THE CANNED FILM FESTIVALK


LARAINE NEWMAN - "LARAINE"
RICK FORD - "JACK"
LAURA GALUSHA - "BECKY"
PATRICK GARNER - "FITZY"
PHIL NEE - "CHAN"
KATHRYN ROSSETTER - "DORIS"
TROY WEST - "IRATE MOVIEGOER"
BILL ST. JAMES - "ANNOUNCER"

"The Canned Film Festival" (sponsored by Dr Pepper) was a hosted horror movie (comedy) series aired in 1986, with Laraine Newman (of Saturday Night Live fame) playing "Laraine", the owner and sole usherette at the Ritz Theater in the fictional town of Limekirk, Texas. The series intertwined the activities at the Ritz Theater with the showing of old horror movies. The plot was that "Laraine" was trying to bring life back into the theater through the showing of these old movies. As new customers would come to the theater, they would become regular cast members. The show only lasted 1 season and ran from 21 June 1986 till 13 September 1986, airing 13 episodes. The show's unseen announcer, Bill St. James tells the viewing audience "And that didn't work, so she gathered together a collection of the strangest, silliest, most unusual movies ever made, stocked every refreshment imaginable, and she called it The Canned Film Festival! Will she pull it off? Will Laraine and her mom survive?" The cast and characters (from Wikipedia) The series starred Laraine Newman of Saturday Night Live fame, whose main character, Laraine the usherette, wore an old-fashioned maroon ushers uniform and ran the Ritz with such strict organization as to assign every patron a seat despite the theater's constant near-empty attendance. Laraine ensured that each movie started exactly on time as scheduled, cuing her mother in the production booth via a microphone. Laraine's mother was never actually named nor completely seen during any of the episodes, but sometimes communicated by pounding on the walls or playing musical tunes (presumably with an instrument or a sound device in the booth and transmitted through the theater's sound system). The supporting characters, five in all, were split roughly along gender lines, with three men and two women. The women included Doris (Kathryn Rossetter), a middle-aged aficionado of romantic drama stories. Becky (Laura Galusha) a girl in her early twenties who offered a young feminist perspective to the movies. The men included Jack (F. Richards Ford), Fitzy (Patrick Garner), and Chan (Philip Nee). Jack, as well as the being the love interest of Becky, was also Limekirk's newspaper reporter who was required to review the movies. Together with the middle-aged Fitzy, the two manifested the stereotypical male-oriented fascinations for lowbrow action, crude sexual innuendos, and took morbid pleasure in making fun of some of the movies' more macabre themes (such as nuclear warfare in the feature Rocket Attack U.S.A.). Chan, in addition to being of Asian descent (as opposed to the rest of the cast being Caucasian), was a mute who never spoke except during the episode featuring the movie The Slime People where Laraine dreamt that Chan was possessed. What role Chan's character brought to the series is less clear, although he sometimes provided a childlike response to the episode plots, such as taking a spin in one of the lobby's clothes driers after being inspired by the outer-space setting of the featured movie Project Moonbase. Chan's muteness in the show was only implied, leaving it up to the audience to decide whether or not he could physically speak (although he did laugh on occasion), or if his condition was simply a language barrier written into the script. The movies screened were: The Terror of Tiny Town Doctor of Doom Ski Fever Santa Claus Conquers the Martians Robot Monster The Crawling Hand They Saved Hitler's Brain Untamed Women Bride if the Monster The Las Vegas Hillbillys Project Moonbase Rocket Attack U.S.A. The Slime People

LARAINE NEWMAN as Laraine	RICK FORD as Jack	LAURA GALUSHA as Becky	PATRICK GARNER as Fitzy
PHIL NEE as Chan	KATHRYN ROSSETTER as Doris	BILL ST. JAMES as Announcer	TROY WEST as Irate Moviegoer

The following is a commercial for the show:

The Canned Film Festival hosted by Laraine Newman from The Professor on Vimeo.

LINKS

Internet Movie Data Base "The Canned Film Festival"	Wikipedia "Canned Film Festival"	Internet Movie Data Base "Laraine Newman"
Internet Movie Data Base "Rick Ford"	Internet Movie Data Base "Laura Galusha"	E-gor's Chamber of TV Horror Hosts "Laraine"
Internet Movie Data Base "Patrick Garner"	Internet Movie Data Base "Phil Nee"	Internet Movie Data Base "Kathryn Rossetter"
Internet Movie Data Base "Troy West"	Internet Movie Data Base "Bill St. James"	Dead 2 Rights "The Canned Film Festival"

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