Check and Let Me Know (in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #290 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Industrial]

The president of the Snodgrass Company meets a salesman from an industrial film company on a business trip and gets all hopped up about making an industrial film. So he puts the wheels into motion by telling his vice president about it and asking him to do some research on the cost. This order gets passed around from employee to employee, changing in the process like a game of Telephone, until it metamorphoses into an order for 5000 toasters and the “fact” that a great industrial film can be made for only $5000. The salesman must bear the brunt of this, because the guy from Snodgrass who calls him insists that the $5000 was his (the salesman’s) bid. This is sort of like a 50s version of Dilbert, which makes it amusing, though it’s hard to figure out who this was made for. The film company that made it obviously has a poor opinion of its customers, but no advice is given for how to handle such a screwed-up situation. This makes it a great weird piece of ephemera, giving us a glimpse into what it was probably really like in the corporate offices of that time. Of course, Calvin, the company that made it, revealed in Calvin Workshop that its films were made by chimps, so maybe they could make a film for under $5000. So what’s the salesman’s problem? On the other hand, the employees of the Snodgrass Company make the chimps look pretty smart.

Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ****. Weirdness: ****. Historical Interest: *****. Overall Rating: ****.