The KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival shall ring in the holiday season at Room 5015 on Foothill College in the Los Altos Hills.
The Psychotronix gang - my friends/co-producers Robert Emmett, Sci Fi Bob Ekman, Scott Moon, KFJC sound board aces Austin Space and Grawer - did our first Foothill College show back in December 1992. You gotta be there to see the continuity, flow, rhythm, audience response and sounds of a beautiful Kodak Pageant 250S - and the cool display of 1950's 1-sheets courtesy of Gary Hascall, movie poster king and devotee of 1960's muscle cars, especially Ford Mustangs.
There will be four hours of movie fun, all projected on 16mm film, "The Vinyl Of Visuals."
The KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival means there shall be SOUNDIES!
And SCOPITONES! The sprightly singing-dancing Kessler Sisters passed recently, so we MUST show their Scopitone. The Kessler Sisters always look and sound great - R.I.P.
AND. . . of course, there shall be B-movie TRAILERS!
And classic commercials!
The KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival, without a doubt, means classic cartoons!
That means animation from Fleischer Studios, Warner Brothers Animation and Walter Lantz.
As always, the gang at the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival love instructionals from Coronet films!
Our cornucopia of clips will rock Room 5015!
The KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival
When: Saturday, December 6, 2025 - 7:00 PM to 11:30 PM
Where: Room 5015, Foothill College campus 12345 El Monte Road, Los Altos Hills (El Monte exit off 280) Why: We like cheesy movies.
How Much? $5 Donation Benefits KFJC.
Parking: Lot #5
Public Transit: Cal Train and VTA Info:
Foothill College Transportation & Parking.
Arrive early, as the shows often sell out. Doors open at 6:00 p.m.
SFSFF's Festival 2025 begins with Chaplin's The Gold Rush on Wednesday evening and closes with Buster Keaton in Go West.
In between, there will be, among numerous cool classic movies, the 1926 version of Beau Geste, starring Ronald Colman and (as a bad guy) William Powell, three Sherlock Holmes adaptations, The Unknown (1927), co-starring the ridiculously talented "man of 1000 faces" Lon Chaney Sr. with a very young Joan Crawford (that's right, Joanie was young once, way back in the halcyon days of silent pictures and her 1928 box-office smash OUR DANCING DAUGHTERS) and the always excellent Amazing Tales From The Archives.
There will also be a morning Fleischer Studio cartoon show featuring Ko-Ko the Clown in Jumping Beans, It’s the Cats, KoKo at the Circus, KoKo in 1999, KoKo’s Kane, KoKo’s Klock, KoKo’s Kink and KoKo’s Earth Control.
While it will be more than a bit odd to not go to San Francisco's Castro Theatre to see silent movies on the big screen, the Orinda Theater is a very cool venue. Shows by both the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and the Psychotronix Film Festival have been presented there.
This shall be
the 33rd anniversary KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival and grace the hallowed halls of Room 5015 of Foothill College in the lovely Los Altos Hills.
No doubt the show shall feature the great Joi Lansing and Scopitones will be ready to roll to entertain audiences once again!
Will have more about the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival when December begins and hope hope hope there will be NO problems forthcoming with my passport or the NY-SF flight that will get yours truly to his former stomping grounds, the San Francisco Bay Area.
No doubt my pals and longtime colleagues/collaborators across the country in the San Francisco Bay Area presented a splendid KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival last night at Foothill College.
For today's blog post, here are films I would have LOVED to acquired on 16mm film, "The Vinyl Of Visuals," and presented as part of a KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival at Foothill College's Room 5015. A.K.A. hours of movie fun, all projected using the intrepid Kodak Pageant 250 series machines by equally intrepid Psychotronix Film Festival projectionist and co-producer Sci Fi Bob Ekman.
Granted, this is without the continuity, flow, rhythm, audience response and sounds of a beautiful Kodak Pageant 250S - and my friends Robert Emmett, Sci Fi Bob Ekman, Scott Moon, KFJC sound board aces Austin Space and Grawer, and a display of cool movie posters courtesy of Gary Hascall, the movie poster and 1964 Ford Mustang king. That said, have never shown any of the following celluloid in this post at a KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival.
First and foremost, here's Joi Lansing!
Have I wanted wanted wanted to acquire 16mm theatrical trailers for the following film and Las Vegas Hillbillys?" Yes.
It wouldn't be a Psychotronix Film Festival without a Z-movie trailer featuring Sonny Tufts!
Or coming detractions from a science fiction epic missing one important thing: a budget.
There's at least one early 1930's Fleischer Studios cartoon never shown at the Psychotronix Film Festival. . . this one!
Am a fan of seeing cigarette commercials and car ads go over with a modern-day audience. Since I can watch vintage 1950's ads for hours on end and be entertained, must be reminded to not put 15 of them in a row and lose the entire audience!
Scopitones, anyone? C'est le Mashed Potatoes?
Hoped to buy Neil Sedaka's Scopitone, but nobody ever sells their 16mm prints.
Not surprisingly, this catchy hit by the always-upbeat Sedaka, assisted by The Scopitone Dancers, easily exemplifies the 1960's style swing of the Scopitone brand: silly and sexy!
Been seeking this Soundie starring The International Sweethearts of Rhythm.
Have run a few Coronet films in these shows, but not this one, What To Do On A Date (1950).
Castle Films sold 16mm blue track I.B. Technicolor prints of Walter Lantz Studio cartoons. Could only find a B&W print of this Swing Symphony, directed by Shamus Culhane and featuring the outstanding animation of Pat Matthews. Still holding out for a blue track Technicolor print!
We've shown lots of extra-cheesy TV ads, but none of the following commercials.
Hear there was a Wildroot Cream Oil ad in last night's program, but don't know WHICH of the hundreds of 1950's Wildroot commercials was on the bill. Still can't believe 1950's women actually liked those awful men's hairdos, invariably slicked down with Wildroot, Brylcreem, Vitalis or something else.
Scott Moon and Sci Fi Bob Ekman carry on the Psychotronix tradition with their shows at the Orinda Theatre. This curator/DIY programmer and co-founder of the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival, Paul F. Etcheverry a.k.a. Psychotronic Paul, left the Bay Area and moved to upstate New York in 2016.
This Saturday, June 28, 2025, from 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM, in room 5015 on the Foothill College campus in the lovely Los Altos Hills, the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival will be back.
The fellas who have made this extravaganza happen since the last century will be on KFJC tomorrow night, Monday June 23, with host with the most Robert Emmett on Thoughtline on KFJC from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m, Pacific Standard Time.
"Psychotronix" is a variation on Michael Weldon's "Psychotronic History Of Cinema", the encyclopedia of all varieties of under-the-radar B-films: monster movies, horror films, science fiction, oddball comedies, rock 'n' roll clips, etc.
Our shows delve much more into the comedy, animation, musicals and vintage commercials end of 20th century entertainment than Weldon does, and has been closer to the sensibility of Mystery Science Theatre 3000.
Yet another hallucinatory excursion through the always-irritated bowels of 20th century popular culture awaits the unsuspecting audience!
That means trailers from wretched movies, well-meaning 50's educational films, clips from schlocky drive-in movies with guys in stupid-looking robot and gorilla suits, vintage TV commercials and theatre ads, Scopitones, Soundies and other even more obscure musical shorts, surreal cartoon rarities and more.
The three amigos who founded this extravaganza back in 1992 are Sci Fi Bob Ekman, Robert Emmett of KFJC and yours truly, Paul F. Etcheverry. Fellow curator/showman/film buff/expert Scott Moon joined us in 1997.
The festival is also something of a reaction against all standard rules of film programming, none of which have any appeal whatsoever to all of us involved in presenting these shows.
Instead of devoting a screening to one director, one genre or one series, we throw a wide variety of films from different places, genres, techniques and time periods together.
The more obscure, the lower the budget, the more under-the-radar, the better.
If we can establish a subject link or a Monty Python-esque visual or verbal link between the segments, great, but this is not absolutely necessary.
Or to make a further Monty Python reference, this could be called the "And Now For Something Completely Different" approach to film programming.
The KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival Saturday, June 28, 2025 Room 5015, A.K.A. Forum Classroom Foothill College campus 12345 El Monte Road
Los Altos Hills, CA 94022 (El Monte exit off of Highway 280)
Admission: $5 donation benefits KFJC.
Showtime is 7:00 p.m.
Arrive early, as the shows often sell out. Doors open at 6:00 p.m.
Now, for a not especially entertaining finish to today's post - bear with me, readers, the following rant is admittedly more than a bit self-indulgent - must note that, after 32+ years of involvement in the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival, this grizzled DIY programmer/curator will not be able to be there for the first time ever and has been acting A LOT like Debbie Downer since that became apparent.
Too bad Batman is not presently available to slap me and my passport-less self to just show up at JFK airport and hope hope hope TSA and the airline will let me board a flight.
The travel from where I live in upstate New York to the San Francisco Bay Area necessary to get to Foothill College will not happen. Hesitated to get the ball rolling on getting a new U.S. passport and passport card that would have enabled me to do air travel again. And, while a cross-country train travel itinerary each way would have been fun, for various reasons, that presented a non-option this time around.
Why the delay? Frankly, am, for the first time in my life, nervous about flying, due to the Department Of Grift & Exploitation's reckless, mindless and Draconian cuts to an already alarmingly understaffed FAA, followed by airline disasters in late January and February. Very much not eager to travel and both furious and outraged by the utter idiocy of firing air traffic controllers and other key FAA staff, opted not to fly to the Bay Area for family birthdays in April.
RE: the post-May 7 rules for boarding flights, e-mailed TSA a question about boarding with a non-certified copy of my birth certificate, driver's license (featuring a non-current address) and original social security card. The answer was NO, NO, and in case one even thinks of boarding a flight without Passport/Real ID, NO!
Does this member of the KFJC Psychotronix Film Fest crew desperately need a working Star Trek teleportation device so he can join his pals at Foothill College Room 5015 bearing boxes of 16mm reels on Saturday?
Yes! Where are Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, Uhuru, Sulu and Chekov when you need them?
The Psychotronix Film Festival has been producing movie events in various venues since 1992 - and shall return to the Orinda Theatre at 2 Orinda Theatre Square (Moraga Way and Brookwood Road) with an improvised, sometimes ragtag, all over the map but highly entertaining lineup of films this Saturday night.
These films include 1950's commercials and "educational" films, the most bizarre obscure classic cartoons, trailers from the worst movies, the campiest musical shorts and TV programs that aired once or should never have aired.
The gang that produces these extravaganzas on glorious 16mm film started as DIY archivists/curators/showmen way back in the 1980's and worked on film presentations in the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento for several years prior to producing the first Psychotronix Film Festival at Foothill College, benefitting KFJC, in December 1992.
Rather amazingly, 32 years later, the Psychotronix gang keeps schlepping 16mm Kodak Pageants and reels in the service of big screen fun, featuring a different mix at every show, which is never repeated - and a new celluloid configuration will be hitting the big screen at the Orinda Theatre.
Said mix includes. . . TV ads!
Vintage car commercials!
Cheesy TV show openings!
Toy commercials!
Trailers from bad movies!
Musical short subjects!
And, invariably, Incredibly Strange Cartoons.
Again, the Psychotronix Film Festival, featuring "16MM Film, The Vinyl of Visuals," returns to bring its highly distinctive variant of big screen fun to the Orinda Theatre at 2 Orinda Theatre Square (Moraga Way and Brookwood Road) Saturday night, September 28, 2024 at 8:30 P.M.
Thanks, Sci Fi Bob Ekman, Scott Moon and Robert Emmett for your good work over these past three decades - and thanks to the Orinda Theatre.
