THE CANNED FILM FESTIVAL

The Canned Film Festival is an 1980s TV obscurity that deserves more attention than it gets. It was a syndicated, late night series starring Saturday Night Live vet Laraine Newman as the eccentric and scrappy owner of a faded Texas movie palace. Every week she would show a different B-movie to her small gang of regular moviegoers, and we'd occasionally break away from the movie for ironic commentary from Newman and company. Today's episode features Robot Monster, a cinematic experience of wondrous, transcendent awfulness.

The Canned Film Festival was never a gut-bustingly hilarious show, but it was a lot of fun. It predated Mystery Science Theater 3000 but had a somewhat similar sensibility, lovingly sending up the cheapie screen fare of yesteryear. It reflects a now-vanished era when movie geeks still trekked out to the local indie house to catch a revival show of a movie they knew was no good at all. The sticky floors, the ripped seats, the flyers with print too blurry to read... Somehow, some way, this was what made us happy.

(And oh, dear lord, those 1980s, sci-fi Dr. Pepper commercials...)

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