House - 1977

Battle of the Filmfests

By Christopher P. Jacobs
Staff Writer

Campy and sleazy exploitation films or ecological documentaries – you make the choice on Thurs. April 21, when “Grindfest 2” shows at the Fargo Theatre and the “Wild and Scenic Film Festival” plays at the Empire Arts Center in Grand Forks.

Hosted by the Dakota Resource Council, SYRCL’s Wild & Scenic Film Festival promises “films to change your world” and is taglined “where activism gets inspired.” The evening starts at 7 p.m. with a brief introduction followed by nine documentaries ranging in length from four minutes to 56 minutes, with an intermission about halfway through the roughly three-hour program.

The short documentaries cover such topics as organic food production, CSA’s, renewable energy, recycling, water conservation, outdoor adventure and a variety of innovative social entrepreneurs. The films highlight environmental concerns and suggest solutions, hoping to reach people through beautiful imagery and inspire them to make a difference in their communities and beyond.

Titles include “1% of the Story,” “Meet Your Farmer,” “Brower Youth Awards, Marcus Grignon,” “Living Downstream,” “Evolution and Extinction,” “The Majestic Plastic Bag,” “Slow the Flow,” “The Story of Bottled Water” and “The Windmill Farmer.”

Among the festival’s local sponsors are Amazing Grains, Blaine’s Best Organic Seeds, The Ski and Bike Shop, RSS Renewables, and FARRMs. National partners are Patagonia, CLIF Bar, Kleen Kanteen, and Sierra Nevada Brewing company. Sierra Nevada beer will be served at the event. There will also be a silent auction with paintings from local artists, Pride of Dakota Products, and lots of swag from Patagonia, Grist, Osprey and more. Admission is $10 (or $8 in advance).

The same night in Fargo is the second “Grindfest” double-feature of exploitation film trailers (mostly from the 1970s and 80s) at the Fargo Theatre. At 7 p.m. is an approximately 90-minute anthology of the favorite trailers included in last November’s two Grindfest programs. This will be open to all ages. Then at 9:15 will be the “all-new, lewd, and crude” selection of trailers, which runs about an hour and 40 minutes and will be restricted to viewers age 18 and over. Admission is $5 for either program or $8 for both. (Perhaps a certain amount of beer might also be apropos for these!)

The second batch of trailers is indeed “more extreme” and “ridiculous” as promised, starting right in with some outrageously unashamed sexploitation trailers, moving on to blaxploitation, martial arts, motorcycle films, horror, sci-fi, westerns and various combinations of two or more of those categories. Many if not most of the trailers may be entertaining in their own peculiar way but show you just as much and sometimes more of the film than you’d ever want to sit through. Others appear so off-the-wall as to make you curious as to what else the film could possibly throw in.

Still others are for films that actually had some critical acclaim at the time and/or went on to become cult classics. Among these is the first film by John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon, “Dark Star,” an ambitious science fiction satire originally shot on 16mm film. There’s also the odd and award-winning if somewhat heavy-handed animated sci-fi allegory from France and Czecholsovakia, “Fantastic Planet,” the outrageous 1969 social satire “Putney Swope” and Melvin Van Peebles’ popular but even more controversial independently produced and released satire, “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.”

Towards the end of the program is a bizarre trailer for Nobuhiko Obayashi’s almost hypnotically fascinating and even more bizarre teen coming-of-age horror-comedy ghost-story fantasy, “House” (1977). This ode to modern angst and the music video generation incorporates clever tributes to classic Japanese and foreign cinema, yet its production was inspired as a Japanese response to the success of “Jaws.” It is now available on Blu-ray in a beautiful transfer from the prestigious Criterion Collection, and actually happens to be the closing film of the semester for this spring’s Intro to Film class at UND!

Other trailer highlights of interest include “Blazing Stewardesses,” a cheap sexploitation western comedy made by a classic film buff who was actually able to hire numerous old-time and all-but-forgotten former stars for the project, “Werewolves on Wheels,” billed as the “first motorcycle horror film,” and the infamous G-rated sci-fi horror flick “The Green Slime,” a cheap Japanese sci-fi with American actors and a cult favorite top-40 title theme song.

About halfway through the trailers is a selection of classic concessions-stand promos, just as much fun as the trailers. All in all, it’s a diverting evening of camp from the late 60s through the 80s that may actually entice some viewers to track down a few of the actual features.

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