The Canned Film Festival was a syndicated schlock cinema showcase series that popped up in the summer of 1986, but then, much to my dismay, just as quickly blinked back out of existence. And of all the gonzoidal movie TV-conduits I've encountered in my lifetime, make no mistake, Mystery Science Theater 3000 was the best and my favorite; no ifs, ands, or ... well, one little but. That little "but" being The Canned Film Festival, a tragically short-lived but rabidly championed B-Movie extravaganza.
Well, rabidly championed by me anyways. Read more...
And thanks to the efforts of rgstern, The Canned Film Festival rides again on YouTube for at least one episode: Phil Tucker's magnum opus, Robot Monster :
4 comments:
This reminds me of a show I've been trying to track down for years.
The premise was, an energetic guy dressed in a red usher uniform hosts highly edited down classic cheesy movies, condensing them to about 30 minutes.
The episode I remember was something about a guerrilla kidnapping a girl, it looked like it was from the 30s.
The gimmick was, the guy would zoom past the dull parts, quickly describing scenes as they flew by and then showing you segments.
Me and my brother think it was called something like "Short Cuts" or "Cut to the Chase", but there's like, zero information out there.
I *believe* it was on the E! network during its infancy, which might explain why no one's seen nor heard of it.
Hmmmmmnnnnn ... sounds a lot like Sandra Bernhard's short-lived Reel Wild Cinema. I dug around a bit, but all I could find was a 2005 show on TBS called "Cut to the Chase" but could find no info on it other than the title.
Thanks for checking around. The show I'm thinking of would have aired back in the late 80s, maybe 1988-1990, so the TBS one is out. I'll never forget the wacky, red-suited usher and the abbreviated 30s Killer Gorilla movie. Maybe someday I'll find it.
It's sort of like USA Network's "Shadow Theater" (hosted by Robert Englund!) or "USA Saturday Nightmares," the show that introduced me to Forever Evil, Tourist Trap, etc. Both great shows that get remarkably little nostalgic coverage on the internet.
It wasn't the same kind of a "showcase" series but I do miss the "Fast Food Films" that ran years ago on FX. Each episode, they'd take three schlock films and edit/redub/reframe the footage into some other kind of production. "Surf Nazis Must Die" became a political commercial for the movie's protagonist Martha Washington; "James at 15" became "The Berletz Language Course in Jive"; "Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell" became a health class film, "Womanhood: Your Precious Journey".
I taped most of the series off the air back in the day but unfortunately, the tapes have been missing somewhere in my house for years!
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