Application of Pascal’s Law, Part 1. This dry WWII vintage Navy training film about hydraulics is spiced up slightly when the concept of “work” is shown by an animated Sailor Goofus trying to move a heavy box. Otherwise, it’s just pistons moving and narration, though the design of the animation is kind of cool. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: **. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ***.

Another to Conquer. This 1941 film was made to encourage Native Americans to get proper treatment for tuberculosis, which had become epidemic in Native populations. Young adult Navajo siblings Don and Nema had both parents die from the disease, and their grandfather, Slow Talker, tells them their parents died because they had abandoned traditional ways. Nema wants she and Don to get examined to see if they have the disease, but Slow Talker is mistrustful of the white man and discourages it. Their friend Robert decides to go to the Indian school, to Slow Talker’s dismay, and there he is given a physical exam and is found to have the early stages of TB. He is sent to a sanitarium for treatment (antibiotics hadn’t been invented yet) and slowly recovers. Slow Talker, upon hearing of Robert’s illness, calls him “lazy” for staying in the hospital. But then Don collapses while working hard during the annual sheep dip, and it turns out that he has an advanced case of TB. This changes Slow Talker’s tune, and he agrees to take himself and Nema to be examined. Nema turns out to be disease-free, but Slow Talker turns out to be a carrier who may have been the one to infect his family. He makes the difficult decision to stay in the sanitarium so he won’t continue to infect his family. This film is admirable in its aims, yet it has a patronizing attitude to the Natives that it is trying to persuade. The answer is “white man’s medicine” which couldn’t have been very persuasive to Native audiences. The film has lots of historical interest in showing both attitudes toward disease and Native American life in the 40s. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: N/A. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: *****. Overall Rating: ****.

Animated Sailor Cartoon. A cute animated sailor and his dog take us on an unlikely world tour and show us all the places you’ll go if you join the Navy! This silent film from what looks like the 20s combines animation and live action to reel in the recruits. Fortunately, there aren’t any wars going on in all those places, though the animated sailor and his dog get to play around with bombs and shells for a bit. A cute example of an early military recruitment film Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ***. Weirdness: ****. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ***.

Animals Growing Up. This 1949 Encyclopedia Brittanica film shows us….oh, look, baby chicks!….oh, sorry, it shows us three different kinds of….oh, look, puppies! Cute!….uh, sorry, three different kinds of animals….oh, look, that little calf can hardly stand up! Ohhhh…so cute! (Sorry.) This would be the usual dry EB fare, except for all the cute baby animals, which are entertaining by themselves. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: **. Weirdness: **. Historical Interest: ***. Cuteness: *****. Overall Rating: **** (sorry, folks, I love cute animals!).

Animal Cunning. In which various kinds of wild animals are tormented and abused for our amusement. If they’re not feeding cigarettes to deer, the filmmakers are poking lizards with sticks, pulling sloths from trees, and forcing a vulture and a puma, respectively, to fight an iguana. And then there’s the narration! It’s fun to make fun of animals, kids! This film is only “educational” in the loosest sense; it looks like it was made as a theatrical short, though it looks like the New York Board of Education distributed it, probably to schools. It’s not quite as upsetting as some of the worst of this genre (Catching Trouble, anyone?), and animals are always fun to watch, but I’m glad we seemed to have grown out of thinking this sort of thing is entertainment (if we haven’t, I don’t want to know about it.) Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ****. Weirdness: ****. Historical Interest: ***. Overall Rating: ***.

Angel and Big Joe. This 70s sociodrama features a teenage Hispanic boy who befriends a lonely telephone lineman. The boy is a child of migrant workers and he lives in grinding poverty with his mother and younger siblings in a shack next to the tomato fields they just harvested. His family is waiting for a call from his father, who has gone on to Texas to look for work. Angel befriends Big Joe after Joe fixes the pay phone that the family is waiting for the call to come in on. Angel is desperate to do any kind of work to help out his family, and he eventually convinces Joe to hire him to do odd jobs on his property. A friendship slowly develops between them, as Angel discovers that Joe is a divorced man whose grown son left to join the Navy, leaving him to a solitary existence. Joe had planned to build a greenhouse with his son and start a business raising flowers, but that was abandoned when the son joined the Navy. Eventually, Joe rekindles this dream, having Angel help him build the greenhouse. They raise a crop of roses together and get a good profit for them. At this point, though, Angel’s mother finally gets a call from his father and plans to take the family to join him in Texas. When he tells Big Joe, Joe encourages him to stay and be his business partner, offering to let him live in his house with him. This leaves Angel with a very difficult decision to make: does he stay with Joe and help him with his business, which he enjoys, or does he support his family by going with them to Texas to do more migrant labor, which he hates? This film was made to encourage classroom discussion about the issues it raises. It is quite touching and real; you feel like Angel and Big Joe are real people with real problems. This is a good example of the increasing sophistication educational films developed after the social changes of the 60s. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: N/A. Weirdness: **. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ****.

And Women Must Weep. This dramatic, anti-union film supposedly tells the story of a wildcat strike in Princeton, Indiana. The strike was supposedly called by a tiny committee within the union, after the union president had been fired after breaking some rules that were in the union contract. The firing causes him to call the strike as a personal vendetta against the company, and out-of-state goons came into the town to railroad the union members into supporting the strike, and to harass members who crossed the picket line. It all ends with an anonymous gunner shooting at a trailer home of one of the union members who crossed the picket line, hitting his baby. This is all presented as God's truth about unions who require membership of all company employees. Except it didn’t happen that way. We learn in the union’s rebuttal film, Anatomy of a Lie, that the strike was not wildcat, there was no secret union committee, the female union president discouraged the union from striking because of her firing, there were no out-of-state goons, and the police determined that the shooting at the trailer home had nothing to do with the strike. This totally undercuts the message of this film and makes you wonder about the real motives of the filmmakers. Even without the information in Anatomy of a Lie, there are aspects of the film that don’t hang together. For instance, if the strike was wildcat, where did the out-of-state goons come from? Certainly not the union, if it didn't approve of the strike. This film is the very essence of propaganda: overly emotional and not too concerned with the facts. The fact that the National Right to Work Committee still touts it as truth does not speak well for that organization. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ***. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ***.

And So They Live. This 1940 documentary shows us the lives of the poor mountain people in rural Kentucky. It focuses mainly on one poverty-stricken family that lives in a log cabin, farms corn on depleted soil, and eats a diet consisting mainly of biscuits, cornbread, fat pork, potatoes, wild berries, and little else. Their lives are shown with little narration, and the visuals tell the story. What narration there is focuses on how the curriculum taught in the one-room schoolhouse the children go to has little relevance for them, and how necessary subjects that could improve their lives, such as improving the soil through crop rotation, or milking the goats that they keep, are not even mentioned. The most striking scene, though, is at the end of the film, when the father of the family gets out his banjo and plays a ditty. One of his young sons, who couldn’t be more than 6 years old, dances a jig to the music. His father is so pleased with his son’s dance that he rewards him with a cigarette, which the boy promptly lights and smokes like an experienced smoker. The striking images of poverty and rural life in this film are unforgettable, and give the film lots of historical interest. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: *** (mostly for the child smoking scene; otherwise it would get an N/A). Weirdness: ****. Historical Interest: *****. Overall Rating: ****.

The Ancient World: Greece. Made by the same folks as The Ancient World: Egypt, this film also lets the art tell the story, but this time, instead of providing their own narration, the filmmakers let the ancient Greeks themselves tell the story, with all the narration coming from ancient Greek writings. It comes out a little less coherent than the other film, but no less beautiful and compelling. It gives you a real feel for how the Greeks thought about things, and how they saw themselves. Again, I think this would stand up in classrooms today. NOTE: The link is to Part 1. Follow the link on the archive.org page to view Part 2. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: **. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ****.

The Ancient World: Egypt. This 1951 history film for the classroom on the ancient Egyptian civilizations is surprisingly compelling. I was expecting dry narrated facts or poorly-acted recreations, but no; this film tells its story through the majesty of ancient Egyptian art. Shown in beautiful color and with finely-crafted camerawork, the art tells the story, with the help of dramatic music and stirring narration that never quite gets over the top. This was probably a breath of fresh air for students in the 50s, who were used to dry ERPI fare for history class. A fine film that could be shown in classrooms today. NOTE: The link is to Part 1. Follow the link on the archive.org page to view Part 2. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: **. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ****.

AC Wholesalers Campaign 1971. AC!…IS THERE…FOR YOU! AC…IS THERE…FOR YOU! AC…IS…oh, sorry. This 1971…sales promotional film…for AC auto parts…tries hard…to be bouncy and psychedelic…but fails…because the spokesmen…can’t act their way out of a paper bag. Oh, by the way: AC…IS THERE…FOR YOU! Sorry, I’m having a hard time shaking the badness of this film. Anyway, to top off the excitement, they do a very 70s thing: give away free 8-track players with orders of sufficient size! Wow! To be fair, they have a bit of a tall order in promoting auto parts, since most consumers don’t even notice them until they malfunction. I guess that’s why this film is completely dude-oriented (the only woman in the film is cheesecake in one of the commercials), since car-obsessed dudes are the only ones who can get excited about auto parts. Don’t forget…AC…IS THERE…FOR YOU! If this review seems disjointed, wait till you see the film. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ****. Weirdness: ****. Historical Interest: *****. Overall Rating: ****.

Anatomy of a Lie. This 1962 film is a refutation of another film, And Women Must Weep, which is also on my list to review. That film was an anti-union film that dramatically showed how a machinist’s strike in Princeton, Indiana supposedly damaged the community. Anatomy of a Lie was made by the union who voted to strike and interviews the workers who were involved in it, mostly women. The workers all point out that the anti-union film grossly misrepresented the facts of the strike, making it sound like it was not supported by the workers (actually it was overwhelmingly supported by them), that the picket lines exploded into violence (they didn’t), and that the union hired out-of-state goons to harass people who tried to cross the picket line (the sheriff even corroborates that there were no out-of-state goons, and the workers point out that the company hired out-of-state strikebreakers to cause problems on the picket lines). It all comes off as very convincing, since the interviewed workers are all real people and not actors. My favorite part is when they interview the tough old woman who was union president at the time of the strike. Part of the company’s dirty tricks was when they fired her on a trumped-up pretext. The anti-union film turned her character into a bitter, rabble-rousing man who gets the union to strike in revenge for his firing. When the interviewer asks the real union president about this, she says she actually discouraged the union to strike because of her, because “I’m fat, old, and ugly enough to take care of myself.” Yeah, you go, sister! Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: **. Weirdness: **** (mainly for being an ephemeral film that rebutts another ephemeral film). Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ****.

Americans at Work: Hotel and Restaurant Workers. This chapter of “Americans at Work” focuses on those who work in the kitchens and dining rooms of big hotels and restaurants. There’s lots of footage of cooks and food preparers working in big kitchens with huge quantities of foods. It’s pretty impressive, really, all the work that goes into you being able to go out for a nice dinner, which was the point, I guess. Pretty straightforward with lots of historical interest. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: **. Weirdness: **. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ***.

An American Valley: The Story of Trade Adjustment Assistance for American Workers. This 70s public service film is aimed at workers who have been laid off due to plant closings caused by cheap foreign imports. It explains the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program, which provided additional unemployment benefits, career counseling, and skills training to such workers. It looks like it’s a pretty good program which prevented economic collapse in some areas hard hit by plant closings. There’s a subtle underlying message, though, that cheap foreign goods causing American unemployment is an absolutely necessary thing that can’t be helped, which I question. The film has that depressing style of many 70s films that’s a little hard to explain, but you know it when you see it, and that makes it less watchable than it might be, and makes even the happy endings for some workers not seem that great. An interesting flash from the 70s that still has relevance today. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ** (mostly from 70s ties). Weirdness: **. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ***.

American Tanks in China. 1920s newsreel about U.S. troops protecting American interests in China during the Chinese civil war. There’s some great footage of old tanks here, as well as footage of Chinese people during the 1920s with lots of historical interest. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: **. Weirdness: **. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ***.

The American Spirit. Early silent film in which the spirit of our American forefathers is transmitted to a new generation though overacting. Proves that you don’t have to hear dialogue to know when acting is bad. The film is in very poor condition, so it might have looked a little better in its time, but that would have just made the acting that much worse. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: *** (would have been more if the film had been better preserved). Weirdness: **. Historical Interest: ***. Overall Rating: ***.

An American in the Making (1913) from Ned Thanhouser on Vimeo.

An American in the Making. In this 1913 film, made by US Steel, a Hungarian immigrant gets a job at the US Steel plant in Gary, Indiana, is introduced to, and vastly impressed by, the wide array of safety equipment used in the plant, marries his pretty English teacher, and lives happily ever after with his wife and son in a nice middle class house. I’m sure that he, as well as all the workers he was meant to represent, were so darn happy they had no need for any of those rabble rousing unions. In US Steel’s dreams! Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ****. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: *****. Overall Rating: ****.

The American Indian Speaks. This 1973 Encyclopedia Brittanica film is a surprisingly harsh critique of the white peoples’ and the US government’s treatment of Native Americans. American Indians do speak in this film, and what they have to say Is unsettling to non-native citizens. What’s especially surprising is that EB would have sanctioned such a political film. According to Geoff Alexander’s Films You Saw in School, the suits at EB were shocked by the film and didn't much care for its message, but were afraid of being criticized if they failed to release it. This is a truly educational film that really helps you to empathize with the struggles of the Native Americans, and how they are continuing to be treated shamefully by the rest of this country. I wonder how much this film was shown in actual classrooms, at least after administrators and conservative moral guardians got to see it. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: N/A. Weirdness: ****. Historical Interest: *****. Overall Rating: ****.

The Air We Breathe in Industrial Environments. This industrial safety film explains the hazards of breathing air contaminated by various industrial pollutants, and the importance of wearing proper safety gear when doing various kinds of industrial jobs. It’s pretty standard for the most part, but there’s an old guy who’s not the narrator who has a great set of visual aids in the form of blocks that represent various concentrations of gasses, including one that says “FATAL” on the bottom (a must for the Film Ephemera Museum of Quriky Devices). Also, there’s lots of footage of gritty-looking industrial environments, where it’s hard to breathe just looking at them. Take a deep breath, folks, and be grateful you don't work in a coal mine. Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ***. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ****.

The ABCs of Film Direction. This 60s film on the basics of film direction is a lot of fun to watch, not just because of its lively and somewhat campy Calvin Workshop style. It’s also really interesting for those of us who are into badfilm, as it shows us just how some directors are so incompetent that they screw up directing basics that are taught to beginners. In particular, there is a scene that shows how you can show an actor crossing a room and going up the stairs without showing every last little bit of it, a mistake I’ve seen many a time in bad films. The film also provides some great scenes for miners of video footage; I have a feeling that many of the scenes are a lot campier out of the film’s context. There's some mstable content in a scene of a male boss a female secretary that the narrator keeps referring to as a “girl.” Don’t forget to ask a member of the Calvin staff if you have any questions about this film! Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ****. Weirdness: ****. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ****.