The Dying Detective (track #6 on Sherlock Holmes: The Early Years (Hollywood's Attic, 1996)). [Category: Hollywood]

Made by the same company as The Devil's Foot, this silent short shows us how Holmes foils the evil Dr. Smith by letting him believe he was successful in giving Holmes a rare tropical disease. The story is full of twists and turns, making it more interesting than The Devil's Foot. Still, adapting Sherlock Holmes to the silent cinema is cumbersome––you really need dialogue to make the story flow. And again, the print is in poor condition, making it hard to see.

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

Bread Lines and Soup Kitchens (film #3 in the 1929 Stock Market Crash and Great Depression section of WPA Film Library). [Category: News]

Moving silent footage, some of it in color, of desperate unemployed people, some of them homeless, getting food from bread lines and soup kitchens, scanning employment notices anxiously, and sometimes being reduced to sleeping in doorways or going through garbage cans for food. These images are quite moving and have great historical value as a document to a desperate time in our history. Particularly striking is footage of San Francisco’s Mother Jordan dishing out soup to the hungry with both hands.

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

Armed Forces Display U.S. Might on Observance Day (film #176 on Universal Newsreels). [Category: Military & Propaganda]

Another 50s newsreel with Cold-War-related stories, this time about a show of weapons on Observance Day (which includes some puzzling footage of women dressed in pioneer garb) and more about the war in Algeria. Also included are stories of the surviving Dionne quintuplets opening a flower shop, doctors using walkie-talkies which buzz obnoxiously (the precursor to today’s pagers, no doubt), and two stories about horse racing. Again, this gives you a feel for what was considered newsworthy during the 50s.

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

Brothers and Sisters (film #5 on AV Geeks). [Category: Educational]

Kudos to the AV Geeks Archive for starting to put up filmstrips. This filmstrip features Steve, a small boy with an older brother and sister and a baby brother. He gets frustrated with them the way all kids do, but then he has a bad dream that they’re gone, the way kids in most educational films do. This dream cures him of all sibling rivalry, leading to a wonderfully simplistic and unrealistic ending. This is pretty lively stuff for a filmstrip. The images of Steve’s dreams are great. It’s perhaps not as much fun as seeing the dream acted out for us on film, but it makes up for it by having lots of striking still images, any of which would look great on a t-shirt. More fun than you’d think a filmstrip would be.

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: ***.

Betty Boop’s Big Boss (film #497 on Open Source Movies). [Category: Hollywood]

It’s the height of the Depression, so when Betty Boop sees a “Girl Wanted” sign, she comes on hard to the boss in order to get the job. After she gets hired, the boss comes on hard to her, but before you can say “sexual harassment,” she’s called out not only every cop in town, but the army and navy, too. This is a wonderfully weird and silly Betty, with anthropomorphic inanimate objects aplenty, and side jokes that you almost miss, such as the cops who are determined to arrest the boss for bad acting. Great fun.

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

Chaplin - The Vagabond (film #23 in the Silent section of Movieflix). [Category: Early Film & TV]

The Little Tramp is a down-and-out violinist in this one. After an unsuccessful career as a street musician, he encounters an unfortunate young woman in a gypsy camp who is overworked and regularly beaten with a whip by the gypsy boss. He cleverly rescues her, along with one of the gypsy wagons. Later, she meets and befriends an artist who paints her portrait. When the portrait is displayed in an art show, it causes a sensation. Turns out the young woman was the daughter of a wealthy family who was stolen by the gypsies a long time ago, and when her mother sees the painting she recognizes her long-lost daughter. Charlie gallantly refuses a cash reward for finding her, even though he is flat broke, and it looks like he will be left alone and destitute, but at the last minute, the young woman insists that they go back and get them. This is one of the better Chaplins on this site. It has a lot of funny moments, especially during the scene where Charlie rescues the woman from the gypsies, and the basic story is genuinely touching. A 1916 Charlie Chaplin film.

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

Blanket-Tossing a New Recruit (film #30 on Edison Film Archive. Also, film #13 on The Spanish-American War in Motion Pictures). [Category: Early Film & TV]

Soldiers blanket-toss a new recruit, not being too careful about him hitting his head. They stop when it stops being fun. A slice of life from the Spanish-American War. An 1898 Edison film.

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

Activision Games (film #22 in The Most Memorable Commercials of the 1970s section of TVParty). [Category: Commercial]

This is a silly commercial for Ice Hockey, where the storekeeper gets the customer all hopped up and violent before selling him the game. I guess games were so primitive in those days that they needed the retailers to incite violence in the players, rather than the games themselves.

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

Beggar at the Gates (extra on Blood Freak DVD (Something Weird, 2002)). [Category: Sleaze & Outsider]

.This 60s documentary about religion focuses on the changes happening in the churches at the time, and, in particular, a new interest in the ecstatic religious experience. For some, this is speaking in tongues, for others, it’s taking LSD in the Neo-American church, and for others, it’s bonding with others at Catholic teen retreats. The filmmakers take an objective tack to all of this, showing all different kinds of ecstatic experiences, allowing various members of the clergy to comment on all of it, and including some thoughts by a religious psychologist. Nevertheless, some of it is kind of creepy. Still, this is an excellent historical document of the tumultuous 60s and how it affected religion, with scene after scene drawing you in and keeping your interest an almost mesmerizing way. It belongs next to such films as Coffee House Rendezvous, Columbia Revolt, and Greenwich Village Sunday in giving you an idea of what it was like to live during the 60s.

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

It Must Be the Neighbors (film #21 on AV Geeks. Also, film #12 on The Educational Archives, Vol. 8: Social Engineering 201 DVD (Fantoma, 2003)). [Category: Public Service]

When Bill Duncan gets a Health Department citation for not replacing his rusted-out garbage can, he calls up an old college buddy at the department to see if he can get out of it. The college buddy takes this opportunity to tour Bill’s yard and point out such sanitation horrors as containers of standing water, which he is sure are already breeding grounds for the mosquitoes that spread yellow fever. Bill blames it all on the neighbors, as do all the neighbors. But since the health department guy has a mesmerizing, Pied-Piper-like effect on the neighborhood kids, they all spearhead a neighborhood cleanup campaign which their parents eventually reluctantly accept. The premise of this film is just as ludicrous as it sounds, and the level of acting talent supports this ludicrousness. That, and its rather dark portrayal of 60s suburbia, make this a fun film to watch.

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

Air Race (film #2 on Side A of Disc #3 of Clutch Cargo: The Complete Series: Volume 1 DVD Boxed Set (Brentwood Home Video, 2005)). [Category: Outtakes & Obscurities]

Well, now I’ve seen everything. The complete "Clutch Cargo" series is now out on DVD. This is that incredibly cheesy super-limited animation series using Synchro-Vox technology, which involves superimposing live-action lips on to cartoon characters’ faces. These cartoons were syndicated and shown on local cartoon shows with hosts, usually. Each story was divided into 5 episodes to run Monday through Friday. This episode features Clutch participating in a jet plane race and being repeatedly placed into jeopardy by scheming opponent Ace Condor. This is less weird than some of the other episodes, though some of Clutch’s escapes have got to defy several laws of physics. And he manages to win the race despite being seriously delayed several times, whereas Ace was not delayed at all. Meaning time must operate in his favor. I’m not even going to touch upon the child and animal endangerment laws being violated by taking Spinner and Paddlefoot along.

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

The Bonus Army (film #5 in the 1929 Stock Market Crash and Great Depression section of WPA Film Library). [Category: News]

Newsreel footage of WWI veterans protesting their lack of promised, and badly-needed, bonuses during the height of the Depression, and being attacked by the army after the crowd started to turn ugly. This is grisly footage of a scary time in US history, and yet one that is often forgotten. The footage has a very on-the-spot feel to it, giving this lots of historical values.

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

Arctic Sentinels: Building Rushed on Radar Defense (film #66 on Universal Newsreels). [Category: Military & Propaganda]

This 50s newsreel features stories on the building of radar defenses in the Arctic, the testing of new kinds of missiles, an award being given by the President to a girl for saving her mother’s life, a couple celebrating their 75th wedding anniversary, a demonstration of an experimental turbine car, a fashion show, and the Master’s golf tournament. The turbine car is kind of unusual, but mostly this is pretty ordinary. It does give you a snapshot of 50s news, though.

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: ***.

Betty Boop and the Little King (film #293 on Open Source Movies). [Category: Hollywood]

The Little King finds opera boring, so he sneaks out to the local vaudeville house to watch, and eventually participate in, Betty Boop’s trick horseback riding show. This is another later Boop, so it’s not very weird, but it does have some charming moments with the Little King and a pretzel salesman, and the Little King jumping rope with Betty and her horse. Mildly amusing.

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

Combat Bulletin No. 6 (film #3 on tape #1 of This Film Is Restricted Boxed Set (Marathon Music & Video, 1997)). [Category: Military & Propaganda]

"Beachhead Operation" is a celebration of the various support personnel who make it possible for the GIs to fight at Anzio. Like bakers! Army bakers who knead huge vats of dough while bombs fall around them and produce hundreds of huge loaves of bread which are loaded into big cotton sacks and transported to the front where they are devoured by hungry GIs! Or accountants! Army accountants who toil away in a bombed-out basement at their huge manual adding machines to get the GIs' pay out on time! Or mapmakers! Or telephone operators! Or those guys who stretch out those long coils of barbed wire over the countryside (can't have a war without 'em!)! This is one of my favorite films in the whole This Film Is Restricted series. Because it focuses on the jobs in the "unsung hero" category, it's full of unusual and fascintating images. There's something almost poetic about it after awhile, a sort of Master Hands quality, especially the ending, done to the tune of anti-aircraft guns blasting away into the night. What a lost treasure this film is.

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

Blacksmith (film #1044 on Open Source Movies). [Category: Early Film & TV]

Three blacksmiths pound on a piece of metal, then pass the bottle around. I guess this was before employee drug tests were common. A slice of working life from 1893. An 1893 Edison film.

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

The Amphibian Man Trailer (extra on The Amphibian Man DVD (Russian Cinema Council)). [Category: Commercial]

Trailer for the early-60s Russian movie The Amphibian Man. This is somewhat unusual as they used very little of the film’s soundtrack in the trailer, substituting classical music instead. This looks like Russia’s answer to The Creature from the Black Lagoon, except later you find out it’s just a guy in a suit. Hey, I didn’t give it away––the trailer did!

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

Answer to Open the Door, Richard (film #2 on Side A of Disc #9 of Classic Musicals DVD Magapack (Mill Creek Entertainment, 2005) (part of Soundies Cavalcade)). [Category: Sleaze & Outsider]

This soundie could be called "The Steppen Fetchit Rap", which gives you an idea of how enlightened the portrayal of its main character is. The song and the soundie both involve the attempts of a band to get a very lazy African-American man to get up and open his front door (why, they don’t say). Turns out he’s on his honeymoon, which gives the film a whole new bizarre twist I’m not going to touch with a ten-foot pole. Weird.

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