Chaplin - A Woman (film #26 in the Silent Section of Movieflix. [Category: Early Film & TV]

The Little Tramp gets into some farsical situations with a family he meets in the park, consisting of a mother, an adult daughter, and a father with a roving eye. After knocking Dad into the pond, he goes home with Mother and Daughter. After some silly things happen, he ends up putting on Daughter's best dress and passing himself off to Dad as her old college chum. Dad, of course, cannot keep his hands off the merchandise, at least until he figures out who he's trying to woo. This is not quite as funny as it sounds, but Chaplin does make a surprisingly attractive and convincing woman. A 1915 Charlie Chaplin film.

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

Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid (film #19 on Disc #4 of Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 1 (Warner Bros., 2004)). [Category: Hollywood]

Bosko was the first Warner Bros. cartoon character and this is his first cartoon, so this is a historical landmark. A live-action cartoonist draws Bosko, who comes to life on the page and attempts to entertain the audience with piano-playing, lame jokes, and tooney antics. Unfortunately, he’s a black stereotype, though he’s drawn pretty abstractly. Beyond that, his tooney antics are fun to watch, though his jokes are pretty bad and his singing is excruciating. No wonder the cartoonist decides to put him back into the inkwell.

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

The Aggressive Impulse (film #8 on Angry Night DVD (A/V Geeks). [Category: Educational]

Here we see an ant in a life-or-death struggle with a wolf! Seriously, this is the type of film the Pythons were spoofing in that sketch. Aggressive animal behaviors are compared with human aggression in this 70s film, the point being that aggression can be controlled. This is actually quite a mild film, considering its subject matter. There’s a 70s “niceness” to it. There’s nothing blatantly unrealistic about it, but its overall tone has an idealistic feel to it. It feels sort of like the filmmakers thought that violence could be eliminated by having everybody watch this film. How quickly that kind of idealism would die! A mild, feel-good 70s kind of film.

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

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet #4 (film #4 on Side B of Disc #1 of TV Favorites DVD Megapack (Treeline Films, 2004)). [Category: Early Film & TV]

In this episode of the low-key sitcom, Ozzie decides to stay in bed all day, just because he wants to do whatever he wants to for once. Of course, he lives to regret this decision, as lots of interesting things happen that he would have to get out of bed to participate in, and people start to treat him like he’s sick. The best part is when a guy from his lodge, representing the “Cheer Up Committee,” depresses him to no end with talk of illnesses and death. As usual for this series, this is mildly amusing.

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

Across 110th Street (film #5 in the Trailers section of Movieflix). [Category: Commercial]

Fairly standard trailer for a very violent 70s gangster movie that seems to be heavily influenced by The Godfather. Anthony Quinn stars as a cop who won’t play by the rules, making the clichés as thick as the violence. No surprises here, really.

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

Au Pair Girls (film #15 in the Trailers section of Movieflix). [Category: Sleaze & Outsider]

Trailer for an early-70s British softcore film, in which sexy miniskirted au pair girls take care of all their male employers’ needs, to bouncy, annoying theme music. This is about as leering as it gets without crossing the line into parody, making it pretty campy.

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

Chance to Lose (film #275 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Public Service]

This campy driving safety film from the 30s is breezily narrated like a newsreel featurette and features drivers who end up in humorous pratfalls as a result of their unsafe driving habits instead of tragedy, though the narrator gives plenty of stern warnings about such. The highlight is a young couple who end up crashing into a pigpen because of the young man’s tendency to associate manhood with speeding. Obviously, this humorous tack didn’t work, for driver safety films were to get more and more horrific as time went by, culminating in the gore films of the 60s. Although this was made by the National Safety Council, the ending exhortations about how cars are built entirely safe (so the fault of accidents must lay entirely on the driver) makes me wonder if the auto industry might have gotten their fingers into this.

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

Those Crazy Ol' Commercials (Goodtimes, 1986). [Category: Commercial]

Despite its lame title and $2.99 bin packaging, this is a pretty good collection of interesting commercials. There are quite a few fun moments here and a couple of real jaw-droppers (listed below). It gets docked 5 points for including one commercial with inaudible audio (the Tony Randall Libby's Fruit Juices one––don't panic when you get to it, it's the only one affected).

Highlights:

• The ad for "Old Happiness" liquor is a parody, not a real commercial. But it's so well done and amusing, I'm not going to dock the tape any points for including it. It looks like it's from "The Twilight Zone" series––I wonder if any of the videos from that series bother to include it. If not, it's a great obscurity.
  
• "Put Royal Triton in Cynthia's little tummy," coos Marilyn Monroe, camping it up even more than Edie Adams.
  
• There's a really great example of early TV in the form of a commercial for the 1950 Ford Victoria. It's the slowest-paced commercial I've ever seen. Life must have been really slow paced back in the 50's for a commercial to be that slow.
  
• The real jaw-dropper is a public service announcement about highway safety featuring James Dean. Jimmy urges us not to drive too fast on the highways: "Take it easy on the highways, folks. The life you save may be mine." Unfortunately, it was not to be.
  

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

The Adventures of the Road Runner (film #16 on Disc #2 of Looney Tunes Golden Collection, Vol. 2 DVD (Warner Brothers, 2004)). [Category: Outtakes & Obscurities]

This is the pilot for the Road Runner tv show, made by Chuck Jones by stringing together footage from various cartoons and making linking bits featuring Wile E. Coyote analyzing his failures, and two young viewers of the show making comments about it. This was later split apart and made into several different cartoons. It’s better seen all of a piece––you can see how cleverly it was put together. The scenes of Wile E., in particular, are a lot stronger than I remember them from the hacked-up cartoons. Of course, the scenes from the original cartoons are great, especially the classic catapult gags. A great relic from the vaults for Warner Bros. fans.

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

Assignment: Shoot the Moon (film #1 in the Science section of Movieflix). [Category: News]

This NASA film documents the many unmanned spacecraft built to photograph the lunar surface to determine if a manned lunar landing was possible. The film is well-made and full of pre-Apollo 11 photographs of the moon, as well as the first photographs of the earth from space. This provides an interesting historic backdrop to the Apollo missions, as well as some striking images.

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

Cleanliness Brings Health (film #25 on disc 1 of Walt Disney on the Front Lines DVD (Disney, 2004)). [Category: Military & Propaganda]

Disney made this educational film for South American audiences as part of the governments “good neighbor” policy during World War II. It appears to be aimed at poor rural folk, encouraging them to engage in proper hygiene practices to prevent the spread of disease. This is competently made, but one wonders who actually saw it, considering it was made in English rather than Spanish. It’s basically a Goofus-and-Gallant film, featuring the Clean Family, who relieve themselves in a latrine, wash before eating, and keep flies off their food with mosquito netting (and thus don’t get sick); and the Careless Family, who relive themselves in their cornfield, never wash, and let their farm animals wander all over the place, even into the house. They also look vaguely like “lazy Mexican” stereotype, which is unfortunate. The message is valid, though after seeing Forgotten Village, I wonder whether it really resulted in much change in traditional practices among rural peoples.

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

Army in Space and Under the Sea (film #39 on Open Source Movies). [Category: Military & Propaganda]

This early-70s episode of “The Big Picture” documents the army’s early experiments with rockets and missiles that were precursors to the space program, and various forms of experimental deep sea diving. It’s pretty standard for the most part, with a definite pro-army spin to everything. Lots of footage of rockets taking off and of deep-sea diving here, if you’re a fan of that.

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

Check the Neck (film #1 on AV Geeks). [Category: Industrial]

Straightforward 60s film for emergency personnel for dealing with persons who have had a laryngectomy, and thus breathe through a hole in the neck. This is important information to know and it’s presented in a straightforward non-sensationalistic manner, so you don’t want to laugh at this film at all. One interesting part of it features a picnic of such people, and they’re all chatting away with each other, using the “esophagal method of speech,” which sounds suspiciously like the same process kids use to burp on command. Still, there but for the grace of God go I––these people actually deserve admiration for coming up with a new way to communicate. All in all, this is an interesting film, but not one to laugh at.

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

Additional Bit of Dialogue (film #19 in The Lost Lucy Themes section of TVParty). [Category: Early Film & TV]

This is a bit of dialogue between Fred and Ethel from an episode of “I Love Lucy” that was cut for syndication. It mainly involves Fred making jokes about Ethel’s appetite. This has mild historical interest, especially for Lucy fans, but mostly is pretty ordinary.

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

Aesop and Son (film #10 in the Daws Butler’s Cereal Commercials section of TVParty). [Category: Commercial]

The “Aesop and Son” characters from “Rocky and Bullwinkle” pitch Cheerios. Somehow, this involves beavers (not evil ones, fortunately) and what was probably the first usage of the term “power breakfast.” Ordinary, but mildly fun, as Jay Ward characters usually are.

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

Purely Coincidental (film #23 on AV Geeks. Also, film #10 on The Educational Archives, Volume Four: On the Job DVD (Fantoma, 2002)). [Category: Industrial]

This maudlin industrial safety film has a convoluted plot. It features two guys who like to hunt––one who works in a dogfood plant, the other in a food processing plant. Both plants are chockfull of food handling violations, which are announced by scary synthesizer whines on the soundtrack, but which are nevertheless completely unnoticed by anybody. The guy who works in the dogfood plant uses a drill to fix a broken canning line, creating iron shavings which he casually brushes into an empty can. Before he can dispose of the can, he is called away from the line, and another clueless worker puts the can on the line to be filled with dogfood. Meanwhile, the guy who works in the food processing plant gets grease all over his fingers fixing a broken packaging machine, then later handles dough with the same greasy fingers. By an incredible coincidence, his prize hunting dog is killed from eating the can of dogfood with the iron shavings in it, while a package of contaminated food from his plant is eaten by the dogfood plant guy's little girl, who gets a bad case of food poisoning and has to have her stomach pumped, causing her mom to go into hysterics (good thing she wasn't Eggbert's mom!). Both guys complain bitterly to their friends that those guys in those other plants just don't care about food safety. Then they meet and befriend each other at a hunting lodge, still clueless about their coincidental attachment. Oh, the irony! This is one of the most labored films I've ever seen. The film makers try so hard to sell their point and are so unconvincing. There should be some sort of award for that.

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

Cabin in the Sky (recorded off of Turner Classic Movies). [Category: Sleaze & Outsider]

This 40s all-black cast musical was not made for black audiences, but for white, so there are stereotypes aplenty. Eddie Anderson plays a hapless gambler who gets a reprieve from hell provided he clean up his act in six months. Ethel Waters plays his good-hearted, religious wife Petunia and Lena Horne plays the temptress Georgia Brown who keeps getting him into trouble. Although the stereotypes and general portrayal of African American culture is awful, the cast, as you might expect from the names I just mentioned, often rises above the material. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find a movie containing more black talent of that time in one place. Duke Ellington’s band provides the music and there’s even a cameo by Louis Armstrong as a minor devil who plays a smokin’ horn. This is also one of the few all-black cast films that had a sizable budget, and it shows. It’s too bad all this talent had to work with material that made them look (or tried to make them look anyway) ignorant, simple bumblers, in order to satisfy the prejudices of white audiences. But that’s racism for you. As you might expect, this is lively and fun if you can get past the stereotypes.

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

Date with Duke (film #2 on George Pal Puppetoons (Loonic Video)). [Category: Hollywood]

Duke Ellington conducts some anthropomorphic perfume bottles in a smoother-than-ice rendition of his "Perfume Suite." Then he accepts the challenge of an evil perfume-bottle-sprite-guy who insists that he doesn't like music and hates to dance, that is, until Duke produces some irresistably toe-tapping music. Only in animation and probably only in ephemeral animation do you see such goings-on presented as if they make perfect sense. Which they do.

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

A Case for Beer (film #1 on AV Geeks). [Category: Public Service]

This early-70s film is aimed at convenience store employees, discouraging them from selling beer to underage kids and giving tips on how to spot cheaters. This just screams 70s, and if you were a teen during that time, it’ll probably bring back lots of memories. The tips given are extremely basic and the clerks shown are universally dorky, so I bet plenty of clever teens got away with their six-packs back then. It brought back memories for me as a Midwesterner because of all the Midwestern brands shown, such as Falstaff beer and Kitty Clover potato chips, brands that don’t exist today. Mildly campy and a real blast from the past.

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

Birds of Prey (in the ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #221 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Educational]

Dry Encyclopedia Brittanica film about owls, vultures, and hawks. Now I’m a real owl fan, and the owls in this film are as great as owls usually are, but no thanks to the film’s presentation of them. The filmmakers must have been thinking, “Let’s take a really interesting subject, like prey birds, and see how boring we can make it.” God help us if an educational film actually holds students’ interest.

Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: *. Weirdness: *. Historical Interest: **. Overall Rating: ** (gets an extra star for the presence of owls).