Horrible Horror (Goodtimes, 1986). [Category: Commercial]

TV horror movie host Zacherly hosts this collection of clips, trailers, and various other goodies from horror and science fiction genres. Zacherly is the best host I've seen on this kind of collection. It looks like he's just ad-libbing, and he's a great ad-libber. Mostly, it just looks like he's having a lot of fun. The collection here is quite interesting––there's lots of clips of classic and classically bad moments from these films, quite a few trailers, and lots of other miscellaneous goodies, such as 50's TV clips, bloopers from Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and scenes from old interviews with Bela Lugosi. Fans of cheesy horror and science fiction should particularly enjoy this.

Highlights:

• This tape has my all-time favorite trailer: the classic Killer Shrews trailer, featuring Dr. Radford Baines from the "Department of Information". He tells us about shrews and then urges us to report any sightings of giant killer shrews to our local authorities. Is this the biggest invitation to crackpots and pranksters ever, or what?
  
• One particularly obscure and interesting item is a scene from the 50's TV series "You Asked for It" which features Electro the Robot, the robot built by Westinghouse for the 1939 New York World's Fair. He's big and blocky and talks in a monotone. It's hard to believe that audiences of the day were impressed with him, though they were. Here he says, "My brain is bigger than yours," and blows up a balloon until it pops. Wow!
  
• There's two bizarre Bela Lugosi interviews on this tape: in one, he scares the silly female interviewer away by pretending to hear voices, and in the other, he claims that "Dracula goes on forever," whatever that means.
  
• You not only get to see the incredibly silly cowboy-hatted robots in The Phantom Empire, but you also get to find out that they reappeared in another serial––Captain Video!
  
• Gimmick Alert! In 13 Ghosts, you can only see the ghosts with the help of a special "Ghost Viewer", demonstrated helpfully by William Castle himself! The producers of The Screaming Skull will pay funeral expenses for any member of the audience who dies of fright! Macabre has a similar insurance policy, but warns us it does not cover anybody with a known heart condition or suicides!
  
• Msties, take note: contains clips or trailers from The Killer Shrews, Bride of the Monster, Indestructible Man, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, War of the Colossal Beast, Robot Monster, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, The Phantom Creeps, The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy, The Undersea Kingdom and The Screaming Skull.
  

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

Amelie Moments in the Prelinger Archives (film #35 on Open Source Movies). [Category: Outtakes & Obscurities]

Spuzz, a regular reviewer of Prelinger films, put together this short compilation of unscripted, behind-the-main-action moments from Prelinger films. These are fun moments, though they could have been edited a little bit tighter. This really makes me want to put together my own compilation films, though. It also makes me really want to check out A Visit to Santa––this film looks hideous! And I love the ending!

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

Apollo 11 Crew Preparing for the Moon Mission (film #4 in the Apollo 11 section of WPA Film Library). [Category: News]

Silent footage of the Apollo 11 crew practicing various things they will be doing on the mission, such as getting in and out of the capsule, experiencing zero gravity, and getting pulled out of the ocean after splashdown. This has some historical interest, but I wish they’d included some sound.

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

Candy for Your Health (film #17 in the Documentary section of Movieflix). [Category: Industrial]

Ah, the good old days, back when doctors used to recommend eating candy between meals! This 20s silent film has some wonderful factory tour footage of Love Nest candy bars being made by the Euclid Candy Company. A fun trip back to a sweeter time.

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

Up on Cloud Nine unsold tv pilot excerpts (film #9 on TV Turkeys (Rhino, 1987)). [Category: Outtakes & Obscurities]

Here's another great idea for a sitcom: wacky stewardesses! And all the comical mistakes they make at 20,000 feet! Such as mistaking a pilot's request for dinner service for an announcement of an emergency landing (hyuck! hyuck!)! I mean, wouldn't that be funny if it happened to you? Fortunately, this series never got off the ground, but its pilot will live forever thanks to the miracle of home video. It looks like this was never even shown on tv, but only to prospective sponsors––it starts with "Your Product Presents..." I'm surprised the makers of Dramamine didn't buy it.

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

AWOL – All Wrong Old Laddiebuck (film #1 on Origins of American Animation). [Category: Early Film & TV]

Private Snafu’s dad probably starred in this WWI-era military training toon. A not-too-dedicated doughboy, tired of waiting for discharge after the armistice, goes out on a joy ride (says so on the car) with Miss A.W.O.L. He gets into all kinds of trouble, of course, culminating in having to cool his heels in the stockade while all his buddies get to go home. This is a great example of early ephemera, well preserved, with lots of amusing rubbery animation. A 1919 American film.

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

Big Bertha (film #8 in the Kids with Guns section of TVParty).[Category: Commercial]

Hyperbolic, and thus quite campy, commercial for a big toy tank with three different kinds of guns on it, just perfect if you want your little tyke to grow up to be a war monger. And it’s sold only at Food Marts, so you know it’s pure and wholesome. Appalling, and quite fun.

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

Risque Matinee (film #15 on Blood of Floor Sweepings (LSVideo). [Category: Sleaze & Outsider]

A housewife discovers a brochure from a strip club in her husband’s suit jacket, and, rather than getting mad, she uses it for educational purposes. Good thing she was only wearing a pair of thong panties under her apron. This cockamaimie plot could only appear in a stag film, and one can only laugh at the male fantasies this was designed to appeal to.

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

Forgotten Village (film #1 on Feature Films). [Category: Public Service]

This sensitively-done 30s documentary tells the story of Juan Diego, a young man who lives in a tiny Mexican village, where people live a traditional rural lifestyle that has changed little over thousands of years. The only link with the outside world is Juan’s schoolteacher, who gives the village children a bit of knowledge of the modern world. When the children of Juan’s village start sickening and dying in droves, Juan goes to his teacher for help. The teacher suspects that the village well is spreading an infectious disease, and he encourages Juan to go to a nearby city and get a public health team to come and help. Unfortunately, the villagers rely on a local medicine woman for healthcare, and they are extremely hostile to new ideas. When Juan returns with the medical team, most of the families hide their sick children from them, and when they try to disinfect the well, the villagers accuse them of poisoning it. In desperation to cure his seriously ill younger sister (he already lost a brother to the illness), Juan sneaks her to the medical team in the middle of the night to get her an injection of a curative serum, but his father catches him afterwards and orders him to leave the village and never return. The medical team, however, make arrangements for Juan to attend a special school for young people who want to bring modern medicine to their villages. They reassure Juan that change happens slowly, and that it will be young people like him who will finally bring such changes about. This is an intelligent and sensitive film that is not too hard on the villagers who reject the medical team’s interventions. This makes it more enlightened than you’d expect for the time it was made. Of course, by today’s standards, it has some problems––it gives no context for the villagers’ suspiciousness of outsiders coming in and trying to change their ways, which may encourage audience members to think of them as just ignorant and stubborn. And it shows no downside to modernity, whereas from today’s perspective we know that modern ways, with their medical miracles and conveniences, have a tendency to destroy traditional ways of life, leaving little for poor rural people to take its place. Still, this film is a wonderful documentation of those ways of life, as well as providing a historically interesting snapshot of public health practices in Mexico during the 30s.

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

The Challenge of Ideas (in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #282 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Military & Propaganda]

Edward R. Murrow hosts this early-60s film, which seems to be designed to explain the Cold War to service personnel, though there is also some implication that it may have been shown to the general public as well. A motley assortment of stars, such as John Wayne, Lowell Thomas, and Helen Hayes also appear at various points to explain the ideological differences between the capitalist and communist systems, i.e. Why We’re Right and They’re Wrong. It’s not quite as intelligent as the presence of Murrow would suggest, but it’s not quite as jingoistic as the presence of Wayne would suggest. As such, it’s kind of annoying. It does have a great deal of historical interest, though, as a portrait of what the American government wanted its citizens to believe about the Cold War.

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

MGM Studios Tour (film #1 on Blood of Floor Sweepings (LSVideo). Also, recorded off of Turner Classic Movies). [Category: Industrial]

This is sort of a filmed tour of MGM Studios, made during the 1920s. Just about all the departments in the company get their few moments of filmed glory and a group shot before the camera. You get to see not just actors, directors, cameramen, and editors, but also the studio nurse, food service workers, and barbers. The film follows a loose progression of filmmaking from initial concept to developing the film. This is a wonderful snapshot of a major Hollywood studio in the early days of the studio system, when films were still silent and musicians were strictly for providing mood music for the actors.

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

All of the Dead (film #5 in the Action section of Brickfilms. Also, film #3 in the Horror section of Brickfilms). [Category: Outtakes & Obscurities]

This old classic brickfilm is made in the horror mode of Night of the Living Dead. Which is pretty ambitious for a brickfilm, if you think about it. Mostly, it pulls it off, or at least as much as a brickfilm can be expected to pull it off. It’s not surprising that this film inspired others to start making brickfilms.

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

Apollo, Segment 6016 (in the Documentary section of Open Video Project). [Category: News]

This last of the Apollo segments features the end of a NASA film about preparations for the first Apollo mission. We get to see a space capsule being abused in various ways, and then the pontificating about Man and His Mission starts. During the end credits, the digitizer spaces off again, and we hear the music slow to a stop, which is somehow a fitting end to these endless, poorly-preserved NASA film clips.

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

Calvin Workshop (in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #1 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Industrial]

This film, made by an industrial film company, would have us believe that all of the technical jobs in film production, as well as writing and directing, are done by chimps. On second thought, that explains a lot of the dreck Hollywood has foisted on us over the years. Monsters Crash the Pajama Party was only able to hint at this scandal, but as usual, ephemeral films tell us what is really going on.

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

The Boat (film #2 on Side A of Disc #2 of Comedy Classics DVD Megapack (Treeline Films, 2004)). [Category: Hollywood]

As if he didn’t have enough trouble, Buster Keaton builds a boat and subjects his family to one mishap after another, including destroying his entire house when he attempts to get the boat out of the basement where he built it, sinking his car in the bay during an abortive attempt to launch the boat, and having the boat sink completely during said launch. He fixes it so that it’ll float, but his problems have only begun. Again, this is a quite funny Buster romp, featuring bizarre items like a floating anchor, a picture of an ocean scene that leaks salt water, pancakes that are totally inedible but useful for patching leaks, and a lifeboat made from a bathtub. When inanimate objects are not turning against Buster, his two unruly kids cause further mishaps. Everything that can go wrong does, and that makes this fun watching.

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

Crazy Inventions (film #17 on Cartoon Crazys: Sci-Fi (WinStar Home Entertainment, 1999)). [Category: Hollywood]

Betty Boop hosts a Big Invention Show, featuring weird and wacky cartoon inventions. This is a great concept, though I think it could have been just a bit weirder in execution. Still, the cartoon really takes off when the Self-Threading Sewing Machine goes on a rampage and starts sewing up everything in sight, including ladders, rivers, and people's mouths. Lots of fun.

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

Automobile Race for the Vanderbilt Cup (film #10 on America at Work, America at Leisure. Also in the Historical section of Open Video Project). [Category: Early Film & TV]

An early car race, filmed from various points on the track. On the final straightaway, the crowd stands much too close to the track––I’m surprised somebody didn’t get killed. Of course, the speeds of the cars were considerably slower back then, but still. A 1904 Biograph film.

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

The Betty Hutton Show (film #6 in the When Stars Did the Commercials section of TVParty). [Category: Commercial]

Really silly commercial Betty did for Post Raisin Bran that involves making a raisin bran flambé. This is one of the better examples of stars hawking their sponsors’ products that make up this particular section of TVParty.

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

Murder on Lenox Avenue (film #23 on Feature Films). [Category: Sleaze & Outsider]

From its title, you would think that this all-black cast movie was a murder mystery, but it isn’t. It’s really more of a soap opera, with more subplots than you can shake a stick at, including several interlocking romantic triangles, and an unwed mother who kills herself, though the main story seems to be about an upstanding fellow who tries to eliminate graft from the Harlem Better Business Society. Although there are several rather stereotyped comic relief characters, and one of the bad guys is a really poorly-done hunchback, for the most part this has a realistic feel. And even though the plot is hard to figure out at times, it holds your interest for the most part. An interesting slice of African-American culture from the 40s.

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

Frontiers of the Future (film #574 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Public Service]

Lowell Thomas narrates this “screen editorial” designed to tell Depression-era audiences that even though times are hard now, R & D departments of big companies are inventing new technologies will create lots of new jobs, and it’s all just around the corner. Gee, I wonder if big business had anything to do with this. Actually, this did happen for the most part, but with prices that were not mentioned in this film. The film does provide a historically-interesting snapshot of futuristic thinking during the Depression.

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