Troma Night 300 (Hindsight)

For those who couldn’t make it to Troma Night 300 on Friday, but don’t want to miss out on the experience: here’s what you missed (along with lots of links to some videos for you to watch – note that some videos might be considered NSFW):

• 7:30pm – we had planned to kick off with some Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers, in the traditional fashion, but we discovered that I’d misplaced my copy and so we instead had a few shorts from around the Internet, including:
  • 8-Bit Dr. Horrible (Act 2 part 1) – a world of awesome (assuming you’ve seen and enjoyed Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog)
  • What happens next after you save the damsel in any 8-bit platformer
  • The Department of Internet Hate
  • Broken Wear – I have no idea what this Japanese man is selling, but I’ll buy three
  • Graffiti Penis
  • Auto-Tune the News #11- Pure Poppycock

• 8:00pm – in exaggeration of the tradition, everybody present threw a sponge across the room; meanwhile, simultaneously, Paul threw a sponge out of the window of the Commodore Cinema and clear onto the roof of the nearby shopmobility scheme portacabin.

• 8:05pm – “Kit, order the pizza!” As was the case in years gone by, Kit – in attendance by speakerphone – asked “What does everybody want?” and, via Scotland, relayed our order to Hollywood Pizza. Meanwhile, trololololololololololo man sang in the background (a comparatively recent tradition).

• 8:10pm – Matt in the Hat provided a video, “live by satellite feed”, that he’d acquired with the help of “Travis” at Troma Studios, to introduce our first film:
  • Watch the introduction! (this is awesome)
  • We watched The Toxic Avenger IV: Citizen Toxie – one of my personal favourite Troma films (hell, one of my personal favourite films in general)

• 9:00pm – The pizza arrives, and as a few of the more-squeamish attendees didn’t want to have to eat their pizza while watching people being dismembered (wusses), we paused the film and watched a few more Internet shorts, this time of fluffy little cute animals:
  • Labradors sliding around on snow
  • A woman taking her pet kangaroos to the beach
  • A dog chasing it’s own shadow

• 10:15pm – The first film ends, and while people queue for the bathroom, we have a few more Internet shorts, including:
  • Pixels – I love this!
  • The Internet Explained
  • Trailer for “In Our Garden” – I’m sure this trailer doesn’t do justice to how much potential this film has…
  • Sandwich (Parry Gripp) – for those who aren’t aware, Parry Gripp is the singer for Nerf Herder, perhaps most famous for the Buffy The Vampire Slayer theme
  • Young Girl Talking About Herself (Parry Gripp)

• 10:30pm – Our second film again sees an introduction supplied by Matt in the Hat:
  • Matt’s video introduction – nobody, not even me, had seen this video before it was shown at Troma Night, but it had us rolling on the floor with laughter. I’ve had to modify the video for YouTube (imagine that the pint of Guinness isn’t there), which reduces its impact somewhat, but I hope that putting it online will afford those of you who weren’t there the opportunity to enjoy it almost as much as we did.
  • The Deadly Bees (MST3K edition) – a Troma Night classic and a particular favourite of Adam’s – he owns several different copies of this film. We have some technical difficulties towards the end of the film and switch to the original version to finish off, but this doesn’t make the film any less awful.

• 12:10am – we wrap up with another screening of Matt’s introduction to The Deadly Bees, for those that don’t leave the room fast enough to avoid watching it again (the cowards): the final frame is left as a freeze-frame on the screen until everybody departs

All-in-all a fantastic Troma Night by anybody’s account: a huge thank you to everybody who made it special by coming along, by taking part remotely, or by sending well-wishes (Kit’s blog post, Liz’s blog post, comments on my announcement).

It was particularly important to me to have a Troma Night like this one, as this is likely to be one of my last Troma Nights in Aberystwyth: as I indicated last year, I plan to leave Aberystwyth during 2010. I’m currently looking into a possible window of opportunity that would give me the chance to move to Oxford within the next nine weeks, and it’s very unlikely that I’ll be around for another dozen Troma Nights here. In some ways, Troma Night 300 was – for me – a send-off of the concept of Troma Night in Aberystwyth (although you can be sure that we’ll be kicking off Troma Night Oxford once Ruth, JTA, Paul and I are settled there).

In other news, Alec’s LiveJournal account has been mysteriously deleted: did anybody else notice that?