If the prospect of seeing lots and lots of movies in a ridiculously short period of time gets you all quivery with anticipation, look no further than the Tambay Film and Video Festival.

"84 films in 48 hours" is how Tambay bills itself, although the actual figures may be even more extreme. By my count, there appear to be more like 90 films, although many of them are shorts, and the actual number of hours involved is closer to just 30.

In any event, the end result's the same. Too many films, not enough time.

The Tambay Festival is a more homegrown, grassroots affair than any of the other film festivals that now call the Bay area home, which is both a good thing and a bad one. Tambay's emphasis is squarely on local and independent productions, with considerable attention given to student films and ultra-low-budget, seat-of-your-pants material. This is a festival that gives untested filmmakers a chance.

That's the good news. The bad news is that, as is often the case with raw material like this, there are bound to be some fairly serious quality-control issues. Tambay tends to cast its lot with quantity over quality, or else maybe the festival's programmers just have an extraordinarily hard time saying no to even the least-promising filmmaker. In any event, even after four years in operation, the festival still hasn't quite gotten a handle on weeding out the substandard stuff.

And therein lies the rub. The Tambay Film and Video Festival is exactly the sort of locally produced and locally oriented event that deserves and needs our support, but, unfortunately, the quality of the works being presented often simply isn't up to snuff. The festival's 2004 lineup is less hit and miss than in previous years, but the schedule still includes way too many movies by filmmakers who simply aren't ready to show their stuff to the public. Frankly, some of them will probably never be ready.

The bottom line is that, even though this is a festival full of easy targets, I'm not going to trash any of them. Rather than run the risk of nipping somebody's career in the bud -- or, more accurately, before that career even got a chance to get started -- let's concentrate instead on the positive aspects of this festival. More than a few of those 84 or 90 films being shown from April 23 to 25 at Channelside Cinemas are worth checking out, and here are some of the highlights.

One of the festival's very best efforts was produced very close to home. Gainesville filmmaker Steven Kahler's Click, an engaging drama about Green Berets stationed in Cambodia during the Vietnam war, is a quality production that conveys an authenticity well beyond the limitations of its budget. The film is nicely shot and effectively conveys an atmosphere of tension, fear and claustrophobia, where death potentially lurks behind every tree in the jungle.

Another winner is Massachusetts filmmaker Gordon Barnett's Blame Binky, a quirky little comedy about a group of squabbling, overworked employees pulling a grueling all-nighter at a discount superstore. The movie is slight, but charming and funny in a natural and unstrained way, and I've got 50 bucks that says the script was written by somebody who put in time at a store exactly like the one in the film.

Another comedy, Heather Robinson's Casting Adrift, skirts the edges of camp with a scenario about a bubble-headed pop star who gathers together her favorite has-been soap stars to star in the world's worst movie. Complications inevitably ensue and everybody goes a little crazy. Like many of the feature films at the Tambay festival, Casting Adrift probably would have been more effective as a short, but the characters are likeable, the situations are just absurd enough to make us smile, and when the movie's funny, it's very funny.

Every film festival needs its weird stuff, and Anathema is about as weird as it gets. Director Nicholas Robbins offers an account of an alienated young man and a psychologically damaged hooker on a road trip through hell. The film is a little too enamored with its own oddness -- copious and painful sexual episodes and close encounters with all manner of surreal and hellish phenomena are a specialty -- but the production values are top-notch and the dialogue and performances (generally weak links in these films) are believable. Anathema feels like a real, live, grown-up movie in the sense that it's one of the few films in this festival where we find ourselves genuinely curious about what will happen next.

Festivals like this one are magnets for the genre films that fledgling filmmakers love to make, and Tambay has its share. The best of the lot is Filthy, a 30-minute exercise in no-holds-barred, fluid-soaked horror by local boys Andy Lalino and John Karliss. Filthy more than lives up to its title, with massive amounts of gore and unabashedly repugnant behavior on display, but the wisp of a story (ambitious, icy female reporter taken hostage by cannibalistic fiends) is communicated in a way that's as genuinely frightening as it is ugly. The movie, which contains clever nods to everything from Halloween to The Hills Have Eyes, was filmed in St. Pete, Clearwater and Tarpon Springs -- all places that will probably never look the same once you've seen Filthy.

There's obviously lots more to be seen at the festival, but rather than break my promise to only write about the good stuff, I'll stop here. Tread carefully, don't go expecting Citizen Kane, and chances are you'll be perfectly content with what you see at Tambay. Then again, if enough of us continue to support these sorts of festivals, maybe one of these 84 or 90 filmmakers will one day produce his or her own Citizen Kane.

OK, probably not. But we can dream, can't we?

Tickets and passes for The Tambay Film and Video Festival can be purchased through the festival office by calling 813-964-9781 or at Channelside Cinemas on the day of screenings. For more information, visit www.tambayfilmfest.com.

Contact Film Critic Lance Goldenberg at 813-248-8888, ext. 157, or lance.goldenberg@weeklyplanet.com.