Electric Car (downloaded from the Featured Clip Archive of WPA Film Library). [Category: Industrial]

British newsreel story from the 60s about electric cars, showing two different models and predicting they’ll be all over the place before long. Alas, it was not to be. The cars are cute, though, and so is the car model being used as a paperweight on the car designer’s desk.

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

Caltrans Photolog Sample (film #6 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Educational]

You may find this silent driving footage to be oddly familiar-looking if you took driver’s ed in high school. That’s because this is film from the driving simulator, circa mid-80s. Only it’s as if the person operating the simulator was putting the pedal to the metal. Landscapes, small towns, curvy mountain roads, roadsigns––everything whizzes by at top speed. This has a slightly trippy feel after awhile, especially the curvy mountain roads, which seem to undulate sensually under their own power. Normally, I don’t review films in the educational category that are more recent than 1980, but when I found out that this was a simulator film, I just had to have it in my collection.

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

Crossroads U.S.A. (film #7 on AV Geeks). [Category: Industrial]

This oil-industry sponsored film from the 50s shows us a group of people who are stranded by a storm in a gas station. One of them is Andy, a young man who just turned down a job offer by the gas station owner because he is disillusioned by the opportunities available to a young, working-class person like himself. Another stranded person just happens to be an oil prospector who just made a big strike. When Andy calls him “lucky,” he disagrees, telling him that it took a lot of hard work, money, and discouraging failed attempts before he made the big strike. Just when the storm clears up, another stranded person who just happens to be a hold-up man, gets out his gun and prepares to get money the easy way. He attempts to recruit Andy to a life of crime, but Andy attacks him rather than cooperating. The hold-up guy is eventually overpowered and turned over to the police, and this somehow convinces Andy to take the gas station job and to have faith in individual initiative again. This is another attempt to sell the idea of individually-based capitalism to the masses, and a rather lame one at that. Although the oil prospector’s tale sounds fairly convincing, it’s hard to translate all the money he must have had at the outset to engage in such a speculative venture to Andy’s minimum wage job at the gas station. I don’t wholly object to the idea of individual initiative, but when you consider the source of a film like this, its message becomes hard to swallow.

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

Made in the U.S.A. (film #867 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Public Service]

This 30s film was designed to teach American citizens that foreign trade is vital to the American way of life. The film does this by telling a goofy story about a guy who goes to a general store and hears a cracker barrel philosopher spout off about how we don’t need to get anything from them there foreigners, ‘cause we can get everything worth having right here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. At this point, a traveling magician pitches his show by making some Brazil nuts disappear. The main character, though, has narcolepsy, and so he promptly falls asleep and has a weird dream where he and his wife are driving home with the magician, who makes everything imported from a foreign country disappear when he says the country’s name. Naturally, this makes the car fall apart, as well as getting rid of most of the groceries the wife bought. After waking up from the dream, the guy now sees the light about foreign trade, and can talk back to the local xenophobe, though it doesn’t do any good. I love this sort of supernatural visitor plot, though it’s unusual to find it in a government film. There’s also something charmingly old fashioned about the film, with its general store, cracker barrel philosopher, and confidence in American manufacturing. Not even a rube like the xenophobic guy would ever think to insist that everything good is made in America, considering how little is made here nowadays. I also love the old grocery products and the scenes of the car falling apart.

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

The Cool Hot Rod (film #377 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Educational]

Bill Bowers, a teen would-be hot-rodder, moves with his family to a new town that he thinks is full of “squares” who drive like “old ladies.” He is prepared to educate them in the ways of hot-rodding, which to him means driving like a maniac a la Dick York in Last Date, but he is actually the one who gets reeducated. The town has an organized hot-rod club that requires passing a driver education course, the car’s passing a rigorous safety inspection, six months of driving without getting a single ticket, and passing a “reliability test” as just some of its requirements for membership. Then you get to race your rod on the town’s dragstrip. Amazingly, Bill wants desperately to join this highly exclusive club and spends months taking driving lessons and working on his car in order to do it. As a result, he turns from a hood into a nice young man with an afterschool job at the gas station, which, of course, is the point. This film was sponsored by Hot Rod magazine, so it tries its level best to convince viewers that hot-rodding is a clean-cut, safe hobby. And it was made by Sid Davis, so that means Bill narrates the entire thing, including telling us what was said in all conversations rather than letting characters speak for themselves. This is a good example of a social guidance film that appears to be about a limited topic, but is really about turning teens from juvenile delinquents into nice young ladies and gentlemen. It does deserve credit, though, for showing girls as well as boys equally participating in the hobby, even to the point of working on their own cars and racing against male competitors, making it way ahead of its time in terms of gender roles.

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

Facts on Friction (film #498 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Industrial]

This 30s Jam Handy film tells us way more than we want to know about how brakes work and why Chevrolet breaks are the best. It’s very straightforward and didactic, with the narrator getting way too excited about friction at various points. There’s little of the usual Jam Handy wackiness here, but it does teach you about brakes and give you some great visuals of streets and highways in the 30s.

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

Exclusively Yours (film #487 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Industrial]

This 50s film for Texaco dealers introduces the new improved Sky Chief gasoline with Petrox, a new additive that sounds like it was made from oxtails, but was actually made from petroleum. Several white men lecture at us about it, the best of which is Phil Foster, a master of maniacal facial expressions. The concluding message from C. B. Barrett includes mention of several other must-have ephemeral films that Texaco made at the time, including one about gas station restrooms which sounds like a must-have. There’s also some great visuals of cutaway engines, gasoline additives in unmarked beakers, and Texaco print ads and billboards. Overall, this film is pretty ordinary, but it has some great individual moments in it.

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

Easy Does It (in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #473 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Industrial]

Silly Jam Handy film that spends most of its time arguing that the members of the “weaker sex” do just as much hard work as men do, so therefore lots of time and energy has to be put into developing an easier gearshif for them. Yeah, I know, it doesn’t make much sense to me, either, but since it’s a Jam Handy film, it’s bright and breezy and fun. I like the proposed automatic makeup machine portrayed at the end of the film––I want one for the Film Ephemeral Museum of Quirky Devices. Lots of great gender role stuff to mine here.

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

The Easier Way (in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #471 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Industrial]

A guy who’s obsessed with time and motion study thoroughly ruins a dinner party by talking about nothing else and making the guests try out different ways of putting pegs into a pegboard. His wife gets even with him by assigning him to the kitchen to design a better way of doing dishes. This is a charmingly dorky film that actually makes its points pretty well, but in a silly way. Making it a highly entertaining piece of ephemera.

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

Drawing Account (in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #458 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Industrial]

This goofy Jam Handy film features a cartoon animator who meets a Chevrolet mechanical engineer on an airplane that totally lacks seatbelts. The animator manages to talk the engineer into helping make a cartoon in which a bunch of gremlins run a car engine. The engineer helpfully provides a cutaway engine model for the guys in the animation studio to look at. This results in a baffling scene in which the kooky animators brainstorm about the gremlins while the engineer gives boring lectures about how the car engine works, sneaking in sales messages about how great Chevrolet engines are while he’s at it. One animator, who looks like a Radford Baines wanna-be gets way too excited about making one of the imps into a Roman chariot driver: “We’ll make him a big, muscular guy with a whip!” he crows. Then we get to see a really interesting sequence on how cartoons are made, including how sound synchronization is done, something that was new to me. Then, of course, we get to see the finished cartoon, which is pretty silly. This is one of the goofiest industrial films I’ve ever seen, which makes it a great piece of ephemra. Termite Terrace these guys definitely ain’t!

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

Down the Gasoline Trail (in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #457 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Industrial]

This cute animated Jam Handy film for GM shows the journey of a gasoline drop down the fuel line to the engine, where it is vaporized, turning it into an angel which flies out of the exhaust pipe. I won’t touch with a ten-foot pole the theological issues involved here. I’ll just say that this is a fun film with a great “Mr. Product” character. Remember, folks, every time you drive, angels are flying out of your exhaust pipe. Or at least they did in the days before catalytic converters.

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

Destination Earth (in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #424 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Industrial]

This animated bit of capitalist propaganda features a Martian from a totalitarian Martian society who comes to Earth to find out what makes the Earthmobiles so darned efficient, so he can repair the Head Martian’s limousine. By doing research in a public library, he discovers that oil and free-market competition make America great, so he goes back to Mars to preach this gospel (obviously the stack of books that he steals from the library don’t contain titles about air and water pollution, Middle-Eastern politics, robber barons, or the Great Depression). This inspires the Martians so much that they all go out to drill oil wells, while the totalitarian leader is conquered simply by pushing a self-destruct button––that he was defeated so easily really makes you wonder about the intelligence of the Martian race. This is propaganda, to be sure, but it’s delightfully animated, genuinely funny in spots, and less strident than many films of its kind. The bright colors and 50s cute-style animation won me over, frankly, though I’m not about to drill any oil wells any time soon.

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

Desert Venture (in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #420 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Industrial]

This 40s film, made by Standard Oil of California, documents the initial search for oil in Saudi Arabia, and how its discovery was so beneficial for Americans, Arabs, starving war victims in Europe, and, oh, everybody all over the world. The film itself is fairly straightforward and unsurprising, but the ironic baggage it carries in light of future events is humongous. Perhaps the most ironic moment is a map that turns arrows pointing from North and South America to Europe, indicating the flow of oil, to a huge arrow going from the middle east to Europe. Point that arrow everywhere and you pretty much have today’s oil situation. Beyond that, there are some mildly fun scenes of the totally unassimilated American community in Saudi Arabia, complete with housewives buying convenience foods in supermarkets; and lots of scenes of sand, oil drilling, camels, and Arabs.

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

A Coach for Cinderella (in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #339 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Industrial]

Not satisfied with just fooling around with newsreels (see the endless permutations of Chevrolet Leader News), Chevrolet had to go and make a cartoon, too. Actually, this is pretty charming. It features a bunch of elves from the wrong fairy tale who decide to help out Cinderella by making her a coach from a pumpkin, a turtle shell, some caterpillars, and lots of other stuff from the forest. They assemble the coach in a way suspiciously similar to an automobile assembly line. Then they put it into a great contraption called a “Modernizer”, and out comes––wait for it––a brand new Chevrolet! This could pass for one of the many fairytale-themed cartoons made during the 30s, and its advertising message is not too heavy-handed. Making this one of the more fun examples of the industrial genre.

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

Automobile for Cross-Country Travel Devised (film #123 on Universal Newsreels). [Category: News]

Newsreel story from the 30s about a newly-invented German car that can drive over roadless country. This is fun to watch, but for some reason, the narration is in German, despite the fact that this was an American newsreel. That makes the clip weirder than it might otherwise be.

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

Chevrolet Sales Convention Musical (in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #1807 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Industrial]

Apparently, the way to inspire car salesmen to really go out and sell is to show them a Broadway-style musical on that theme, or so it was in the 50s at Chevrolet. This singing and dancing sales pep talk gives you a real feel of the corporate culture at Chevrolet at the time, though what it actually says about it I don’t want to touch with a ten-foot pole. Rogers and Hammerstein these guys ain’t, though they sure try hard. As you might guess, this is tremendously campy and could be used to torture folks who like to think they’re cool. It’s rock and roll that killed this sort of thing––whether or not it was murder or justifiable homicide is up to the viewer to decide.

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

Chevrolet Leader News, Vol. 5, No. 2 (in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #309 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Industrial]

This rather dull edition of Chevrolet Leader News features bathing beauties fencing on the beach, the utterly fascinating world of rice growing, more model boat racing, traffic cops getting aerial photographs of intersections with a camera attached to a balloon, and, in the latest animal abuse news, baby chicks being transported on a seaplane to South America. Actually, this doesn’t really qualify as animal abuse, so they had to make up for it by placing a couple of the chicks in a humiliating toy plane. Another slow news day at Chevrolet. The graphic design of the title cards is cool, though.

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

Chevrolet Leader News, Vol. 4, No. 3 (in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #309 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Industrial]

OK, folks, I’ve put up with the animal abuse in this series. I’ve put up with stuffing dogs in trunks. I’ve put up with dressing monkeys in humiliating costumes. I’ve even put up with them capturing a grand old sea turtle and tormenting it before killing it for its hide. But now Chevrolet has gone too far––they’ve taken an innocent cow and started it smoking! And then they milk her and feed the milk to children! Forget PETA––call out the Surgeon General for this one! Oh, and they also have silly stories about a parade honoring the school safety patrol, a guy who trades in his buggy for a new Chevrolet (and who now, with Chevrolet’s blessing, has no tolerance for other buggies on the road), a bunch of oil drillers playing around with nitroglycerine (don’t try this at home, kids), a guy who goes everywhere on stilts, and an archery instructor who shoots at his female students from the hood of a driverless moving car. Had enough safety violations for one film?

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

Chevrolet Leader News, Vol. 4, No. 2 (in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #308 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Industrial]

More silliness from Chevrolet. This time, it’s stories on surfing, a truck that delivers supplies to a CCC Camp in Death Valley (this has some historical interest), photography, braking tests, and, in the usual segment on animal abuse, a wild deer kept as a pet and regularly locked in a car and made to wear a humiliating hat at dinner. The usual, but do I get the feeling they’re beginning to run out of steam?

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

Chevrolet Leader News, Vol. 4, No. 1 (in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #306 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Industrial]

Another rather dull installment of Chevrolet Leader News, featuring magazine models, an offensive story about using a statue of an Indian as a target for braking tests, dull facts about industrial diamonds, a small town rebuilding after being wiped out by a flood, and, in the usual segment on animal abuse, rats being forced to perform on tightropes and jump through flaming hoops. Yawn.

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