Cultflicks.net launches movie night at Tampa Pitcher Show

By Dalia Colón, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Friday, April 9, 2010, in Tampa Bay Times

There are two types of bad movies.

“You can have movies that are just bad, like Pearl Harbor,” said Greg Ross-Munro, 29. “Or you can have movies that are so bad that they’re actually good again.” These, Ross-Munro explained, become cult movies: campy, often low-budget films with weak acting and lame special effects. The flicks often bomb at the box office but garner a strong following online.

Ross-Munro and his buddies Casey Kent and Steve Martinez, all of Tampa, run cultflicks.net, a Web site dedicated to reviewing and preserving movies like the 1966 horror film Manos: The Hands of Fate and the 1993 comedy Terminal USA. On Saturday at Tampa Pitcher Show, cultflicks.net will hold its first public event, a screening of The Toxic Avenger Part II, a 1989 action comedy about a superhero from New Jersey who battles evil in Tokyo.

The friends started cultflicks.net two years ago after their favorite B-movie video store, Unique Video in West Tampa, closed down. They wanted a place to celebrate “movies that didn’t make any money,” said Kent, 30. “Movies that people just stopped caring about.” This is important, the guys said, because many popular films are based on or allude to forgotten cult flicks. For instance, the 1980 comedy Airplane! was actually a spoof of Zero Hour!, a 1957 disaster movie.

On cultflicks.net, fans review, debate and innumerate the most awesomely bad films. Hot topics include 10 Bad Movies You Didn’t Know You Loved, Top 5 Best and Worst Kevin Smith Moments and 5 Movies Better Left as Video Games.

Recently, inspired by the midnight movies of the 1970s, the guys approached Tampa Pitcher Show owner Wayne Valenti about hosting a cult film night at the Carrollwood cinema.

“They are really open-minded there,” Kent said. “They show Rocky Horror Picture Show every two weeks, which is awesome to begin with.” The theater also appealed because it has a full-liquor bar. Cult movies get better with beer goggles, the guys said.

If the first event is successful, they plan to screen cult films regularly, including locally produced B-movies by filmmakers like Marcus Koch, Josh Darling and Joel D. Wynkoop.

Cultflicks.net will accept donations. With the money, the guys hope to preserve more VHS films digitally and buy distribution rights to make full-length movies available online.

In the meantime, Ross-Munro, Kent and Martinez will keep scouring flea markets and 99-cent bins on their original mission.

Said 30-year-old Martinez: “We wanted to find the worst movie ever made.”

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From the USF Oracle

Poor movies’ strong standing

By Jimmy Geurts, Montage Editor

The trend of bad movies turned into cult classics — which includes films like “The Room” and “Troll 2″ — has spread across the Tampa Bay area this month.

On Sunday at 8 p.m., St. Petersburg’s American Stage Theatre Company will host a screening of “The Room” — the first movie ever shown on the Raymond James Theatre’s stage.  Tickets are “pay what you can at the door,” although the theater’s website recommends somewhere in between $5 and $15.

Called “the ‘Citizen Kane’ of bad movies” in an Entertainment Weekly article, “The Room” has gained notoriety for its story about an emotional banker’s struggle with his girlfriend’s infidelity.

American Stage Theatre public relations director Andy Orrell said “The Room” is a particularly terrible cult film because of its over-the-top acting, poorly dubbed voiceovers and utter sincerity.

“It’s one of those movies where you can tell the director and producers were all very serious, and they all really thought they were making a grand epic about human experience,” Orrell said.

Despite being released seven years ago and having a current Internet Movie Database (IMDB) user score of 3.1 out of 10, “The Room” has had over 30 U.S. screenings this month, according to theroommovie.com.

The theater provides spoons, which fans are meant to throw at the screen whenever a framed photograph of silverware appears on screen. Other dedicated moviegoers dress up in tuxedos like the protagonist Johnny.

“There’s Johnny look-a-like contests, trying to be the main character,” Orrell said. “People start throwing footballs back and forth to each other and shouting at the screen. It’s very reminiscent to the old ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ experience.”

“Troll 2″ earned an even lower IMDB user rating of 2.0 for its story of double-decker bologna sandwiches and vegetarian goblins — although no trolls.

Yet almost two decades after its initial release, the film has spawned enough fan screenings that it prompted a documentary this year from the film’s child star Michael Paul Stephenson.

“Best Worst Movie” documents the screenings and reconnects with the original cast — including Alabama actor-turned-dentist George Hardy and reclusive Italian director Claudio Fragasso.  The documentary has previously been screened at the SXSW and New Orleans Film Festivals, and will come to Florida on Oct. 15 at Florida State University’s Student Life Center.

The original “Troll 2″ film was screened Sept. 11 at Tampa Pitcher Show by Cultflicks.net, a Tampa website that centers on “bad cult movies and reviews.”

The website has screened three movies with Tampa Pitcher Show — which is located on 14416 N. Dale Mabry Highway — including gruesome Tokyo adventure “The Toxic Avenger 2″ and a surreal Richard Elfman musical called “Forbidden Zone.”

Cultflicks.net writer Greg Ross-Munro said the group is choosing from a pool of cult movies for their next screening.  Some of these films — like “Tromeo and Juliet,” a reimagining of Shakespeare’s classic with vomiting and hermaphrodites — belong to what Ross-Munro calls the “good bad movie” genre

“Either it’s poorly made on purpose, or it’s poorly made due to incompetence or lack of funding or terrible acting,” Ross-Munro said. “Then it becomes so bad that it’s funny.”

However, Cultflicks.net is also considering showing “Night of the Living Dead” because of its groundbreaking zombie origins and because the film is in the public domain.

Sometimes even quality B-movies can appear locally, Ross-Munro said, citing Tampa filmmaker Marcus Koch’s gory comedy, “Rot.”

However, Ross-Munro said an appeal still remains in watching a well-known “good bad movie” projected on the silver screen.

“There’s something to be said about seeing movies with a group of people — and the more the merrier,” he said. “The more people you can get in laughing and drinking and screaming in front of something, it makes for a better experience.”

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September 11th, 2010 at the Tampa Pitcher Show Cult Flicks Latest Movie Troll 2 “Best Worst Movie”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyophYBP_w4

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Thank you to all those of you who came out to the Cultflicks.net Cult Movie Night at the Tampa Pitcher Show. We had a great turnout and defiantly did our best at the FULL LIQUOR BAR! *cough* well, I know I did, I mean, at least I think I did… but I can’t be sure because I’m pretty sure I blacked out somewhere around King Fausto’s horizontal mambo with Frenchy – they certainly know how to make a Sangria at the Pitcher Show. Anyway, for those of you who missed it, here is our amazing video introduction.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmlp8QBgUFA

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3. Thanks for Your Support!

CultFlicks and The Tampa Pitcher Show have teamed up to show the Cult Classic, “Forbidden Zone.”  Come show your support for naked titties, midget kings, dancing frogs, and weirdness in general.

When, Where, How Much?

Friday, May 21 from 11:00 pm to 1:00 am
The Tampa Pitcher Show
Tickets are $5 each FREE!!!
Directions

What Movie?

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Thanks to everyone who came out to The Tampa Pitcher Show on Saturday. It was a great success and we’ve been invited back next month to do another one! Once we’ve gone through all the suggestions for the next movie to show, we’ll have up a poll for you to decide which movie you would like to see! For those of you who were not able to make it, here’s a taste of what you missed!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4q0ifSgPss

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Cult Flicks and The Tampa Pitcher Show have teamed up to show the Cult Classic, “Toxic Avenger 2.”  Come show your support for Super Heroes from New Jersey, gratuitous violence, and wind surfing to Japan!

When, Where, How Much?

Saturday, April 10 from 11:30 pm to 2:00 am
The Tampa Pitcher Show
Ticket are $5 each
Directions

What Movie?

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1. Forbidden Zone Showing at The Tampa Pitcher Show! FREE!
2. Troll 2 Cult Flicks Night September 11th
3. Cultflicks.net Cult Movie Night Roaring Success

A few months ago we began experimenting with Amazon’s Mechanical Turk program. Basically, what the service does is allow users to upload a set of tasks and then pay users small fees to complete the tasks. The service was designed to help folk with repetitive tasks that are pretty simple for humans, but extremely difficult for computers. Most of the tasks  are things like “Describe this picture above” or “Is the item above suitable for users under the age of 18?” Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) are paid by the answer, normally tiny little amounts like $0.01 per HIT or something like that. I don’t know why people sign up and do this, but they do… I guess it’s slightly more productive than playing with your facebook farm during lunch. ANYWAY, we decided to try it out on content generation. The idea was that we would create HITs that were vastly more complex than the normal ones. We asked the Tukers to actually watch our movies that we store here on the site for reviews, then using our review format, write a well thought-out review. The kicker? We offered $1 per review! Now, strangely enough some of them actually came out pretty well, but that wasn’t the best part. Was was even better than the good, were the bad. Some of them were SO bad that we’ve decided to share them with you here on the site. Over the next few weeks we’ll be recording one of our interns, Mr. Adam Ballzee, try and read you some of the best of the worst, then edit and upload them for your enjoyment.

The Cultflicks.net Staff

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