Breaking News (film #2 in the News section of TVArk). [Category: News]

Clip from a news break-in from Sky News on a football team being disciplined for misconduct. This is appropriately chaotic, but too short to be of much interest.

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

Air Smashes Devastate Germany (film #38 on Universal Newsreels). [Category: Military & Propaganda]

Newsreel story about American air raids on Germany during World War II. This mostly involves lots of things being blown up real good, including Wittenburg, home of Martin Luther, the narrator tells us. Guess it’s rubble now.

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

Coca-Cola Bottling Plant, Arabia/North Africa (film #341 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Industrial]

From our International Ephemera Department, we get this factory tour film about bottling Coca-Cola in some Arabic country, completely narrated in Arabic. It’s fairly standard factory tour fare (though why they chose to include an extended sequence on making burlap bags I don’t know), until the end, when we find out that polite, well-heeled folks in this country enjoy going out to nightclubs in the evening and drinking Coca-Cola while singing along to a catchy advertising jingle. I don’t remember this from geography class.

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

Young Man's Fancy (MST3K Episode #610: The Violent Years. Also in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #1723 on Prelinger Archive. Also, track #30 on Ephemeral Films CD-ROM (Voyager) (excerpts)). [Category: Industrial]

Teen-aged Judy falls head over heels for her older brother's friend Alexander Phipps––he makes her feel "squishy"––but Alex is too obsessed with electrical appliances and time and motion study to notice her. So Mom comes to the rescue, helping Judy plot a "nice little conspiracy" involving a nice home-cooked meal made in their all-electric kitchen. This film was made by a group of electric companies, and no opportunity was missed to plug electrical appliances. A very ripe piece of 50s camp.

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

Bees’ Buzz (film #20 on Feature Films). [Category: Hollywood]

Wacky Mack Sennett comedy from the early sound era involving an elopement, a chase by an angry father and a rival suitor, a cow costume, a car stalling on the railroad tracks, a justice of the peace in a steam cabinet, some golfers, and a beehive that goes down the rival suitor’s pants. Many of the individual gags fall flat, but the overall silliness of the proceedings and the fast pace make this pretty amusing anyway. There is a real 20s feeling to this film, which is rare in a sound film.

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

False Vases (film #5 on Felix the Cat, Vol. 1 (Video Resources, 1994)). [Category: Hollywood]

Felix breaks a Chinese vase at home and fears the wrath of his cranky wife. So, naturally, he gets his dog to dig a hole to China so he can get a new one. This is one of the weaker Felixes, but it's still pretty fun in places. My favorite moment is when Felix transforms four snakes into a sort of pipe organ. Lots of mileage (literally) is gotten from the Chinese guys' long pigtails and several laws of physics are routinely broken. Felix finally returns to his side of the world with an acceptable vase, which he immediately breaks, starting the whole cycle over again.

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

Bicycle Safety (film #2 on AV Geeks). [Category: Educational]

Dry Centron bicycle safety film containing rules, rules, and more rules for riding your bike. There are a few amusing moments of examples of what not to do, and the overall environment is very representative of 50s suburbia, but mostly this is pretty tedious.

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

Boston Blackie (film #6 on Side A of Disc 5 of TV Favorites DVD Megapack (Treeline Films, 2003)). [Category: Early Film & TV]

Episode of an early 50s crime show based upon a radio program. Detective Boston Blackie helps an old ex-con friend of his beat a robbery rap really committed by his brother. This is standard crime show fare, and rather cheaply done as well, though Blackie’s black fenderless convertible is cool.

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

Angels with Dirty Faces Trailer (film #1 on Disc 1 of The Adventures of Robin Hood DVD (Warner Bros., 2003)). [Category: Commercial]

Fairly standard trailer for the gangster pic Angels with Dirty Faces. No surprises here, but it is representative of the trailers you might have seen in a theater when The Adventures of Robin Hood was playing.

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

Adland: McDonald’s Commercial (film #8 on Media Burn Archive). [Category: Sleaze & Outsider]

Another clip from Adland, this one showing us the filming of a McDonald’s commercial. The guy who plays Ronald McDonald is interviewed, as well as the director of the commercial and the man in charge of the campaign. They are shown enjoying their work, and viewing this type of advertising as subtle and sophisticated. This is not quite as strange as the Adland clip featuring Mason Reese, but it’s still fairly interesting.

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

Bus Nut (film #6 on AV Geeks). [Category: Educational]

A little girl is a “bus nut”––that is, she’s obsessed with the school bus and following all the safety rules. Amazingly enough, this doesn’t get her beaten up by the other kids. This is a very 70s film, with all the right enlightened 70s casting choices. The main character is African American, the kids are different races, and the bus driver is a woman. Other than that, this could be a 50s film in its heavy-handedness and unrealistic portrayals of children (at least the “good” ones––the “bad” ones seem pretty real). And the acting will make you wince. Making this a fairly campy blast from the 70s.

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

Don’t Run (film #16 in the Public Info. Films section of TVArk). [Category: Public Service]

Very brief 70s PSA that purports the interesting idea that you shouldn’t run down the street and around a corner, because construction workers actually do walk around with huge plates of glass for people to run into, just like in every slapstick comedy you’ve ever seen. A curiosity.

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

Abracadabra (film #20 in the Comedy section of Brickfilms. Also, film #4 in the Music Video section of Brickfilms. Also, film #5 in the Sci-Fi section of Brickfilms). [Category: Outtakes & Obscurities]

A Lego guy does a really bitchin’ magic act until the Alien Police arrive and arrest him for practicing magic without a license. The makers of this film probably got busted by the Brickfilm Police for using––gasp!––PLAY-DOUGH for the alien heads. I’ll forgive it, though, because it is a genuinely funny film with several good lines, an easily impressed Lego audience, and cute alien heads.

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

Breakfast Time Special: Zeebrugge Tragedy (film #1 in the News section of TVArk). [Category: News]

Opening of a BBC special report on a 1987 Belgian shipwreck. This is most interesting for the programs the clipped British announcer says are being preempted: a gambling show and a children’s program! Other than that, this is ordinary.

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

Circular Panorama of Electric Tower (film #39 on American at Work, America at Leisure. Also, film #65 on Edison Film Archive. Also, film #2 on The Last Days of a President. Also in the Historical section of Open Video Project. Also, film #6 on The Origins of Cinema, Volume 1: The Films of Thomas Edison (Video Yesteryear, 1995)). [Category: Early Film & TV]

Surrounding the electric tower is a lot of striking neoclassical architecture. I wonder how much of it still stands. A 1901 Edison film.

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

Air Forces Come Home via Bomber (film #37 on Universal Newsreels). [Category: Military & Propaganda]

Wartime newsreel featuring stories about airmen coming home from Europe after V-E day, though only to train and prepare to go to the Pacific; Secretary of State Stettinius proclaiming the Four Freedoms; Herbert Hoover being consulted by Truman for advice on distributing food to war-torn Europe; a one-armed baseball player; and grisly fighting on the island of Okinawa. Apart from the one-armed ballplayer, this is pretty standard wartime fare.

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: ****.

Combat Bulletin No. 24 (film #2 on tape #3 of This Film Is Restricted Boxed Set (Marathon Music & Video, 1997)). [Category: Military & Propaganda]

This is mostly about the Allied advance in Germany. In "Channel Coast Activities", the Army Air Corps bombs German merchant vessels in the English Channel. In "Ordinance Repairs", tanks are repaired (that's it, really). In "German Frontier Operations", several U.S. armies advance across the German frontier. In "Additional Film Airborne Operations", more paratroops and supplies are dropped on Holland. There's an interesting little clip from a camera strapped to a paratrooper's chest (making you want to shout "Jane! Stop this crazy thing!!"). In "Toulon Harbor Installations", we are shown various captured German installations near Toulon, Italy. In "Invasion of Palau Islands", we see Air Force and Naval footage of said invasion, including footage of bombing, naval maneuvers, and the building of an airstrip on a captured island. One of the more ordinary Combat Bulletins.

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

Be Good to Me (film #1 in the Film section of Bedazzled. Also, film #3 in the Video section of Bedazzled. Also, film #1 on Scopitones). [Category: Hollywood]

Petula Clark sings a pop ditty that urges her lover to be good to her. She sings this while riding in a boat towing a male waterskier. Then she goes to the wharf and hangs out with the fishmongers. OK, the ditty is cute and sincere, but the visuals in this Scopitone make you wonder what is really going on in this relationship.

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

Bicycle Clown (film #2 on AV Geeks). [Category: Educational]

A boy poorly narrates the story of his younger brother Jimmy, a kid who clowns around on his bike in order to impress his peers and thinks safety rules are for sissies. Since this is a Sid Davis film, he is punished for this by getting into an accident which results in him getting gauze wrapped around his head, his arm in a sling, and being confined to a hospital bed. Jimmy’s brother becomes obsessed with finding out why this happened, even though it’s obvious from the beginning that Jimmy is an idiotic daredevil. This is one of the tamer Sid Davis films, though.

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