Better Reading

Better Reading. Teenager Harold Wilson has a problem—he can’t read for (expletive deleted). So he has to spend all his free time studying and even then he gets poor grades. His teacher refers him to the school’s reading clinic, where they give him lots of tests and diagnose him with being a poor reader. Then, of course, he is given a pamphlet to read to help him improve his reading. After an enormous amount of time and effort, his reading improves and, of course, so does his life. This EB film is charmingly dorky, reminding one of a Coronet film. The message is valid—being able to read well does improve your life and expand your horizons. What I question is if most teenage poor readers would be willing to put in the time and effort Harold does to improve things. Still, that’s what makes the film charming. If you’re having trouble reading this review, be sure to check out my 12-part series of e-books on “How to Read Good.” Don’t forget to move lots of furniture and get that old reading lamp out of the cellar.

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

Beginning Responsibility: Taking Care of Things

Beginning Responsibility: Taking Care of Things. Grade-schooler Andy is a slacker in the taking-care-of-things department, so he suffers the humiliation of having to sharpen his pencil while everybody is looking at him, being called a “baby” by his classmates, and totally not impressing older kid Fred when he can’t find what he was going to show him. This is pretty painful for him, but since this is a Coronet film, it all ends happily when he does an abrupt about-face and starts putting things away and being more careful with stuff. And because this is a cheaply-made film, this is all told to us by a friendly female narrator than through dialogue. Maybe they left the soundtrack out in the yard; hope Dad can fix it. A charming early childhood educational film that would make good fodder for msting.

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

Accident Prevention Through Equipment Guarding

Accident Prevention Through Equipment Guarding. Guards, in this case, are not human, but refer to guard rails and metal cages used to prevent machines from killing or maiming their operators. This 1982 industrial safety film for miners teaches us the importance of guards and generally how to keep yourself safe around machines that could easily remover a finger or a limb or two if operated carelessly. It's mostly pretty dry, but it’s punctuated by staged accidents that are announced by dramatic music on the soundtrack. Oh no! There goes another one! Fortunately, the blood is kept to a minimum.

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

The Benefactor. This 1917 film may be one of the first biopics ever. The life of Thomas Edison is told in a lively and fun fashion for a 1917 silent film. We find out that he was an incredible prankster, extremely creative, and very hard-working. It all comes off like Edison sitting down with us and telling us stories of his youth, with the expected embellishments. General Electric added an ending where we see the real Edison accepting a Congressional Medal of Honor. Also of interest are scenes of 1917 cities being lit up by electric lights, which have an erie art deco feel to them, even though they predate art deco by some time. Lots of historical interest here.

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

Belonging to the Group: Respect as a Human Value. This 50s EB social guidance film shows us two families that are newcomers to a small town, one of average 50s folks, and one that are first-generation immigrants from an unnamed European country. They both have minor problems with getting accepted into the town’s social fabric, with the immigrants having a few more problems than the white-bread family. But all the problems are on the 50s sitcom level, i.e. they’re problems we’d all like to have because they’re so minor. There’s a slight hint of discrimination towards the immigrant family, but it all gets resolved in the end when the boy impresses kids at school with his woodcarving skills and the mom wins a cake baking contest at church. This is one of those 50s films that hints at larger problems and then denies the seriousness of them, which makes it slightly campy and somewhat disturbing at the same time.

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

Beer Outtakes. This is billed as a series of outtakes from a 70s beer commercial, though it actually looks more like an audition tape. The soundtrack is lost, so we don’t know what the series of attractive 70s young people are saying as they drink a mug of beer in a bar setting. But it’s clear that the people drinking and chatting in the background are having lots more fun than they are. The awkwardness of the beer spokespeople just reminds me of why I don’t think drinking in bars is really very fun. But this just begs to have a new and improved satirical soundtrack dubbed into it. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ***. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ***.

The Baltimore Plan. This 1953 public service film outlines an aggressive plan by the city of Baltimore to clean up slums. Working one neighborhood at a time, social workers helped landlords, tenants, and homeowners to fix up and clean up their properties. For those who wouldn’t cooperate voluntarily, housing courts were set up to enforce new, tougher housing codes, though even they took a problem-solving, rather than a punitive approach. This seemed to help a great deal to improve conditions in poor neighborhoods, though I don’t know if the changes lasted, or how things are in Baltimore now. The film provides a great historical snapshot of social services in the 1950s. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: N/A. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: *****. Overall Rating: ***.

Ball Handling in Basketball. First of all, stop that snickering. Gangly, skinny white guys demonstrate proper and effective ball handling—hey! You in the back! Shut your mouth!—in basketball, in this 1946 Encyclopedia Brittanica film. It’s all done in the dry EB style, but the necessary repeated mentioning of the B-word has a tendency to bring out the 7th grade boy in all of us. I’m surprised this was actually shown to young people without the entire class getting sent to the principal’s office. Great for msting. For actual basketball players, get back out on the floor and practice your dribbling (sorry). Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ****. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: ***. Overall Rating: ****.

Bad Dog. Say, I’ve got an idea: what if dogs could make films? Whether or not you think that’s a good idea, this film tries to simulate that, showing us what things look like from a dog’s point of view. Unfortunately, this dog’s owner is Mr. Bentley from The Jeffersons during his hippie phase, and somebody told him that having a dog is a great way to meet girls. It doesn’t turn out the way he had hoped, though. What the point of showing this in classrooms was is not clear to me, unless it was to give kids more empathy for dogs. What I want to say to the director is this: No! Don’t touch that camera! BAD DOG!! Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ****. Weirdness: *****. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ***.

Back to Life. In this 40s film, Bud Lambert, a skilled tradesman working in a factory, suddenly goes off his nut, as the British like to put it. He begins hearing voices and lashing out at his coworkers and his wife. So they put him in a mental hospital and from then on, everything goes swimmingly. He learns to trust his therapist, and gains self-esteem after fixing the loom in the occupational therapy shop. The staff think he’s ready to go home, but what about his old job? Will they take him back? This film focuses less on the treatment he gets in the hospital, and more on vocational rehabilitation. Unfortunately, the film undercuts its message somewhat by focusing on such a perfect patient—nothing goes wrong with Bud once he begins treatment, and he is able to return to his old job with no trouble whatsoever. I’m sure most real cases were a wee bit more complicated than that. Still, the film has a certain charm that comes from the bad acting (done by mental health professionals who are obviously not professional actors) and the positive way it tries to present psychiatric treatment and patients. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ****. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: *****. Overall Rating: ****.

Attending Information Management. This early 70s film appears to be a training film for group counselors in some sort of social services job training program. A counselor has an initial session with five job program participants and goes through some initial information-gathering with them about their previous job experiences and their interests. The participants all seem to me to be somewhat troubled individuals who need help getting and keeping employment, such as a guy who likes working with kids but doesn’t like bosses, or a shy young woman who didn’t finish high school and has no work experience of any kind. The group leader is kind of awkward, but that just adds to the realism of the film. This is interesting enough that I would like to see more of what happens with this group, though I don’t know if the other films in the series stay with this same group or not. Overall, this is an interesting snapshot of social service practices in the early 70s. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: **. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ***.

Artificial Respiration. This 70s film on how to do artificial respiration is pretty straightforward. Acted scenes of everyday accidents that require artificial respiration are alternated with stock footage of disasters. The acted scenes are a tad bit dorky and very 70s, but they don’t undercut the message of the film and what it is trying to teach, which is an important skill. The film teaches it well, presenting the steps clearly and making it look easy and non-intimidating. Each acted scene ends with an announcement that the victim was lucky the people who were with him or her knew what to do, the best of these being, “It pays to know the right people!”, which somehow doesn’t fit into a first-aid film. Other than that, though, this is pretty standard. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ***. Weirdness: **. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ***.

Are You a Good Citizen?. Clean teen Jim breaks the window of Mr. Heinemann playing baseball with his buddies in the street. Heinemann uses this as an opportunity to teach Jim good citizenship, since he has been named the town’s First Citizen. He finds out that Jim and his friends need a good place to play baseball, so he helps Jim to organize a bond issue for the town to buy a nearby vacant lot and turn it into a playground. This film is dorky as all get-out, but it’s message of self-empowerment through engagement in the political process is actually a good one, though it makes the process look a lot simpler than it actually is. P. S. Vote Bernie in 2020! Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ****. Weirdness: ****. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ****.

Are Manners Important?. Grade schooler Mickey doesn’t seem to think so. He barges through his 50s world without a care for anybody but himself and says, “Manners are just for grown-ups!” when his mother confronts him about his rude behavior. But when it seems like the other kids are rejecting him, he gets frustrated and has a fantasy where, as president of the United States, he issues a proclamation banning manners forever. Unfortunately, a big group of kids barge in and bring manners back through mob violence. I guess that’ll teach Mickey a lesson, though the narrator leaves it open for discussion. A fun, campy little EB film with some great moments of bad child acting. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ****. Weirdness: ****. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ****.

Application of Pascal’s Law, Part 1. This dry WWII vintage Navy training film about hydraulics is spiced up slightly when the concept of “work” is shown by an animated Sailor Goofus trying to move a heavy box. Otherwise, it’s just pistons moving and narration, though the design of the animation is kind of cool. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: **. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ***.

Another to Conquer. This 1941 film was made to encourage Native Americans to get proper treatment for tuberculosis, which had become epidemic in Native populations. Young adult Navajo siblings Don and Nema had both parents die from the disease, and their grandfather, Slow Talker, tells them their parents died because they had abandoned traditional ways. Nema wants she and Don to get examined to see if they have the disease, but Slow Talker is mistrustful of the white man and discourages it. Their friend Robert decides to go to the Indian school, to Slow Talker’s dismay, and there he is given a physical exam and is found to have the early stages of TB. He is sent to a sanitarium for treatment (antibiotics hadn’t been invented yet) and slowly recovers. Slow Talker, upon hearing of Robert’s illness, calls him “lazy” for staying in the hospital. But then Don collapses while working hard during the annual sheep dip, and it turns out that he has an advanced case of TB. This changes Slow Talker’s tune, and he agrees to take himself and Nema to be examined. Nema turns out to be disease-free, but Slow Talker turns out to be a carrier who may have been the one to infect his family. He makes the difficult decision to stay in the sanitarium so he won’t continue to infect his family. This film is admirable in its aims, yet it has a patronizing attitude to the Natives that it is trying to persuade. The answer is “white man’s medicine” which couldn’t have been very persuasive to Native audiences. The film has lots of historical interest in showing both attitudes toward disease and Native American life in the 40s. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: N/A. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: *****. Overall Rating: ****.

And Women Must Weep. This dramatic, anti-union film supposedly tells the story of a wildcat strike in Princeton, Indiana. The strike was supposedly called by a tiny committee within the union, after the union president had been fired after breaking some rules that were in the union contract. The firing causes him to call the strike as a personal vendetta against the company, and out-of-state goons came into the town to railroad the union members into supporting the strike, and to harass members who crossed the picket line. It all ends with an anonymous gunner shooting at a trailer home of one of the union members who crossed the picket line, hitting his baby. This is all presented as God's truth about unions who require membership of all company employees. Except it didn’t happen that way. We learn in the union’s rebuttal film, Anatomy of a Lie, that the strike was not wildcat, there was no secret union committee, the female union president discouraged the union from striking because of her firing, there were no out-of-state goons, and the police determined that the shooting at the trailer home had nothing to do with the strike. This totally undercuts the message of this film and makes you wonder about the real motives of the filmmakers. Even without the information in Anatomy of a Lie, there are aspects of the film that don’t hang together. For instance, if the strike was wildcat, where did the out-of-state goons come from? Certainly not the union, if it didn't approve of the strike. This film is the very essence of propaganda: overly emotional and not too concerned with the facts. The fact that the National Right to Work Committee still touts it as truth does not speak well for that organization. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ***. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ***.

Anatomy of a Lie. This 1962 film is a refutation of another film, And Women Must Weep, which is also on my list to review. That film was an anti-union film that dramatically showed how a machinist’s strike in Princeton, Indiana supposedly damaged the community. Anatomy of a Lie was made by the union who voted to strike and interviews the workers who were involved in it, mostly women. The workers all point out that the anti-union film grossly misrepresented the facts of the strike, making it sound like it was not supported by the workers (actually it was overwhelmingly supported by them), that the picket lines exploded into violence (they didn’t), and that the union hired out-of-state goons to harass people who tried to cross the picket line (the sheriff even corroborates that there were no out-of-state goons, and the workers point out that the company hired out-of-state strikebreakers to cause problems on the picket lines). It all comes off as very convincing, since the interviewed workers are all real people and not actors. My favorite part is when they interview the tough old woman who was union president at the time of the strike. Part of the company’s dirty tricks was when they fired her on a trumped-up pretext. The anti-union film turned her character into a bitter, rabble-rousing man who gets the union to strike in revenge for his firing. When the interviewer asks the real union president about this, she says she actually discouraged the union to strike because of her, because “I’m fat, old, and ugly enough to take care of myself.” Yeah, you go, sister! Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: **. Weirdness: **** (mainly for being an ephemeral film that rebutts another ephemeral film). Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ****.

An American in the Making (1913) from Ned Thanhouser on Vimeo.

An American in the Making. In this 1913 film, made by US Steel, a Hungarian immigrant gets a job at the US Steel plant in Gary, Indiana, is introduced to, and vastly impressed by, the wide array of safety equipment used in the plant, marries his pretty English teacher, and lives happily ever after with his wife and son in a nice middle class house. I’m sure that he, as well as all the workers he was meant to represent, were so darn happy they had no need for any of those rabble rousing unions. In US Steel’s dreams! Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ****. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: *****. Overall Rating: ****.

The Air We Breathe in Industrial Environments. This industrial safety film explains the hazards of breathing air contaminated by various industrial pollutants, and the importance of wearing proper safety gear when doing various kinds of industrial jobs. It’s pretty standard for the most part, but there’s an old guy who’s not the narrator who has a great set of visual aids in the form of blocks that represent various concentrations of gasses, including one that says “FATAL” on the bottom (a must for the Film Ephemera Museum of Quriky Devices). Also, there’s lots of footage of gritty-looking industrial environments, where it’s hard to breathe just looking at them. Take a deep breath, folks, and be grateful you don't work in a coal mine. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ***. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ****.