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In the span of eight days, 427 movies were screened for buyers, sellers and industry leaders at this year’s event. Only two years ago, AFM screened 513 movies over the same number of days. I’ll leave the math to you, but that’s definitely a lot less product on display.
As I have reported in the past, AFM is never to be confused with the glamor of the Cannes Film Festival, where an abundance of A-list stars appear at the red carpet premieres and plentiful bikini-clad beauties stroll along the beach.
George Clooney was rumored to show up to pitch one of his productions, but his appearance would be the exception to the rule.
Most of the people action is concentrated in the lobby of the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, consisting of a strange mix of buyers and sellers haggling over film rights while others, including aspiring actors and hangers-on, mill around to hustle pet projects only because they lack the proper credentials to roam freely through the many hospitality suites located above the lobby level.
Since watching more than 400 films in eight days is impossible to achieve, the next best thing is to get a flavor of the offerings by visiting the hotel rooms and suites where independent film companies peddle their wares.
The AFM honchos reported that attendance at this year’s market increased by 6 percent while the number of sellers decreased by 7 percent.
Issuing an assessment of the market’s condition, AFM managing director Jonathan Wolf’s formal statement said the “positive feeling in the halls is a direct result of production levels that are now in balance with marketplace demand.”
This gets me back to the “less is more” dictum, which accounts for marketplace stability where the number of buyers and sellers achieves a more symmetrical balance.
Notwithstanding that some films sold at AFM are quality films worthy of awards, the basic staple on display is the usual schlock cinema of B-grade horror and cheesy action, with some sex comedies thrown in for good measure.
The search for inferior horror and action usually starts with the master of the genre, Troma Pictures.
The Troma gang has previously promoted such tacky classics as “A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell” and “Class of Nuke ‘Em High.”
I don’t know if Troma is resting on its laurels, but sadly they had no new horror product to push. However, for no discernible reason, they handed out free samples of Troma’s Killer Condom.
To fill the horror void, New Horizons Picture Corp. stepped into the breach with its saturation campaign on behalf of two freakishly weird films.
“Dinoshark,” starring Eric Balfour, stirs fears of what lurks below the ocean surface. Better still is “Sharktopus,” featuring a half-shark, half-octopus creature terrorizing vacationers on the Mexican coast.
Starring Eric Roberts, who is not surprisingly cast as the bad guy, “Sharktopus” is about the U.S. Navy commissioning a genetic engineering company led by a corrupt scientist to develop a weapon that would combat pirates on the open seas. Instead, the thing feasts on beachgoers.
David Carradine arrived at a terrible end in a hotel room in Bangkok last year, but he lives on at AFM in at least a handful of movies.
He has a starring role in another New Horizons’ generic horror picture, this one titled “Dinocroc vs. Supergator,” in which two giant creatures escape from an experimental facility and terrorize tourists on the white sand beaches of a resort tropical island. Apparently, the New Horizons folks enjoy reworking the same horror theme.
Meanwhile, Fantastic Films International advertises “Eldorado” as David Carradine’s final film in which he plays the Spirit Guide to the siblings of a Blues Brothers tribute band called The Jew Brothers.
Billed for its “murder, music, mayhem,” the poster art for “Eldorado” is an interesting mix of horror, western and homage to the Blues Brothers.
Dressed like Jake and Elwood Blues, the Jew Brothers stand in front of a vintage decommissioned black-and-white squad car with a hatchet planted firmly in the car’s hood.
The film also stars Darryl Hannah, Michael Madsen, Steve Guttenberg, Brigitte Nielsen and Jeff Fahey – all of whom are throwbacks to an earlier time but are still familiar names.
Film marketing at AFM is driven by a risk-averse environment where the combination of a recognizable cast and a salable genre is likely to deliver major dividends.
The menacing-looking Danny Trejo, the knife-wielding assassin in “Machete,” is typecast again, carrying a big machete in “Poolboy” and also playing a revenge seeker who won’t die in “The Lazarus Papers.”
The scenario for “Poolboy” is weirdly amusing, as Kevin Sorbo, tortured by his past as a poolboy, returns after a long absence to his home in Van Nuys and discovers that only Mexicans run pool-cleaning companies.
He sets off a brutal mission to reclaim his “rightful” vocation and enact revenge on Trejo for killing his wife and son.
Zombies also remain fashionable in both popular culture and at AFM.
“Zombie DIEner,” which deliberately tries to milk a play on words in its title, is self-described as “Pulp Fiction” meets “Zombieland.”
If only that were true, this “zombie” flick could be a hit, but my well-honed instinct tells me otherwise.
For one thing, the cast includes Josh Grote, Jorge Montalvo, Parker Quinn and Liesel Kopp – not exactly household names.
Another trend has been the fascination with “cougars” (not the four-legged ones), and so “Cougar Hunting,” starring Lara Flynn Boyle and Vanessa Angel, was simply the inevitable comedy about hot older women with a taste for younger men.
I find it fascinating when a well-known and respected thespian turns up in an AFM film that’s not likely to be an artistic classic.
This brings me to the great Helen Mirren, starring as the owner of Nevada’s first brothel in “Love Ranch” along with Joe Pesci, Gina Gershon and Bryan Cranston. How she ended up in this film is just one of the many mysteries of the AFM marketplace.
Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.
