Like many ‘80s kids raised on a diet of VHS horror, George Sukara’s childhood sleepovers were spent watching The Lost Boys, Evil Dead 2, and everything from the A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th franchises.
It was only a matter of time before he and his friends began making their own movies, a passion they’ve carried into adulthood. When Sukara finished his rock ‘n roll horror-comedy HELL! , a sequel to his similarly Beatles-inspired A Hard Day’s Nightmare, he submitted it to the Scumdance Film Festival, a scrappy gathering for weird filmmakers and fans held in Reno.
HELL! was a Scumdance hit and Sukara developed a friendship with the festival’s founder, Travis Calvert, over their shared love of weird movies and gatherings like Spike & Mike’s Festival of Animation, which gifted the world South Park, Beavis and Butt-Head, and The Powerpuff Girls.
Now, Sukara is Scumdance’s director, having moved it to San Francisco in 2022. On Saturday night, the ninth installment of the fest will unspool in all its scummy glory at The Lost Church in North Beach.
Sukara describes his little festival as “a way to show cool, underground movies to like-minded movie mutants.” With the event’s irreverent moniker, skull-laden posters, and slimy font, Scumdance is more like a punk rock show than Sundance or Telluride.
This year’s lineup includes Soliloquy of One, by Max Radbill; Murder in the Park, “a trashy and silly gorefest” from Rives Elliot; and In The Flesh, by Fern Poppy. Sukara is also excited about Wet Ingredients, “a witchy, bubblegum pop short” by Bay Area filmmakers Matthew Ragsdale and Kendy Paxia, and Dead, White & Blue, directed by Mike Davis.
To make the selections, Sukara pored over 90 submissions, watching some 37 hours of film. Occasionally he stumbles upon something that really holds his attention. This year, it was Dead, White & Blue, which he describes as “a feature-length movie made up entirely of found footage, stitched together into a really fun story.” That story involves a rogue FBI agent and white supremacist super-scientists with a shrink ray. Throw in overdubbed dialogue (shades of What’s Up, Tiger Lily?) and a soundtrack like “a 1970s cop show” and you get something special.
“We've never shown a film like Dead, White, & Blue,” Sukara says. “I mean, what's not to like?”
As eager as he is to share these films with the world, Sukara acknowledges that it’s gotten tougher to do so over the years. When Calvert founded the festival in 2017, it was held at his favorite dive bar and ended with a punk show. When the bar changed management in 2022, Scumdance was given its walking papers. It was Sukara’s idea to move it to San Francisco, though he’s keenly aware of the pitfalls of trying to produce a cheap festival in such an expensive city.
“I’ve lived in SF for over 20 years, and it’s heartbreaking to see indie venues go under or get consumed by the big boys,” he says.
If people want to keep events like Scumdance going, there’s really only one way: “You’ve gotta show up,” Sukara says. “Showing up is the most important thing. That also means showing up for your fellow artists. Get out of the house. Buy a ticket. Just show up.”
