Jason goes to Holehead--Day 9

After staying up past 2 am Friday night, then getting up early for the special screening of SUPER 8 Saturday morning, I still dragged myself up for three movies at Holehead.

First up, APOCRYPHA, a cool little locally made film. Griffith is a senior editor at the San Francisco Chronicle. If that's not impressive enough, he worked his way up there in just a year...after appearing in San Francisco with absolutely no memory of who he is or how he got there. He's also a womanizing douchebag, but lately he's had a powerful desire to bite the women he beds on the neck (worse yet, some are into it). He confesses all this to his psychiatrist, a delightfully acerbic drunk who blames Griffith for driving him to drink. Meanwhile, Maggie wakes up in Golden Gate park with absolutely no memory. An odd set of coincidences will inevitably bring these soulless-mates together. It's a good story, cleverly revealed, and features a pretty meaty role by the Thrillpeddlers' Will McMichael (that reminds me, I've got to find time to see their Vice Palace before it ends its run).

The next show was supposed to start with the short PROCESS, but they didn't have the copy so instead they showed ROID RAGE again. Still hilarious.

Then the feature RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE. I actually saw this las December. Here's what I wrote at the time:

The locals are pissed about the crazy American corporation that is drilling for archaeological relics in their mountain. But if they thought it was bad that they were disturbing the wolves and ruining the reindeer hunt (oh yeah, the heroes are reindeer hunters), just wait until they unearth the most amazing Christmas legend ever. You see, the Santa Claus created by Coca-Cola wasn't the real one. The real one was a demon who wasn't so interested in giving children presents, he was more interested in punishing naughty children. And now he's back. Pretty awesome, although I will say I wanted a bit more of a reveal at the end. Although to say anything more would be too much of a spoiler.

Huh, that was kind of brief. I'll add that the hero kid is pretty awesome. And the "reveal" at the end is actually just right the second time around. And it's hilarious. That's the most important part--it's really, really, really funny.

And the final show of the night started with the short THE MONKEY AND THE QUIET CORPSE. A drug addict beats one of those clanging cymbals monkeys to a bloody pulp. I think it's a metaphor for getting the monkey off your back. Whatever it's about, it was pretty cool.

And finally my night ended with RAT SCRATCH FEVER, a celebration of gloriously cheesy no-budge special effects. A team of privately funded astronauts explore Planet X, where they discover giant rats (played by real rats scurrying through cheesy miniature sets). Only one astronaut survives and makes it back to earth, but she's carrying a horrible rat plague. The psychotic head of the private space exploration company wants her exterminated, but her special forces boyfriend has other plans. And L.A. becomes overrun with rats. It's cheesy, it's cheap, all the 'strings' are showing, and that's all part of the fun. Don't take it seriously, just sit back and enjoy it. My personal favorite scene--when a body is thrown out a window and becomes a doll on the other side for the rats to climb over.

And that was my Saturday at Holehead.

Total Running Time: 300 minutes
My Total Minutes: 239,609