploitation and bad taste

By Marika Ley
For The Prague Post
February 13th, 2008 issue

Shock Proof Film Festival

When: Feb. 19–24
Where: Kino Aero
Tickets: 70–95 Kč, available at the venue
Not all the films are in English. For more
information and a complete schedule, check www.otrlydivak.cz

So candy and flowers aren’t your style on Valentine’s Day. What better, then, to warm the heart than a film fest that focuses on foul features of the “B” persuasion? The Shock Proof Film Festival provides a refuge for the wayward lot who prefer transvestites over transcendence, dementia over deduction, and blood over bliss, all under the thin veneer of “cultural awareness.”
Ivo Anderle, one of the festival’s curators at Kino Aero, titters with subdued gaiety while explaining the lack of intelligentsia film appeal. “We’re showing the Prague premieres of Rambo [2007], Deep Throat [1972] and Starcrash [1978], an Italian film with David Hasselhoff,” he says with a mischievous smile.
Rarely does one see such pride from an art-house director reveling in the guilty pleasures of soft porn, over-the-top gore and cult classics like Blood Feast (1963) by Herschell Gordon Lewis and Francis Ford Coppola’s Dementia 13 (1963).
“And we have a shock self-portrait contest, too,” Anderle giggles. “Send us a shocking or disturbing picture of yourself, and we’ll post the winning photo on the festival Web site, give the winner two festival passes and a 500 Kč bar tab at Kino Aero.”
The films were culled with care for their low-budget or far-out plot devices, ranging from angry animals to eroticism. The Japanese, for instance, really know how to inject porn with a piqued perspective, as in The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai (2005), about a prostitute who becomes a genius after a bullet lodges in her cerebral cortex, or The Strange Saga of Hiroshi the Freeloading Sex Machine (2003), where men are depicted as sex objects. Those two films comprise the Pinku Film double feature, “pink film” being a Japanese genre of quickie movies shot on 16 mm or 35 mm with an extremely low budget, requisite number of sex scenes and, of course, hot Japanese chicks.
Starcrash is the opener of a triple-feature “Kult Movie Night” produced by Ivo Pospišal, the art, avant-garde and psycho film peddler at Radost FX. Think Flash Gordon on early ’80s prescription drugs, with Hasselhoff as the crown prince of the universe and Christopher Plummer as the evil emperor. That’s followed by Black Sheep (2006), which was screened at Karlovy Vary. Only a film from New Zealand could try to terrify with an attack by approximately 10 million contaminated sheep coming after their herders. Rounding out the bill is A Bucket of Blood (1959) by the King of the Bs, Roger Corman. Closet and open Bohos can participate in his film about “far-out” beatniks, as it will be shown silently, with a jukebox soundtrack selected by the viewing audience prior to the screening.
Another Hollywood deviant, Edward D. Wood Jr, gets an entire night with screenings of three of his illegitimate spawn. The first, Glen or Glenda (1953), is a study of transvestitism that showcases the acting talents of the director himself, as well as Wood’s infamous preoccupation with fuzzy sweaters. Bride of the Monster (1955) features performances by loveable, drug-addled Bela Lugosi and the concussion-afflicted semi-pro wrestler Tor Jonson.  
Entrance is free to those brazen enough to come dressed as an Ed Wood film celebrity. Prizes will be given before the screening of the final film, the groundbreaking epic Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), with a possessed zombie cameo by the ever-seductive Vampira.
Conceptual and film artist Marek Ther is slated to show To Hell and Back opening night (Feb. 19). Ther is building quite a reputation for himself in the homemade avant-visual art arena. “We’re not sure what it’ll be like; he does weird, kitschy sex films,” Anderle says. “We hope we’ll be able to screen it.”
And if they’re not able to screen it? Who wants to bet they’ll screen it anyway?

Marika Ley can be reached at tempo@praguepost.com


Other articles in Tempo (13/02/2008):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.