Scraping Bottom

The third annual Lucky Charm Awards prove that there are a lot of sickos out there with video cameras.

by Kelly Hughes | Published March 3, 1994

Evil priests. Lascivious nuns. Mischievous monkeys in a graveyard. What genius dwells in the minds of low-budget moviemakers. What quirky flourishes of inspiration. What splendid deviance. What banal crap.

The entry form reads: We accept personal visions of art, trash and everything in between! What kinds of stuff do people actually enter? Of course, if you've ever been to one, you already know. But do you ever wonder about the stuff that gets entered, but never gets a public screening? Do you possess a perverse streak that actually takes delight in the extremes of artistic output? Then enter, I say. Enter the beautiful, putrid world of The Lucky Charm Awards.

I love all the videos we receive. The good, the bad and the ugly. Believe me, we got some ugly stuff this year. You don't even have to watch them to recognize their ugliness. The names alone say it all: Puss Bucket; Hell on Earth II: Arena of Death; Mein Skitzo; Axe and Ye Shall Receive;   Slaughterville; Jesus Hates You; 90 Minutes to Die; Age of Demons;   Vulgar Display of Power;   Here Were Hanged;   Dick and Jane Drop Acid and Die; and My Penis (and Her Feet).

What You Won't Be Seeing at the Awards:

I do have some standards. Really, I do. I like to shock as much as any fringe/ sleaze/ deviant video czar. But I also draw the line based on public tastes and personal dislikes. It's moral caprice, and I have a right! And these are some of the clips you won't be seeing at this year's Lucky Charm screenings:

My Penis (and Her Feet) Like The Pooch burger at Seattle's recently departed Dog House restaurant, the title speaks for itself. My Penis is a video by a self-proclaimed foot fetishist. A few decades ago a man like this would've been locked up. But now we give people like Mapplethorpe cameras and foot fetishists camcorders and art moves to the next level. Anyway, not much happens in this video. We see the body parts in the title, we hear the voices, but we never see their faces. It was certainly horrifying. People who know me know I watch a lot of horror movies and can stomach a lot of gore, but even I have a tough time watching a man set his privates on a table while a woman in pumps teases her heel and says things like "I'm gonna put my weight on that thing." Maybe I'll screen a black-out versiona nd let people hear the audio. They won't believe what they're not seeing

The Headstrong Newspaper Woman This one's a period piece about a Little House on the Prairie-era murderess who wants to become editor of a newspaper and is willing to seduce and kill to get what she wants. Sitting in her jail cell awaiting hangin, she performas fellatio on a guard. I can't tell if it's real or she's going down on a lifelike rubber version, and it's unsettling. I have nothing again NC-17 moments, but I will not tolerate vagueness in a video!

Manic-A-Go-Go The main characters in this story at a comedienne and a male stripper. I know this because it says so on the box. But nowhere, nowhere in this video do you ever see this woman onstage telling jokes or the man taking off his clothes. Do people think they can simply make up an occupation for a character without any relevance to the story?! At least no penises were involved in this one.

What you will be seeing:

We're having three nights of screenings this year: 1) An evening of Underground Horror, Gore, and Cyberspace Sex Fiends: The Bloody Best of the Lucky Charm Awards: Thursday, March 17, 8 p.m. at the Pike Street Cinema, 1108 Pike St., Seattle. I love horror movies because so many beginning moviemakers use them as their rite of passage. Oliver Stone, John Carpenter and Brian DePalma got their start this way. Some successful directors like Francis Ford Coppola and Jonathtan Demme have used them to revie their careers. I see three trends this year: First, there're some pretty decent special effects. These videoteurs seem to know their way around a blood squib. Second, there're some surprisingly good production values, with well thought out compositions and lighting.

2) Glitter Goddess of The Sunset Strip: Friday, March 18, 8p.m. at 911 Media Art Center, 117 Yale N., Seattle. The new thing we're doing this year is screening a feature-length video in its entirety. Creator Llana Lloyd will be on hand to talk about this docudrama that combines personal footage and video re-enactments of her life in the glam-rock 70's and clips from the numerous talk shows she appeared on and used as a therapist's couch during the 80's. Guaranteed lively discussion about the movie and Llana's national group, Children of Gays, will follow the screening.

3) Night of a Thousand Charms: The Third Annual Lucky Charm Awards- Saturday, March 19, 8p.m. at the Seattle Art Museum. The state of the art in low-budget videomaking, our wacky night of video clips will include comedy, music, narrative, experimental, and erotica. Regarding the latter, The Lucky Charm Awards are designed to showcase the genres low-budget videomakers are working in. And as we all know, people are using their cameras to make naughty videos. It's not that I have a problem with porn, except that it's usually boring. It's because an erotic video should be based on a sensual experience, not simply body parts. People like to look at naked bods and though they're turned off by monotonous pumping, they're intrigued by a happy medium. It is my contention that today's experimental erotic videomakers will be tomorrow's master filmmakers. See them here first. This night will also include our tribute to Super-8 moviemakers and our grand prize presentation for Rosa Mi Amour. MM

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