Boston Underground Film Festival 2009

Music video for Sue Scrofa's "5 Seashells"

Music video for Team Robespierre's "88th Precinct"

Deep in the San Fernando Valley, a multi-billion dollar trade abounds that chews up and spits out all but the most hardened of its workforce. It is, of course, the adult entertainment industry, an enterprise larger than the music and movie industry combined. 9to5 – Days in Porn delves into the lives of the people working in pornography and hopes to emerge with a glimmer of what motivates them. Director Jens Hoffmann presents a thoroughly unbiased look at the determination, empowerment, naïveté, and sometimes outright sadness of the representative sample that makes up our cast. Some of the most intriguing subjects include young starlet Sasha Grey, determined to blaze new paths in porn, and Sharon Mitchell, who gave up a career as an adult-film actress to become a doctor and open a clinic for sex workers. Told through Hoffmann’s evenhanded eyes, the audience is left to determine for themselves what is scandalous, superficial, sleazy and sexy about this most American of exports. - Kevin Monahan

Mr. and Mrs. McGuire are enjoying a wonderful dinner with their son, Adam. All is well until Mrs. McGuire conjures up an unbelievable notion that dramatically alters the course of their evening. As Adam tries desperately to set his mother straight, she slips further into delusion. And when Adam's violence-prone father gets involved, things go from bad to worse... until a blood-curdling scream and a chilling thud change Adam's life forever.

A short doc on Andy Ofiesh, founder of Boston’s Naked Comedy Showcase, as he sheds clothes and conventions.

Embittered and in the throes of those awkward teenaged years, Jimmy has trouble talking to girls and has a tendency towards escapism via voyeurism, a plight not unfamiliar to a good fifty percent of the planet. When Jimmy accidentally witnesses a scientist’s literal metamorphosis, a quasi-Faustian scenario unfolds, pitting creature against (teenaged) creature in a precipitating bargain for life and death. And homework. Enlisting the help of the wise anthropomorphized mutant crustacean scientist, Jimmy crafts a plan of Cyrano de Bergerac proportions that will allow him to trick his dreamgirl (and lab partner) into falling in love with him. Flailing in his attempts at wooing and dangling the prospect of restoring the scientist back to human form, Jimmy grows progressively frustrated with his peculiar predicament. What starts out as your standard scientist’s-experiment-goes-horribly-awry-and-he-turns-into-a-hideous-creature-who-needs-the-help-of-a-virile-teenaged-boy-to-restore-order-to-the-universe flick quickly shed’s its lighthearted skin (well, molts), revealing the darker undercurrent of adolescent cruelty. You’ll find yourself wondering who the real monster is.

" Anywhere USA reduces every audience that sees it into a delighted, giggling mob... It reminds one of the joy of sitting in an audience of strangers while everyone laughs hysterically." -Quentin Taranitno With a cast comprised mostly of off-the-street non-professional actors, Chusy Haney-Jardine takes us on a beautiful, meditative, and completely meandering madcap journey through redneck sub-culture in the Anywhere town of Asheville, North Carolina. A tale told in three tangential parts, the film opens with “Penance,” wherein a hillbilly couple becomes estranged when the boyfriend finds a pistachio in her trailer, triggering a hilariously surreal pastiche of paranoid posturing involving an al Qaeda conspiracy intended to demolish the Anywhere towns of America. Redneck subtitles abound, as do beautiful fucking mustaches. “Loss” is a touching story about a recently orphaned girl (played by the one professional actor in the film, Haney-Jardine’s daughter Perla), her hippie uncle, a stash of pot brownies and the debunking of the tooth fairy. “Ignorance” follows the racial awakening of a white man who, upon realizing he has no black friends, attempts to remedy this. Garnering Quentin Tarantino’s seal of approval (and a Special Jury Prize!) at Sundance 2008, Anywhere, USA delivers paroxysms of laughter and is absolutely the kind of film intended to be seen in a large dark theater packed with strangers. It’s daring, original, absurd, and exemplifies true independent filmmaking. - Nicole McConvery

One woman struggles to survive in a ghostly world besieged by giant killer robots.

“One of the most unique and committed visions in independent horror ... A testament to the fact that even the greatest amount of bad taste can succeed via good wit.” -Michael Gingold, Fangoria “Easily Henenlotter’s most twisted and perverse work to date … A film that flies its freak flag high and doesn’t even try to appease the multiplex normals.” -Mitch Davis, Fantasia International Film Festival, Montreal This film had our undivided attention from the first line of dialogue uttered: “I was born with seven clits.” Meet Jennifer, high-end fashion photographer, multi-media artist renowned for her sexually-charged themes and owner of the aforementioned freakshow genitalia. Suffice to say, Jennifer has a hard time finding love. Luckily enough for her insatiable libido, she has an easy enough time finding sex. Not so luckily, most encounters end up with Jennifer accidentally killing her partner, if he hasn’t already fled at the sight of her mutant mix-up. A successful encounter (regardless of whether or not her mate survives) will result in a deformed baby, delivered less than two hours after conception, which must be disposed of as quickly as possible. Batz is a loner, who as a result of a childhood accident, has been experimenting with various drugs in order to restore working function to his penis. He went a little too far, however, and now Batz’s cock is dangerously addicted to the medley of chemicals he’s has been injecting into it over the years. The drugs, originally intended to stimulate, are now employed to calm the beast down. It must suck to have a drug-addicted, sentient penis. When Batz’s stately Victorian house is rented for one of Jennifer’s photo shoots, a meeting is inevitable. In his first film since 1992’s Basket Case 3 , director Frank Henenlotter ratchets up the camp, gore and nudity to absolutely absurd levels. Shot in glorious 35mm, and relying on prosthetics and stop-motion animation as opposed to CGI, Bad Biology seethes with old-school schlock sensibilities. Fueled by an energetic hip-hop soundtrack (many real-life underground hip-hop artists including Prince Paul, Reef the Lost Cause, and co-writer/producer R.A. "The Rugged Man" make cameos), Bad Biology reminds us of the perverse pleasures that made Henenlotter’s Basket Case , Brain Damage and Frankenhooker cult classics. - Kevin Monahan