An American Girl (film #363 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Educational]

This film, made by the same folks responsible for All the Way Home, show us the underside of the "nice, simpler time" of the 50s, this time from a teen's perspective. Teenaged girl Norma gets a pretty silver charm bracelet for her birthday from her little sister, who bought it in a second-hand store. When Norma returns to the store with her friends to get the storekeeper to decipher some foreign characters on one of the charms, she finds out it is a Jewish bracelet. When the storekeeper shows her a star of David charm that goes with it, Norma has it put on the bracelet, despite the protests of her friends, who think it is "weird." Norma does it because she thinks it's pretty, but she finds that wearing a bracelet with Jewish symbols on it is "not done" in her neighborhood and it leads to ostracism by most of the kids at school, including her best friends. One of her friend's mothers actually accuses Norma of hiding a Jewish identity and insists that she should make friends with "her own kind." Fortunately, Norma's parents are unusually intelligent and thoughtful in this matter. They realize that they cannot shield their daughter from the ugliness that is showing in their "nice" neighborhood after the bracelet scratched its surface, and they allow Norma to make her own decision about what to do about it, according to her own conscience. Norma chooses to confront the PTA with her experiences by reading her diary aloud to them. This film is a good counterpoint to the social guidance films made during this period, most of which stress "fitting in." What those other films failed to show was that some people were not even given a chance to "fit in" and that conforming to the group is not always a good thing. The fact that the filmmakers didn't actually make Norma Jewish just shows how pervasive the problem of racism was, and how it was covered up with innuendo and hints, in order to maintain the facade of "niceness." Again, this is a film that is necessary viewing in order to get a more complete version of what the 50s were like, and the price that was paid for its "niceness."

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

As Seen Through a Telescope (film #26 on The Movies Begin, Volume Two: The European Pioneers (Kino Video, 1994)). [Category: Early Film & TV]

Somebody discovered that you could simulate the experience of looking through a telescope, sort of, by filming through a black mask with a round hole in it. Of course, one of the first uses of this device is in a film about a voyeur. He spies on a woman getting fitted for new shoes, and through the "telescope" device we get to see––gasp!––several inches of her ankle! Of course, she's still wearing her industrial-strength black stockings––I told you I wouldn't be reviewing porno, after all. What we really get to see "through the telescope" is a view of what a previous era considered racy. A 1900 George Albert Smith film.

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

Classic Sci-Fi Trailers, Vol. 6 (Sinister Cinema). [Category: Commercial]

Good grief, more trailers from science fiction movies from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. This tape seems to focus mostly on science fiction horror. Again, lots of fun. Gets 5 points for throwing in some drive-in ephemera here and there.

Highlights:

• Tobor the Great is a great hokey robot. "Gramps, don't you do it!"
  
• Gimmick Alert! Conquest of Space was billed as being a true story––before it happens! The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock was filmed in Wonderama and Matterscope!
  
• Both Queen of Outer Space and Dark Star were advertised as serious science fiction!
  
• "Your eyes will glaze! Your ears will pop!" claims the trailer for Journey to the Seventh Planet. Sounds like a typical airline flight.
  
• The trailer for Queen of Blood promises to "turn the Milky Way into a Galaxy of Gore!" That's sure to bring in the alien tourist trade!
  
• Journey to the Center of Time was brought to us by American General Pictures. I guess they didn't want to get too specific.
  
• She Demons features "a power-mad genus (sic)!" Now that would make biology class interesting.
  
• Msties, take note: contains the trailer for Beginning of the End.
  

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

The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (film #2 on Cartoons for Big Kids (Turner Home Entertainment, 1989)). [Category: Sleaze & Outsider]

This is one of the all-time great Warner Brothers cartoons. Daffy Duck plays detective Duck Twacy, an outrageous parody of Dick Tracy, who tracks down a case of stolen piggy banks. This is one of the most visually amazing of any of the Warner Brothers toons––somebody must have had a whole lot of fun drawing a bunch of faux Dick Tracy villains. And on top of that, the toon is very funny. Hint: use the pause button at various points during the scene where all the villains fall over, one after the other––the animators slipped in some fun surprises. Another item for the Film Ephemera Museum of Quirky Devices: the streetcar cards marked "To the Villain's Secret Hideout". Highly recommended.

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

Doctor Who: Shada (Fox Video, 1992). [Category: Outtakes & Obscurities]

"Shada" is the Great Lost "Dr. Who" Episode––due to a strike at the BBC, it was never finished. This was a shame, because it supposedly had an excellent script by Douglas Adams. This tape rectifies that situation. "Shada" has been reconstructed here, using the footage that was shot, and filling in the holes with narration. And the narration is done by none other than Tom Baker himself. Baker, although noticeably older than in his "Dr. Who" days, does an excellent job with the narration––it really looks like he's having fun. And the episode is no disappointment. An evil alien named Skagra gets ahold of an ancient Timelord book which was in the possession of Cambridge Professor Chronotis, who is really a very old Timelord himself. Skagra has the ability to steal peoples' minds through the use of a robotic sphere, and he wants to use the book to gain access to Shada, the Timelords' prison planet. There he plans to hook up with the infamous Timelord criminal Salievin, who has the power to invade peoples' minds, and use their combined technology to steal all minds in the universe and combine them into one infinite, all-powerful Universal Mind. Professor Chronotis is a wonderful absentminded professor character, and the story has lots of great twists and turns and surprises. Baker's narration is strong enough that the episode doesn't suffer from having missing segments. "Dr. Who" fans won't want to miss this. One of the best examples I've seen of piecing together a "lost episode" of a tv series.

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

Admiral Dewey Leading Land Parade (film #3 on Edison Film Archive). [Category: Early Film & TV]

This film documents a military parade led by Admiral Dewey. The uniforms are amazing. An 1899 Edison film.

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

NASA, Volume Two Film Reel (extra on NASA DVD (Madacy Entertainment, 1999)). [Category: News]

This is a clip of President John Kennedy giving his "we choose to go to the moon" speech, interspersed visually with clips from the 60s space missions. It's not exactly a "film reel" but it is a mildly interesting bit of news footage.

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

Betty Crocker (film #3 in the Commercials section of Movieflix (www.movieflix.com)). [Category: Commercial]

Betty Crocker offers a money-back gurantee on her cake mixes and gives us several serving tips for honey spice cake. A mildly fun bit of housewifey ephemera from the 50s.

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

The Bronze Buckaroo (film #5 in the Black Culture section of Movieflix (www.movieflix.com)). [Category: Sleaze & Outsider]

This all-black cast western from the 30s is incredibly cheaply made. It has a standard western plot involving Cowboy Bob saving his old pal Joe Jackson from a gang of outlaws who are trying to steal his land, and a comic-relief subplot involving ventriloquism and a "talking" mule. The comic relief characters are a bit hard to watch, as they are as stereotyped as black comic relief characters in other movies of the time. Still, at least in this one the hero and the heroine get to be black, too (though their the lightest-skinned of the bunch).

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

Better Housing News Flashes (film #208 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Public Service]

A couple of short, government-sponsored newsreel clips showing how the New Deal is creating more housing and more jobs in building new houses. Construction workers are put back to work building new houses as part of a government-sponsored program, and a middle-class couple inspects a model home, now made affordable by National Housing Administration mortgages. The first scene is pretty standard, and the second is mildly cute. A fun little piece of 30s history.

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

Barbie's Audition (film #5 in the Film and Video Section of Illegal Art). [Category: Outtakes & Obscurities]

In this highly disturbing film, a young woman's movie audition turns to casting couch turns to rape, the young woman being played by a Barbie doll and the rapist being played by a full-grown man. The guy holds the Barbie doll very close to the camera throughout the film, which reduces her dollishness somewhat and he makes her respond to what is happening by moving her in various gestures. The effect is real enough to be highly disturbing, and this says something about violence against women, the way such violence is glorified on film, and how the cultural standards of beauty that are idealized in the Barbie doll make women more vulnerable. The film treads a fine line between social commentary and offensiveness. To my mind, it never actually goes over the line, but it gets awfully damn close. Close enough so that it might go over the line for others, so be warned and think carefully before viewing it.

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

China Central TV (film #7 on Television Archive). [Category: News]

This is a 30-minute clip of Chinese tv on September 11, 2001. It starts with news coverage of the events of the day, which is basically a recap of images better covered elsewhere. But the rest of it is just regular Chinese tv. So if you want to know what tv is like in China, here's your clip. It includes commercials, an investigative report about education, a painting demonstration by what must be the Bob Ross of China, and a profile of an elderly couple, the woman of which may be American because she speaks English with an American accent at times. All of this is, of course, in Chinese, with no subtitles (no English subtitles anyway––many of the segments have Chinese subtitles, which may be a translation of the various Chinese dialects). Still, this is more interesting than you might think, especially the commercials, some of which are almost as annoying as American commercials.

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

American Fashion and Department Stores: The Pro-Mass Production View (film #117 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Industrial]

A marketing class goes on a field trip to a Montgomery Ward store and learns how the Monkey Ward system of catalog merchandising is so darn great, and how the American system of buying and selling goods is so much better than systems of doing business in those other countries. Several of the students are from those other countries, giving handy-dandy descriptions of how business is done at home that the professor can use as negative examples. None of them mind, though––they're all eager to learn the American way of doing things. One interesting thing about this movie is that it contains film footage of a Russian fashion show and of the GUM Department Store in Moscow that looks authentic, which was probably none too easy to get during the time that it was made. This adds to the historical value of the film. Mostly, though, this is the usual 50s big business propaganda film.

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

Atomic Energy as a Force for Good (film #410 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Military & Propaganda]

Rancher John Vernon is approached by a representative of the Atomic Energy Commission who wants to buy options on his land for building a nuclear power plant. Vernon is against having anything to do with "the bomb" and he gets the town to pass a resolution petitioning their congressman to stop the plant from being built. So the pro-nuke congressman comes to town, bringing along with him an atomic scientist, who shows them all a film about the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. One of those uses involves using radiation to identify the location of brain tumors, and this really gets to Vernon, because his little granddaughter has one and doctors have given her a death sentence. Suddenly, he flip-flops his stance and is all for the nuclear plant being built. This film is very earnest and tries very hard to be fair about this issue, making Vernon and the other townspeople thoughtful and intelligent instead of ignorant knee-jerkers in their opposition to the plant, but its pro-nuke stance is obvious and that in the end makes the resolution overly simplistic. Just because there are some benefits of atomic research does not really resolve the issues the townspeople originally brought up. Perhaps if the film had made it more clear what specifically the proposed plant was supposed to do it would have helped. As it is, it promotes black-and-white thinking about nuclear energy––if it's not 100% evil, if you can find even the tiniest benefit from it, then you must be 100% for it. Sorry, but I think it's a lot more complex than that. And it's disturbing to me to see the town be so easily reassured about atomic energy. The film's very earnestness and intelligence make it a much more subtle and effective piece of propaganda than the campier films on this site, and that makes it more disturbing.

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

Admiral Dewey Landing at Gibralter (film #2 on Edison Film Archive). [Category: Early Film & TV]

A landing boat arrives at a pier and a couple of guys get off. I'm not even sure which one is Admiral Dewey. I guess there's some historical interest here, but not much else. An 1899 Edison film.

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

Assignment Venezuela (film #1 on Assignment Venezula and Other Shorts (Best Brains, 2001). Also, film #162 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Industrial]

Aha! One of my Ephemera Holy Grails has been released! This lost mst3k short was originally intended for a Voyager mst3k CD-ROM, a project that was ultimately abandoned. The rough-cut of the short, complete with time code, was shown at the Coventio-Con Expo-Fest-a-Rama II: Electric Bugaloo, where I saw it. I despaired in Issue #0 of LBC that it would ever see the light of day on video, but it turned out that Best Brains heard my plea and responded. The film on this tape is the same rough-cut that was shown at the Con. It's much longer than most mst3k shorts, since they didn't have to deal with the time restrictions of a tv episode. Made by the Creole Oil Company (every mention of the name causes the bots to start frantically scatting in gumbo-speak), it features an incredibly dorky American engineer who gets transferred to the company oil fields in Venezuela and writes detailed letters about the country to his wife and kids back home. Of course, he only gets to see the most "modern", Americanized parts of the country. His wife's clothing and make-up are a scream––did women ever really look like that? The msting is great, especially during the scene when the guy has a night out at the bar which he fails to tell his wife about in the letter. This was worth waiting for.

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

The Best Made Plans

The Best Made Plans.

A 50s housewife solves all problems with Saran Wrap plastic film. Of course, all her problems are the kinds we all want to have, such as freezer burn, last-minute party favors, and an unexpected trip to visit her sister, who has just given birth. I have a special affection for 50s home economics films like these––they inhabit an unreal, spotless world where all problems are quickly and easily solved by using the correct products. My favorite moment in this one is when the friendly neighbor lady solves the party favor problem by showing the little girl how to make "flowers" from hard candies wrapped in Saran Wrap––when the husband asks if he can help, she sends him into the kitchen to boil water, as if a home birth were imminent. Lots of fun and quite mstable.

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

Brink of Disaster (film #252 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Sleaze & Outsider]

College student John Smith holes up in the library while a riot is going on, armed with a baseball bat. While there, he encounters the ghost of an ancestor of his who was killed in the Revolutionary War. They are soon joined by one of the history professors, and the three of them "discuss" the recent student protests. Both the professor and the ghost are dead set against the students, equating any sort of dissent with the worst kind of violence and looting. The student responds by occasionally giving extremely lame justifications for the students' behaviors, justifications that totally play into the hands of the professor and the ghost. In the end, though, the student turns out to be one of "them"––i.e. the hippies––and is just about ready to turn the professor over to his cronies, when the ghost knocks him out with the stock of his rifle. However, this only will only delay the ultimate confrontation, as the rioters are already chopping through the locked door with axes. It ends with the lurid title “Will you let this be...THE END??" This strident right-wing film tries to address student violence using a Sid Davis approach, which ends up being laughably unsuccessful. The filmmakers show absolutely no understanding of the students point of view. Indeed, the students are portrayed as Bad Guys whose only point is wanton, pointless destruction, which misses the point that students were also supposed to be the films' audience––when was the last time you were swayed by an argument that portrays you as evil? Student dissent is equated with "filth," i.e. "dirty" books and movies, sexual promiscuity, illegal drug use, and communism, which therefore makes it Evil in the eyes of the filmmakers, leading innevitably to wanton violence and destruction. This black-and-white thinking is laughably simplistic and ignorant of the real factors playing into the violence on college campuses at the time. The film, if it had any impact on its intended audience other than laughter, probably just made it more angry and rebellious. After the professor's self-righteous harrangue, the students in the audience were probably rooting for the rioters by the end of the film.

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

Believe It or Not (recoreded off of Turner Classic Movies). [Category: Hollywood]

This filmed version of the Ripley's comic strip plays a lot like the strip itself. Ripley himself narrates and shows us a number of unusual things, some of rather dubious authenticity (like the two 121-year-old Missourians––ages are notoriously hard to verify), some that seem more like jokes than serious oddities (the $25-a-month apartment on Wall Street), and some that are obviously real and quite interesting (the giant steaming teapot sign in Boston, the tightrope-walking dog). The beginning is rather upsetting as Ripley makes light of 8-year-old girls in other cultures who become mothers, and the audience titters along. Yeah, buddy, you try being enslaved in a harem and giving birth with a child's body, and you'll find out just how funny it is.

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

Belo Horizonte (film #442 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Public Service]

This film is a midcentury portrait of Belo Horizonte, Brazil's "planned city with a plan" (wonder if there's any planning involved?). It's not so much about the planning of the city as it is a promotional travelogue about how great the city is, with a heavy focus on the minerals produced in the area. Of course, all of the great things about the city are supposed to be a result of its planning, which controls everything, right down to the schools, churches, recreational facilities, social service agencies, and prisons. By the time they get to the prisons, the "planning" starts to seem a little Orwellian, especially as they end the film with the citizens marching in precise military order, while the narrator rhapsodizes about a "well-ordered Brazil". Fortunately, you just know it's not so neat and tidy in real life.

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