MONTREAL – One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Rick Trembles figures he’s sitting on a gold mine of trashy treasures. Cinematic trash-treasures, that is.
At a time when film folks around the planet ponder the best movies of the year, decade and millennium, Trembles is focusing on the sediment at the bottom of the cinematic pool. And he wants nothing more than to share his finds with like-minded fanciers of film from the fringes.
Trembles’s four-day Trash and Treasures film fest kicks off Wednesday night, and – best news of all – it’s absolutely free. And what do you get for nothing? “Sex, monsters, telepathic appliances, popcorn.”
Trembles is creator of the Mirror’s popular Motion Picture Purgatory, wherein he creates a film review in cartoon form. Needless to say, his scrutinized films tend to be less from the Ten Commandments than the Twonky school. As fate would have it, Trembles launches Trash and Treasures with the not-so-epic The Twonky (1953).
“It’s a classic,” Trembles claims. “Pie-in-the-face McCarthyism meets Videodrome. It’s about a TV that invades a man’s home. It was made in a period when televisions were relatively new, and people were often scared of them.”
As they were of witch-hunting senator Joe McCarthy. The maker of this flick capitalizes on that fear by having a TV zap dangerous rays into the owner’s head and brainwash him.
“Oh, it’s just so bad, but the premise is fantastic,” Trembles gushes. “That’s the thing about bad movies – you can tolerate the badness, although you generally have to wait 10 or 20 years after it is made. It allows you to peer into another era.
“Of course, at the time, people wouldn’t go near the film because it is just so hideously cheesy. But then the cheese ripens, and it becomes an artifact.” Albeit a smelly one.
Trembles has dubbed each night of his fest. Wednesday night’s spectacle, also including Red Nightmare (1962), a short, is Paranoiamania.
Best/Worst Groovy, Thursday evening, will showcase Alien Factor (1978) and Starcrash (1978). Friday’s Avant Nards features The Secret of Wendel Samson (1966), The Stranger in Apartment 9F (1998) and Screamplay (1985). And the fest wraps Saturday with Feminine Misspeak: Nice Girls Don’t Do It (1990); Je t’aime, moi non plus (1976); and the heart-wrenching Kamikaze Hearts (1986).
“Some of these films were made for next to nothing,” Trembles says. “The filmmakers poured their hearts into them, and so many of them went completely broke in the process.”
For his part, Trembles is proud of all the film trash in his collection and is initially hard-pressed to pick a favourite from his batch of bad. “The heir to the throne of bad changes yearly, although Alien Factor was No. 1 in my heart for a while. Its director, Don Dohler, was touted as the Ed Wood of Baltimore.”
For the uninitiated, Ed Wood was the king of the no-budget, C-film genre and creator of such lovably abysmal classics as Plan 9 From Outer Space and the autobiographical Glen or Glenda. Alien Factor, the debut offering of cartoonist Dohler, is a sort of how-to manual on making flicks on the cheap. Trembles hails it as the “zero-budget zenith.”
By offering free admission, Trembles is clearly not in this for the money. “These are film gems to me, and I’ve been looking forever for some of them. And when I finally snag them and discover they are everything I had hoped they would be, I just want to share them with others. It becomes so infectious.
“I see a lot of weird stuff. I have peculiar tastes. I like films that make my jaw drop. I ask myself how on earth they got made, and why would anyone put money into them. But you truly have to admire these creators who know they’ll never make a cent but are just so committed to telling their tales – no matter how twisted they may be.”
If all goes well, Trembles hopes to launch an annual Trash and Treasures fest. Not surprisingly, he has been in contact with Montreal filmmaker Dan Ahmad, who presented the worst-ever flick, The Room, last Saturday to an enthusiastic house of screaming, spoon-throwing revellers of the wretched.
“It’s not always understood,” Trembles explains. “But bad can be just so beautiful.”
Trash and Treasures starts Wednesday night and runs until Saturday at 135 Van Horne Ave., 2nd Floor. Admission is free. For more information, go to www.redbirdstudios.org or call 514-746-6754.
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