A Bucket of Blood, The Bride of the Monster and Blood Feast: what do these rather unusual titles have in common? Apparently they’re some of the worst movies ever made, and this week you have the rare chance of seeing them on the big screen. The Shockproof Film Festival got underway at Prague’s Aero cinema on Tuesday; I spoke to the festival’s organiser Petr Šaroch.
“The Shockproof film festival is already in its fourth year. It started basically as a joke between a group of friends. We always liked these kinds of films and we thought it would be a good idea to show them in regular cinemas. So we had a talk with the guys from Kino Aero and they said: OK, do it. We were quite surprised that people were really interested so we tried it for the second year, for the third year and now we are trying for the fourth year.”
Can you specify a bit more what kind of films one can see at the festival?
Ed Wood in “Glen or Glenda”
“It depends on the programme for each year but this year there are two main thematic lines: pornography and bad-taste films, such as Ed Wood and the likes. The pornographic films will all be shown on Saturday and there will be two Japanese so-called pinku films, than a French movie The Beast from 1975 by Walerian Borowczyk, which caused a big scandal at the time of its release. The highlight, if I may say so, we will be the legendary Deep Throat, a hard core porn movie from 1972 with lovely Linda Lovelace.
Which films would you recommend?
Photo: CTK
I think each film is interesting in its own way, but I would suggest the very first movie by Francis Ford Coppola called Dementia 13 or the very first gory film ever made Blood Feast by Herschell Gordon Lewis. But there is also an interesting Czech film called Revue na zakázku. It’s a very obscure film made in the 1980s in co-production with Kazakhstan, the homeland of Borat. There is also an Italian movie Starcrash with lovely Caroline Munro and the very lovely David Hasselhoff and of course there is the profile of the supposedly worst director of all times Edward D. Wood junior. We are showing his three best-known movies, so it should be fun.”
Is there any competition or is it just a film show?
Aero Cinema
“It’s just a film show but there is a competition for the viewers. This year they could send crazy pictures of themselves and the best photo was awarded free admission to the festival. On the final day, when we are showing Ed Wood movies, everyone who comes dressed-up as a character from any of his movies will also get admission for free and the best costume will be awarded special prize.”
And if you want to check out some of those movies for yourself, you’ll find them at the Aero cinema in Žižkov – but remember to bring your ID, most of the films are for adults only…
