Cinemagoers beware!
Bad taste and some of the worst movies ever made will descend upon Prague 3 cinema Kino Aero throughout this week with the return of the Shockproof Film Festival (Festival otrlého diváka), the annual ode to strange cinema now in its 14th year.
From February 27 to March 4, a variety of film oddities will be put on display at one of Prague’s hippest cinemas for its denizens to gawk at and walk away offended. If you decide to take the plunge, be aware of about what you’re walking into.
The 2018 edition of the Shockproof Film Festival will kick off tonight in Kino Aero with a screening of John Waters’ Multiple Maniacs, starring Divine, Mink Stole, Edith Massey, and others who would become staples throughout the directors career. Of course, Waters’ follow-up film, Pink Flamingos, would go on to become a monument for lovers of the bizarre.
Among other highlights, Wednesday will bring the 1993 Australian black comedy Bad Boy Bubby, from director Rolf de Heer. This one’s an Aussie classic – a true oddball gem that is the unironic best this year’s Shockproof Film Fest has to offer.
After a screening of the Schwarzenegger flick The Running Man with live Czech commentary on Friday (MST3K style), the festival will showcase a very special film: Czech amateur filmmaker Robert Vrba’s Vaginator: Dawn of the Bitches, complete with English subtitles. The title should give you some idea of what to expect, but if not:
Friday is gore day at Kino Aero, beginning with a 18:00 screening of Belgian filmmakers Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s Let the Corpses Tan. I’m a huge fan of the directors’ beautifully-shot previous features (Amer and The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears) and will be first in line to catch this one. It screens in French with English and Czech subtitles.
Afterwards, the fest will showcase the underseen splatter classic Troma’s War (with live Czech dubbing) and the notorious gore porn Slaughtered Vomit Dolls. Patrons will be given a barf bag before entering the cinema, and should expect to make use of it.
On Saturday, the fest will present the legitimately-good killer ant movie Phase IV, from famed credit sequence designer Saul Bass, followed by the early ‘90s Hong Kong feature The Cat, from the director of the famously over-the-top Ricky-Oh: The Story of Ricky.
Those features will be followed by a bad movie classic: the Andy Sidaris sleazefest Hard Ticket to Hawaii. At midnight, in long-standing tradition, Shockproof will present a hardcore porn film, the West German classic Sensational Janine.
On Sunday, the fest will close out with an English-friendly mystery movie Blind Date screening, followed by James Nguyen’s much-ridiculed Birdemic: Shock and Terror. Though some laud it along with The Room as one of the best bad movies ever made, it’s really just an embarrassing no-budget ripoff of The Birds.
Tickets to films at this year’s Shockproof Film Festival run 120 crowns and can be purchased online through Kino Aero.
After playing in Prague at Kino Aero, the Shockproof Film Festival will move on to Brno’s Kino Scala and Hradec Králové’s Bio Central.
More information can be found at the Shockproof Film Festival’s official site and Facebook page.
