Canned Film Festival (1986)

Genre

comedy

Country

United States

Rating

8.0 of 10 from 1 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This late night series from 1986 takes B movies and weaves short comedy sketches around them during commercial breaks. It showcases odd and strange films, aiming to entertain viewers looking for something out of the ordinary.

comedicquirkynostalgiccampylightheartedoffbeatironicloose

What happens

The Canned Film Festival is a comedy-based motion picture television series that was nationally syndicated during the late night hours in the United States for a single season in the summer of 1986. The name is a play on the Cannes Film Festival, the annual world-renowned film-screening celebration in Cannes, France. Not to be confused with the latter, the Canned Film Festival featured B movies as the centerpiece for each television episode, and was composed of short vignettes interwoven throughout the films. Boasting the tagline "late night with the best of the worst", the series was promoted and sponsored by the Dr. Pepper Company, whose then-tagline "out-of-the-ordinary" echoed the show's collection of odd and strange movies. The series was created by Young & Rubicam, developed for television by Chelsea Communications, and distributed by LBS Communications. Although similar in style to the successful Mystery Science Theater 3000 series shown on cable TV a few years later, the Canned Film Festival differed in that its comedy scenes occurred strictly during the commercial intermissions instead of adding peanut gallery type satire during the actual run of the movies. In addition, the script, although comic in nature, often reflected upon the serious contextual and cultural subjects contained in the featured movies, sometimes providing historical insight into their production. An example is seen during the episode featuring Project Moonbase, where female spaceship commanders were discussed as an accurate future prediction by the 1950s era movie, as were cordless telephones and big screen televisions. The featured B movies of the series were not full-length, and edited to fit the show's approximately two-hour timeframe per episode. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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