Classic Sci-Fi Trailers, Vol. 1 (Sinister Cinema). [Category: Commercial]

Science fiction trailers, mostly from the 50s, which is good because that's when they made 'em campy. A good selection of both classic and classically bad sci-fi movies of the period. Film and video quality is very good. No listing on the package, but Sinister Cinema gets 5 points for providing complete contents listings of their trailer compilations in their catalog.

Highlights:

• If you were to list the film credits of Howard Hawks, what would you put at the top of the list? If you said I Was a Male War Bride, then you think like the producers of the trailer for The Thing.
  
• Godzilla, King of the Monsters had probably the most hyperbolic trailer ever. "Dynamic Violence!!" "Savage Action!!" Manic Narration!!
  
• Conspiracy buffs alert! More subliminal messages, this time in the trailer for It! The Terror from Beyond Space. "See IT!" "Don't Miss IT!" You'd think, though, that after going to all that trouble they would have made the messages more specific.
  
• The Crawling Hand's trailer is just as cheesy as the movie itself, which is an achievement of some sort.
  
• Msties, take note: Contains the trailers for It Conquered the World, The Mole People, Earth vs. the Spider, The Giant Gila Monster, and The Crawling Hand.
  

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

The Big Snooze (film #3 on Cartoons for Big Kids (Turner Home Entertainment, 1989)). [Category: Sleaze & Outsider]

Despite its appearance on Cartoons for Big Kids, this was my all-time favorite Bugs Bunny cartoon when I was a kid. It's still on my list of all-time favorites, as it's one of the weirdest cartoons ever made, and probably the weirdest Bugs vs. Elmer toon. Elmer gets fed up with Bugs and decides to tear up his contract with "Mr. Warner" and take up fishing. He does so, despite Bugs' pleading with him not to "break up the act". After finding a nice fishing spot and casting, he promptly falls asleep. Bugs then takes sleeping pills and invades Elmer's dream, and if you think Bugs is wacky in the "real" world, just wait till you see what he does to Elmer's dream world! What probably got it on the Big Kids tape is a very funny scene of Bugs dressing up Elmer in drag and then unleashing a bunch of wolves (literally) on him ("Have any of you girls ever had an expewience like this?" Elmer asks the audience). One of the all-time great Warner Brothers cartoons.

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

X Marks the Spot (MST3K Episode #210: King Dinosaur). [Category: Public Service]

Apparently, if you die in an auto accident in New Jersey, before dealing with St. Peter and your general record of sins, you have to face the Heavenly Traffic Court and answer for your driving record. This is what happens to "average driver" Joe Doaks. Reporting on Joe's record is his Guardian Angel of Traffic, who looks like a recent graduate (complete with cap and gown) of the Rocky Marciano School of Big Galloots. Joe's case doesn't fare too well--apparently, like most "average drivers", Joe's driving sucked big time. However, the judge ultimately leaves it up to us, the audience, to decide Joe's fate. Rick Prelinger, in his Our Secret Century series of CD-ROMs, tells us that many auto safety films were made by the auto industry ostensibly as a public service, but actually to place the blame for accidents in the laps of drivers and deflect blame away from design defects in their cars. This seems especially obvious in this film. Joe isn't merely shown to be a poor driver--he's supposed to represent the average driver, leading us to the conclusion that most drivers are extremely unsafe. The only mention of his car is that Joe had regular vehicle inspections (as required by New Jersey law), so "he can't blame his accident on his car". Appalling and lots of fun, with good msting.

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

Chicago Television (Hollywood's Attic, 1996). [Category: Outtakes & Obscurities]

Back in the 50s and 60s, there was something called Local Television. Individual tv stations would actually produce their own programs, some popular and some forgettable. Most have been lost to posterity, but this tape is chock-full of excerpts of local Chicago shows. For me, it brings back lots of hazy early-child memories of watching local and syndicated shows, especially since I know some of this stuff was syndicated and shown in Omaha, where I grew up. I could do without the lengthy sports footage, but the tape makes up for it by including moments ranging from the truly surreal ("Diver Dan", "Clutch Cargo", the hostess of "Ding Dong School" having a one-sided conversation) to the truly evil (Pandora, the host of "Kiddie-a-Go-Go"; the Santa in The Three Little Dwarves, the faun in "The Mighty Hercules"). At over two hours, it has more prime ephemera for your money than just about any collection I know of. A must for ephemera collectors.

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

Houston, We've Got a Problem (film #2 on NASA DVD (Madacy Entertainment, 1999)). [Category: News]

This well-produced documentary shows us the nerve-wracking Apollo 13 mission, where a major malfunction in the power supply made the command module non-functional, and the astronauts had to try to make it back to Earth in the lunar module, using manual controls. The film has a minimum of narration, relying mostly on NASA footage of the astronauts and of Mission Control, we-interrupt-this-program news footage, and footage of the reactions of ordinary citizens in New York City to the unfolding drama of the mission to tell its story. This makes it particularly interesting from an ephemera standpoint. Another excellent historical document on the NASA DVD.

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

Atom Bomb Tests: Bikini (film #5 on Atomic Memories (Video Yesteryear)).

This film documents atomic bomb tests Abel and Baker near Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. It's pretty standard for the most part, but the narration is quite pompous and occasionally strange. The most unbelievable assertion is that after test Abel they thought the damage was "negligible" at first, but found out differently at closer inspection. The idea that anyone would think an atom bomb would cause only "negligible" damage (especially after Hiroshima and Nagasaki) is pretty amazing.

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

Albert in Blunderland (film #4 on An American Retrospective Through Animation (Moviecraft, 1994)). [Category: Industrial]

Harding College sponsored the animated films on this tape "to strengthen and preserve our American freedom through understanding." Actually, these films seem to be attempts by Big Business to sell capitalism to workers who might be otherwise tempted by the Godless Commies. The films, though well-animated and somewhat amusing, have a subtle patronizing undercurrent and a lack of understanding of the real problems of workers and the injustices they face under capitalism. Intelligent workers probably had negative reactions to capitalism from viewing these films. In this film, Albert the Auto Mechanic listens to a leftist radio commentator extoll the virtues of a "planned society", liking it to the social order of ants. Albert likes what he hears and wishes he could be an ant. After receiving a blow on the head, he gets his wish in a dream, but quickly discovers the downside of the ants' "planned society". Communism is not mentioned once by name, but it's obvious that the ant social order is meant to be a send-up of a certain large eastern European/Asian nation. Of course, this also means that it has all the dystopian cliches typical of the Hollywood version of communism, such as thought police, unreasonable work quotas, and execution without trial, even right down to the 1984-influenced city architecture. The most hypocritical part comes when Albert gets hauled off by the ant thugs for threatening to start a union in the state-controlled factory, as if workers in capitalist countries were free from such harassment. I'm no fan of communism, actually––it's just that patronizing propaganda such as this can make it begin to look good, at least momentarily.

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

Babies on Parade (film #1150 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Hollywood]

Newsreel featurette about a baby parade and festival. It's not as creepy as these things usually are, since it's not so much a beauty contest as it is an all-around festival with a parade, silly costumes, and various contests. The babies react in typical baby fashion, i.e. it's fun for awhile for them, but they get tired and cranky real fast. Overall it's an innocuous slice of life from the baby boom period.

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

Alcohol: How Much Is Too Much? (film #5 on Classroom Scare Films, Vol. 2: Health Horrors (Something Weird, 1994)). [Category: Educational]

This early 70's classroom film about the dangers of alcohol is of the "here are the facts--you decide" variety so common to the decade, which is not nearly as much fun as the "we'll tell you what to do" type of the 50's. The warnings of the risks of alcohol consumption are undercut by the visuals, which mostly consist of people having a high old time drinking. The only visual moment that reflects the downside of drinking is a very brief scene of a skid-row bum drinking in an alley. The junior-high school audience this is aimed at is repeatedly told that they must decide for themselves how much alcohol is "too much"––which is true, as the film obviously doesn't tell them.

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

The Apparition (film #5 on Marvelous Melies (A-1 Video)). [Category: Early Film & TV]

Dang modern technology! Just what did folks have to endlessly frustrate them before there were computers? Well, the guy in this film manages to find a candle pretty damn irrascible, as it keeps sliding back and forth across the table, suddenly turning giant-sized, and generally frustrating any attempts to read by its light. Eventually it drives the guy batty, and then the ghosts arrive. More Melies silliness. A 1901 Melies film.

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

Classic Commercials, Vol. 4 (Madacy Entertainment, 1998). [Category: Commercial]

More commercials, mainly from the late 60s and early 70s, although a few 50s ones are thrown in. Like Vol. 3, this one has lots of celebrity endorsements and memorable advertising characters. Monster fans will enjoy quite a few commercials featuring classic monsters, especially the Frankenstein monster and King Kong.

Highlights:

• The commercial for the Fantastic Country LP will bring afternoon tv K-Tel commercials rushing back to you.
  
• Contact decongestant does a great parody of the old Shell gasoline roadtest commercials.
  
• The real highlight of this tape is a great cheesy mail-in offer from the 50s Space Patrol tv show for a pair of really dorky-looking strap-on binoculars. Seeing the stars of the show wearing the things is a real hoot.
  
• Memorable advertising characters on this tape: Mother Nature for Chiffon Margarine (the one It's Not Nice to Fool), Josephine the Plumber, and Rosie the Bounty Diner Waitress.
  

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

Because of Eve: The Story of Life (Something Weird). [Category: Sleaze and Outsider]

Bob loves Sally. Sally loves Bob. Bob and Sally want to get married. Unfortunately, their doctor, Dr. Clueless, stupidly puts his foot in his mouth after their premarital medical examinations, letting spill Sally's out-of-wedlock baby and Bob's VD in one sentence (this scene is incredibly campy and worth the cost of the whole film). The good doctor spends the rest of the film frantically trying to patch things up between Sally and Bob, who are, naturally, less than thrilled to find out about each other's past mistakes. The plot, though, turns out to be just a framing device for three sex education films: "The Story of VD," "The Story of Reproduction," and "The Story of Birth." The prologue of the film tells us that these films have been shown in high schools and colleges, but considering the explicit nudity in the films and their exploitation origins, that's doubtful. "The Story of VD" shows lots of disgusting footage of the ravages of syphilis. Lots of naughty bits are shown, but not one of them lacks oozing open sores or rashes. "The Story of Reproduction" explains human conception with limited animation, carefully leaving out, of course, how the sperm gets into the uterus. "The Story of Birth" is a genuine roadshow birth-of-a-baby film. All I can say about it is I'm glad it's in black-and-white. The films in toto are enough to turn any young people off of sex, at least for a few hours. And the set-up footage about Bob, Sally, and Dr. Clueless is campy enough to provide an evening's-worth of entertainment for bad film fanatics anywhere.

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

We Drivers (film #5 on Our Secret Century, Vol. 4: Menace and Jeopardy CD-ROM (Voyager). Also, film #1014 on Prelinger Archive. Also, film #3 on Ephemeral Films CD-ROM (Voyager) (excerpt)). [Category: Public Service]

Animated Reckless Rudolph and Sensible Sam battle in the boxing ring, and over the soul of the average driver, like in cartoons when a character has a moral dilemma and a little devil whispers in one ear and an angel in the other. Sensible Sam wins, of course, and the boxing ring countdown turns into a list of ten rules for traffic safety, ending with "Obey all laws!" Like many films of this type, its message is undercut by its dogmatic tone and the goody two-shoes quality of Sensible Sam.

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

Chased by Monsters (extra on Monsters Crash the Pajama Party Spook Show Spectacular DVD (Something Weird, 2001)). [Category: Outtakes & Obscurities]

Ever have one of those dreams where you're being chased by a monster but you can only run really slowly, like you're going through molasses? I bet it wasn't nearly as hokey as this clip from an LSD exploitation film that Something Weird dug up. A pathetic shmoe is chased by a bunch of Freudian female monsters. Like I said, this is hokey as all get-out.

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

Headline Stories of the Century (Questar Video, 1992). [Category: News]

A "photo album" of newsreel clips documenting pop culture trends from the mid 20s to the early 60s. "Photo album" is an apt description of this tape, as the clips are quite brief and have added narration. I wish they would have shown the whole newsreels with their original narration. Still, there are some interesting moments here, such as Billy Sunday raving against the demon rum, the mayor of Buffalo banning kissing (it spreads influenza), some really obnoxious hog callers, and a convention of fan dancers arguing about proper fan length.

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

As the Twig Is Bent.

Made during World War II by Aetna Life & Casualty, this film encourages parents to make a special effort to look after their kids during wartime. It fairly accurately spells out the special problems the war was creating for children, such as lack of adult supervision, family upheaval, and teens dropping out of school to take jobs in war production. But, like many corporate-sponsored films, it places responsibility for these problems entirely in the lap of the individual, which seems particularly ridiculous during a worldwide war. This individual-blaming really takes the cake when the film asserts that so many of the generation who were children during World War I became criminals solely because of parental failure. Aw, c'mon––don't you think the Depression and Prohibition bootlegging had at least a little bit to do with it? The film then tells parents that it is their duty to maintain as normal a home life as possible for their children––how parents are supposed to do this when Daddy's off fighting the war, Mommy's working in a defense plant, and the family has just moved to a trailer court in a defense boomtown far from their extended family is not spelled out. A real guilt producer.

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

Bandaid Commercial (film #2 in the Comercial Section of Movieflix (www.movieflix.com)). [Category: Commercial]

An evil clown encourages kids to injure themselves so they can put Bandaids with stars on them on their cuts. Unfortunately, he's only a Bucky Beaver wanna-be, but this is pretty campy all the same.

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

Back to Nature (extra on The Beast That Killed Women/The Monster of Camp Sunshine DVD (Something Weird, 2001)). [Category: Sleaze & Outsider]

A bunch of naked people frolic in a nudist colony. They swim, ride horses, swordfight, have barbecues, do laundry (towels only), and go rock climbing, all while carefully keeping their backs to the camera or draping a towel casually over their naughty bits. It's all supposed to be so wholesome, but you just know that this film is designed for ogling purposes. Most disturbing is the male shower sequence and the thoroughly disgusting-looking barbecue.

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

Arteries of New York City (film #83 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Public Service]

Fairly dry film about the various transportation routes into and out of New York City. It does have lots of historically interesting scenes of NYC in the 50s, though.

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

Amie en Matiere Plastique (film #3 in the Indie Section of Movieflix). [Category: Outtakes & Obscurities]

A nerdy guy gives a heartfelt marriage proposal to...his inflatable love doll. Har-de-har-har. I saw this one coming a mile away. Still, it's lots better than Asphyxiated Heart, even counting the scene of him sucking the doll's fingers.

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