It was 9 years ago today that I attended Quentin Tarantino's Third Film Festival, or QT lll if you will, at the Original Alamo Drafthouse in Austin. For about 125 bucks I got the full pass for the whole nine days. A very exciting time in my life and it felt great to be cruising into downtown Austin on a Friday night with the prospect of watching cool movies with QT. I entered the cozy cavern of the Alamo, already my favorite theater in the world due to the vibe, beer and pizza. Scratchy trailers for bizarre kid's toys and films were on a surreal hilarious loop. I was lovin' it. It's important to note the importance of showing a variety of ads and trailers to get people in the proper frame o' mind. My favorites were for the WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT remake from 1970, PUSSYCAT PUSSYCAT I LOVE YOU (yes, that's right) and MAID IN SWEDEN, a well-made sex opera with the amazing Christina Lindberg. It just felt to good eat pizza and viddy these fascinating bits of cultural ephemera on a Friday night in Austin.

Here's the first night of films:



Three Musketeers/Four Musketeers

Zulu Dawn



Soon, Richard Linklater came out to hoops and applause to intro Quentin and ask people not to bug him for autographs because then he has to sit through Quentin telling them, in a good imitation, that "this is my church, and we're all just hanging out watching movies." He then brings Tarantino out to great applause. An online journal, MONK, has his very savvy opening speech, tho James Crotty's preface is a bit snarky. And though Crotty claims QT was not to be questioned, that is untrue, as I and others can attest. He talked to anybody as long as it was about films, music, etc. And Crotty leaves off Tarantino's final wry words to the audience before the first film began: "And if anybody has a script they want to give me, I'd love to read it."

So after Quentin does his thing, we get to view the two non-scope prints of the THREE and FOUR MUSKETEERS from 1973/4. I've seen chunks of these on TV over the years but never sat proper through them both. Altho Tarantino claimed to not be a Lester fan, he loves these movies, especially for the big star cast, all doing some of their best work, from Michael York to Oliver Reed to Chris Lee to Charlton Heston to Faye Dunaway to Raquel Welch. I am a Lester fan and these two films -- that were actuallly filmed as one without telling the actors -- rank as some of his best work. There's a 70's naturalism to the way Lester shoots the fight scenes, with quick brutality and raw violence. Check this scene out. And it's all about Oliver Reed. As Tarantino pointed out, Reed is indeed "a god in this."

Onto ZULU DAWN, a sort of sequel to the hit 1964 imperialist epic, ZULU, that helped push Michael Caine into stardom. Fatigued by a hard day's work and an easy night's double feature, I recall little of ZD, except for some very cool battle scenes and a more complex perspective on the imperialism of the earlier ZULU film. It all boils down to, how do you cheer White Colonialists mowing down African warriors who are only defending their land? Well, in this film, you start by showing the White Colonialists get outrageously slaughtered in Britain's most deadly war loss. The sheer chaos is effective in filmic terms.

So the first night of QT lll 99 ends quiet with the smokey remains of a battlefield and Quentin promising more greatness to come with Saturday's All-Nite EXPLOITATION MARATHON! My friends Bethany and Manny have promised to join me for this test of movie endurance. I walk into the cool air, passing the archetypal Sixth Street flock going strong in search of one more brew. My sleep is sober and peaceful, bouyed by visions of raging cheerleaders and heroic swordsmen spooling through my head.

And this was only the first night.