In the Suburbs (in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #4 on Our Secret Century, Vol. 6: The Uncharted Landscape CD-ROM (Voyager). Also, film #742 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Industrial]

We're talking 50s, folks. 50s big white families with big cars who live in little boxes made of ticky-tacky that all look just the same. 50s "young adults" who go to the mall and spend lots of money. Redbook magazine, the makers of this film, claimed to have its fingers on the pulse of this big-spending bunch from the ‘burbs. The film was obviously made to sell this demographic group to advertisers, and seeing such a film illuminates how much the 50s suburban nuclear family mythos was a marketing creation. These "young adults" are portrayed as consumers only, not as actual people. Although the film pays lip service to 50s social and political issues in the form of brief newsreel clips, it's just to show how "serious" these young adults are, and how Redbook addresses this "seriousness" by running articles like "The Sexual Responsibility of Women". But don't worry, advertisers, they're not too serious––they're back at the mall in the next scene. What's really scary is how these rigid marketing concepts became ideals to aspire to during the 50s, and how they've become items of nostalgia today. A fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the 50s suburban reality tunnel.

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

Circus on Ice (MST3K Episode #421: Monster-a-Go-Go). [Category: Hollywood]

CIRCUS?? ON ICE??!!!! Yes, this newsreel featurette of the Toronto Ice Carnival is just as bad as it sounds. It would be mind-numbingly dull if it weren't so cheesy. Maybe some people like to watch ice carnivals live (though I'm willing to bet it's about as many as like to eat fruitcake), but a cheesy film of an ice carnival rates below zero on the audience appeal meter. And they couldn't have picked a worse theme than the circus (but I won't go off on that topic as I still have Here Comes the Circus to review). As Joel says, "Even my mom would be bored with this!" The msting is some of their best ever, though: "They are agents of Satan...", "And now a clown will deliver the eulogy...", "She can do that because she feels fresh!", etc.

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

BBC1 Schools #4 (film #7 in the Schools section of TVArk). [Category: Educational]

This counter is like the one in #3, only the letters in the center remain stationary, and the ponderous classical music soundtrack has been replaced by a generic disco soundtrack. Can you tell this was from 1978?

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

The Big Swallow (film #36 on The Movies Begin, Volume Two: The European Pioneers (Kino Video, 1994)). [Category: Early Film & TV]

The whole camera, cameraman included, goes down the hatch in what is indeed a very big swallow. A rather silly 1901 James A. Williamson film.

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

Frigidaire Finale (in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #5 on Our Secret Century, Volume One: The Rainbow Is Yours CD-ROM (Voyager). Also, film #566 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Commercial]

This short film, designed to introduce the 1956 Frigidaire product line, is all style over substance. It's style over everything, in fact––there's no narration, no product information of any kind, just music and a glamorously-dressed couple dancing around appliances. Did people really get this excited about stoves and refrigerators?

Highlights:

• The big highlight of the display is a black refrigerator! The reproductions of print ads provided as reference on the CD-ROM shows that this model really was sold. But to whom? In all my born days, I've never known anybody who had a black refrigerator.
  
• There's a really weird Freudian moment when the male dancer tries to get close to the female dancer, only to end up with a bin full of ice cubes. The producers had to know what they were doing here––the reference to "frigidity" is just too obvious. But what is this doing in a sales film probably targeted at women?
  
• This product line was called "The Sheer Look" for no possible reason I could discern. Even the female dancer's dress wasn't sheer, much less the appliances.
  

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

Kid-a-Vision (Digital Mirage). [Category: Outtakes & Obscurities]

If you spent as much time in front of the tv as I did when you were a kid, all it would take would be this tape and Classic Toy Commercials to relive your childhood. Openings from most of the kidvid shows you remember from the 50s, 60s, and 70s are here, and some you don't remember as well ("Salty"? "Korg: 70,000 B.C."? "Dodo, the Kid from Outer Space"?). I particularly enjoy the cheesier 50s shows, such as "Johnny Jupiter" and "Andy's Gang", and the weird, psychedelia-influenced 60s shows, such as "The Banana Splits". Digital Mirage gets 5 extra points for providing an accurate list of the clips on the back of the box.

Highlights:

• See a young Alan Hale star in "Casey Jones". See an old Jay North star in "Maya".
  
• Kix cereal is "83% energy food!" In case you don't know, "energy food" is a food industry euphemism for "sugar". You do the math.
  
• Personally, I'd rather not know that "The Mighty Hercules" has "iron in his thighs".
  
• Aren't you embarrassed to admit that you know all the words to the "H.R. Pufnstuff" theme?
  

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

Brezhnev (film #246 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Military & Propaganda]

This Russian documentary on the life of Soviet premiere Leonid Brezhnev is narrated entirely in Spanish. Why is hard to say, unless perhaps it was meant for Cuban audiences. There is a brief moment where Brezhnev talks to Castro, but it’s not any longer than the brief moment he talks to Gerald Ford, and the film was obviously not made for American audiences. At any rate, if you don’t speak Spanish, it’s pretty confusing, though certain things are pretty obvious, such as that Brezhnev was a “man of the people,” that he liked to mingle with crowds, that lots of old babushka ladies liked him, that he met with lots of foreign dignitaries, and that there was a pretty big war in the Soviet Union back in the 40s. Other than that, you’re on your own. There is lots of historically interesting footage of Soviet life from the turn of the century to the 70s; it would be a lot more interesting if you could understand the narration, but there you are.

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

Hidden Grievance (film #11 on The Educational Archives, Volume Four: On the Job DVD (Fantoma, 2002)). [Category: Industrial]

This is another "discussion film," like The Grapevine. Jake, a machinist with a Canadian accent, has a lot of complaints––the light's too dim, his feet hurt, etc. His foreman tries to be accomodating, but no dice. Jake finally tells him his real beef––he thinks he's being given all the tough jobs and none of the easy ones. The foreman tries to tell him that the jobs he's been assigned are no tougher than what anyone else has to do, but Jake doesn't believe him. So he goes and files a complaint with the union that he's being discriminated against, for being Canadian, I guess. What's the poor foreman to do? Again, this has a "What do you think?" ending. This seems a little more fair than The Grapevine. Neither Jake nor the foreman is made out to be a total bad guy––it seems like the problem is more a result of a misunderstanding. I'm not sure how I would handle it, frankly.

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

Circus (film #22 on The Cartoons That Time Forgot: The Ub Iwerks Collection, Vol. 2 DVD (Image Entertainment, 1999)). [Category: Hollywood]

Flip the Frog runs a hot dog stand at the circus in this one, complete with anthropomorphic hot dogs. OK, folks, you know how I feel about walking and talking food, so we'll move on. Flip valiantly agrees to chase down a pickpocket, resulting in a ridiculous chase scene. Another cute and fun Flip the Frog cartoon, with extra points for the hot dogs.

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

BBC1 Schools #3 (film #6 in the Schools section of TVArk). [Category: Educational]

This counter is another mesmerizing one. Dots that make up a circle slowly count down, while unintelligible symbols gradually turn into letters that spell out “SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES.” I bet this killed a lot of time for students.

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

The Bewitched Traveller (film #15 on The Origins of Cinema, Volume 6: Rare Films (Video Yesteryear, 1997)). [Category: Early Film & TV]

Ever have one of those days? You settle into a nice chair only to have it disappear on you? You sit down to a nice breakfast only to have the table suddenly shift to behind you? You get on a bus only to have it disappear entirely, leaving you rolling down the street? Apparently Hepworth was enamored of the dissolve effect for awhile and used it to ruin the day of some poor shmoe. It ends like you would expect it to. A 1904 Hepworth film.

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

The Flying Saucer Mystery Extras (on The Flying Saucer Mystery (Sinister Cinema)). [Category: Commercial]

Since The Flying Saucer Mystery is such a short film, Sinister Cinema added some trailers to the tape. All of them are from 50s sci-fi movies with an alien invasion theme, which is a pretty fun subject for a collection of trailers. A nice extra bonus which rounds out the film well.

Highlights:

• Gimmick Alert! The trailer for It Came from Outer Space features a fun explanation of the 3-D process, complete with animated stuff flying out of the movie screen.
  
• The trailer for Killers from Space features the incredibly campy bug-eyed aliens of that film.
  
• In the trailer for 20 Million Miles to Earth, a dumbfounded reporter, on being informed that the monster of this movie comes from Venus, says, "You mean the planet Venus?"
  
• Msties, take note: Contains the trailers for This Island Earth, The Astounding She-Monster, and It Conquered the World.
  

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

The Dynamic American City (in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #467 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Public Service]

According to this film, cities remain dynamic by tearing down “obsolescence”, i.e. old buildings. That’s right, folks, no matter how beautiful or how historically important a building may be, down it must come, in order to make room for more parking garages! And all the stores moving out to the suburbs don’t affect the city one bit––it’s still as dynamic as ever! Why just look at all the wrecking balls and rubble! Actually, I’m making this piece of urban renewal propaganda sound a lot more interesting than it is––it drags on and on, with a droning narrator the only thing on the soundtrack. That is, if you can get to the actual film before falling asleep––the opening is the most tedious I’ve ever seen, featuring three guys from the United States Chamber of Commerce having the most boring conversation imaginable about how they made this film about cities and are selling a book to go with it. Perhaps the makers of the film attended too many tedious Chamber of Commerce dinners. Just wait until their headquarters gets torn down to create more parking.

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

Uncle Tom and Little Eva (film #13 on Cartoon Scandals (Goodtimes, 1987)). [Category: Sleaze & Outsider]

Lots of stereotyped black characters who look suspiciously like mice frolic and chase each other across ice in this 30s cartoon, very loosely based on Uncle Tom's Cabin. Very confusing.

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

Johnny Carson: His Favorite Moments from "The Tonight Show": 80s & 90s: The King of Late Night (Buena Vista, 1994). [Category: Outtakes & Obscurities]

This tape is a lot funnier than I expected it to be, but then it occurred to me that a tape of highlights is the ideal way to experience something like "The Tonight Show". The tape covers highlights from the 80s and 90s (there are two other tapes in the series which cover the 60s and 70s) and there's a wide assortment of clips, including bloopers, silly ad-libs, interviews gone strange, kids and animals upstaging Johnny, and early appearances by well-known comedians. My favorites are the weird guests they would get occasionally, such as the female accordionist who describes sitting on the toilet and playing new song ideas to her husband while he takes a bath ("Any marriage that can survive that is a strong union!" asserts Johnny), or the lady who sees faces in potato chips and brings her collection of chips to the show (Johnny plays a hilarious prank on her which I won't give away here). The end of the tape gets all sentimental as we see some of Johnny's last guests commenting on his retirement (including a jubilant Ted Koppel), but it fortunately doesn't get too weepy. A good record of the last years of the ultimate tv institution. Watch for the great surreal moment when Charles Grodin gets Johnny to admit the gut-level honest truth about his job as a talk show host.

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

Brazil Gets the News (in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #243 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Military & Propaganda]

Ho-hum, another boring film about Brazil…wait a minute. This film is full of gentle surprises, mostly from the narrator, who narrates in a breezy, sly style, throwing in little jokes when you least suspect them, and generally not taking the proceedings too seriously. The film is about newspaper production in Sao Paulo (‘the Detroit of Brazil,” the opening title card tells us, “or is Detroit really the Sao Paulo of the United States?”) and it is actually one of the clearest and best-made factory tours I’ve ever seen. This really gives you a good idea of what newspaper publishing was like back in the 40s, and it probably was pretty much the same in the U.S., since the film tells us that several times. The propaganda point was that free countries have a free press, unlike some Axis countries we could name. And also probably to build up good will for our Brazilian allies. But it’s the narration that really makes this one––that guy sounded like he was having way too much fun with this project.

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

Gypsies for a Day (film #8 on Blood of Floor Sweepings (LSVideo)). [Category:Industrial]

This 1930s silent film documents a big cross-country motorcycle race held in Keene, NH, and sponsored by Goodyear. Keene must have been the 30s version of Sturgis. The weirdest moment in the film is nighttime footage of a bizarre line dance done around the campfire by the participants in the race. It's also somewhat weird to experience motorcycles, normally such noisy machines, in total silence. Otherwise, this film is pretty ordinary.

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

Chinook's Children (in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #538 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Hollywood]

This silent featurette shows the training of the puppies of Chinook, Admiral Richard Byrd's lead sled dog. As you would expect, the puppies are incredibly cute and will probably steal your heart. I was happy to hear they were trained without whips or chokes. The rest of the film is fairly dull, especially the race footage at the end. Dog fans will probably like this, though.

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

BBC1 Schools #2 (film #4 in the Schools section of TVArk). [Category: Educational]

Very brief clip of another educational television counter, this one featuring a clock, and a clipped British announcer. This one probably wasn’t very interesting to watch.

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

Before Hollywood, There Was Fort Lee, New Jersey (Image Entertainment, 2003). [Category: Early Film & TV]

Fort Lee, New Jersey was basically the Hollywood before there was Hollywood. Edison started making movies there in his Black Maria and it's where most of the big names in silent films, including studios, directors, and stars, got their start. This documentary tells us all about the major Fort Lee studios and their films in a somewhat dry way, though it does include a few complete short films from the period, presented with a bit of helpful, nonintrusive narration. The story of Fort Lee is an important, yet usually forgotten, piece of film history, so I'll give this DVD extra points for dredging it up.

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