The Good Egg (1945)
Article 5847 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-15-2020
Directed by Chuck Jones
Featuring the voices of Arthur Lake and Mel Blanc
Country: USA
What it is: Government film for the navy

Seaman Hook is taught the value of War Bonds.

By now most Warner Brothers fans are aware of the Private Snafu shorts made for the military during WWII. Apparently, there was an even more obscure series around a character called Seaman Hook for the navy, though it appears that other studios also worked on this series. Hook is a fairly passive character here; he’s largely there to be talked at by his good and bad sides i.e. a tiny devil and a tiny angel version of himself. Most of the humor comes from the fight between the two mystical characters, but naturally the angel wins so he can tell Hook about the way War Bonds will benefit him. It’s a minor cartoon and pretty forgettable, but since this is the first time I’ve even heard of this character, I’m glad I saw it.

Good Against Evil (1977)
Article 5847 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-15-2020
Directed by Paul Wendkos
Featuring Dack Rambo, Elyssa Davalos, Richard Lynch
Country: USA
What it is: TV-Movie

A man falls in love with a fashion designer, unaware that all of the previous boyfriends for that designer have ended up dead. It turns out she’s under the control of a Satanist who has plans of his own…

As for the story, suffice it to say that it’s a TV-Movie mishmash of elements from ROSEMARY’S BABY and THE EXORCIST. That should tell you a lot about the type of scares you’re likely to encounter as well as an idea of (this being a TV-Movie) how intense they’re likely to be. The opening is a fast-moving compendium of cliches. Then we have romance for about thirty minutes or so before it starts trying to be scary again. Then, about two-thirds of the way through, we unexpectedly shift the story to a set of characters who mostly appear in the movie for the first time. then, about twenty-five minutes later, you realize that there simply isn’t enough time for the movie to resolve its central conflict. It was only then that something occurred to me that I should have been suspecting from the moment I knew it was a TV-Movie. And though it may be considered a spoiler by some, nonetheless, I’m going to reveal what that revelation was, as it’s the sort of thing that goes under the heading of “fair warning” as far as I’m concerned. This movie was a pilot for a non-anthological horror TV-Series that wasn’t picked up (which goes a long ways toward explaining to me why this movie has such a generic title). In short, there is no resolution to the central plot, nor will there ever be. Now you’re perfectly free to decide for yourself if this one is worth your time.

Goliath Awaits (1981)
Article 5846 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-13-2020
Directed by Kevin Connor
Featuring Mark Harmon, Christopher Lee, Eddie Albert
Country: USA
What it is: A variation on the Atlantis stories

The remains of an ocean liner that went down 42 years ago are discovered on the ocean floor, but exploration reveals there may be life on board it. And there is… but the man hailed as the savior of the liner’s passengers may not want them to be rescued…

This three-and-a-half-hour TV movie (originally run over two nights) isn’t exactly easy to categorize in terms of its fantastic content; it’s not quite fantasy and not quite science fiction, though it’s pretty close in spirit to any number of genre movies that involve a lost civilization that has become isolated from the rest of humanity. It does have, however, a fairly far-fetched concept; that a group of people aboard an ocean liner could survive underwater in their sunken ship for forty years and develop a sub-culture so complex it even has room for a rebel faction to develop. For me, the opening scenes that lead into the story are more mysterious and memorable than the story proper; once four of the rescuers make their way into the interior of the ship, things get a little more predictable and a lot more tiresome. Still, it is nice to see Christopher Lee in a strong role (as the savior of the people), and to catch John Carradine in a role where he gets more than a couple of minutes of screen time as well as not proving the hammiest actor in the cast; the latter award goes to Frank Gorshin, whose perpetual scowl and odd performance distracts our attention. It’s a little sad to see an interesting premise give way to a fairly predictable story; sadly, the extra length of it just causes it to become a bit more cluttered. It’s passable, but could have been much better.

Golden Yeggs (1950)
Article 5845 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-12-2020
Directed by Friz Freleng
Featuring the voice of Mel Blanc
Country: USA
What it is: Looney Tunes

A goose on Porky Pig’s farm lays a golden egg, but he fingers Daffy Duck as the responsible party. Daffy enjoys the attention and notoriety… until he is bought by a gangster who is going to make sure Daffy delivers.

Here’s a solid if unspectacular cartoon from Friz Freleng that introduces Rocky to the Warner Brothers universe; an earlier version of him was modeled off of Edward G. Robinson in particular, but this version is the more memorable one. Most of the gags involve Daffy trying to escape from the gangsters, especially during a sequence where he is given five minutes to produce an egg. The laughs are steady and assured, Mel Blanc does a fine job, and this is a nice introduction for a character that would be used sparingly during the next few years.

The Golden State (1948)
Article 5844 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-12-2020
Directed by Seymour Kneitl and Dave Tendlar
Featuring the voices of Charles Irving, Jack Mercer and Sid Raymonf
Country: USA
What it is: Screen Song

Enjoy some jokes about California, and then follow the bouncing ball for a round of “California, Here I Come”.

I wouldn’t say Famous Studio’s Screen Songs are necessarily awful, but I do consider them forgettable non-events in the history of animation. Like the other ones, it’s a series of blackout gags about its subject, followed by a “follow the bouncing ball” singalong. Here’s another one that squeaks by on the fantastic content list by having one of the gags involve dancing skeletons. Isn’t it nice we live in a world where we can fast forward to this scene and then skip the whole singalong? For dancing skeleton completists only.

Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla II (1993)
aka Gojira vs. Mekagojira
Article 5843 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-9-2020
Directed by Takao Okawara and Kazuki Ohmori
Featuring Masahiro Takashima, Ryoko Sano, Megumi Odaka
Country: Japan
What it is: Godzilla movie

When a baby Godzilla is hatched in Japan, Godzilla shows up to claim it. This gives the military its chance to battle it with their new weapon – a giant robot known as Mechagodzilla.

The II in the title is there only to differentiate it from the similarly titled 1974 movie; this is not a sequel to that one. Rodan also shows up in this movie, though in some ways the role he plays feels like it might be more appropriate for Mothra. The baby Godzilla is far less cloying here than in the earlier series; nor is it as cutesy as the one in the immediate sequel to this one. I’m a little disappointed by Mechagodzilla here; I prefer the pyrotechnics of the earlier versions, and I miss the finger missiles it used to launch. The story is a bit of an improvement, and it manages to give the girl with the ESP connection to Godzilla a little more to do than is usually the case. Overall, it’s one of the better entries in the Heisei series, but I do find that whole series seems to melt together in my mind in a way that the original run of Godzilla movies doesn’t.

Godzilla Fantasia (1984)
aka Gojira Fantaji: SF Kokyo Fantaji
Article 5842 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-7-2020
Directed by various
No listed cast
Country: Japan
What it is: Long music video

If there’d been a plot, I’d have summarized it here.

For those who don’t recognize this particular title from the Godzilla series, here’s a bit of explanation. At one point, composer Akira Ifukube composed a three-movement symphony based on the scores he wrote for several Toho fantasy films, many (but not all) of which featured Godzilla. This movie consists of a performance of that symphony together with the movie scenes for which the music was originally written. There are apparently several versions of this movie with two sections available. One is a performance of a synthesizer version of the symphony with other scenes from the movies, and a third consisted of scenes from movies later than 1984. My copy features the original symphony and the synthesizer version, but not the third sequence (which must necessarily postdate the 1984 year listed here). The original symphonic version is easily the best of these; plus, at about forty minutes, it finishes up before the whole thing gets tiresome. The synthesizer version feels redundant, and occasionally features noise and talking from the footage it shows; it even uses some of the same footage as the symphonic version at one point. There’s at least one scene that appears to be from some historical movie I can’t identify. If you’re keen on Ifukube’s scores, this can be a fun movie; for Godzilla fans, it’s optional; after all, you won’t be seeing any Godzilla footage you probably haven’t seen before.

Gifts from the Air (1937)
Article 5841 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-4-2020
Directed by Ben Harrison
Featuring the Radio Rogues
Country: USA
What it is: Christmas whimsy

A poor boy retrieves a discarded broken toy from a toy shop, takes it home, and decides to have a real Christmas. Towards that end, the broken toy calls Santa over the radio…

Between the sentient toys and a visit from Santa Claus, this Christmas cartoon short has enough fantastic content to qualify for a review. And, despite a lowly 5.2 rating on IMDB at the time I wrote this, I must say that I rather liked this one. That may be because of what the short DOESN’T do rather than what it does; the opening scenes of a penniless young boy looking into a toy shop window on Christmas Eve had me thinking we were going into “The Little Match Girl” territory, but fortunately, the cartoon does not go that route, and aims for whimsy instead. I do like the way the boy makes do with what he has to create a Christmas atmosphere in his hovel. I’m less taken with the ending, where a bunch of the toys he receives from Santa are featured, and the short goes into celebrity caricature mode. The trouble is, most of these celebrities are rather obscure nowadays (the only one I knew right off the bat was Ed Wynn), nor does the cartoon do anything really creative with them. Ultimately, the cartoon is a piece of fluff, but I was in the right mood for it.

Ghost Parade (1931)
Article 5840 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-2-2020
Directed by Mack Sennett
Featuring Andy Clyde, Marjorie Beebe, Harry Gribbon
Country: USA
What it is: …

A realtor visits a haunted house. He gets scared.

I’ve seen a lot of bad comedies for this series, and one way to classify them is how you feel after watching them. Some of them leave you feel insulted. Some of them leave you bored. Some of them leave you angry at your time having been wasted. But to my mind, the worst are the ones that leave you feeling depressed. I’m afraid this is one of the latter.

This short is almost entirely a compendium of people acting scared when scary things happen, but the scares aren’t scary, and the being scared isn’t funny. It feels as if virtually no effort was made to tell a coherent story; arbitrary things happen and people react. Practically everything here feels desperate, forced, lazy and/or sloppy, as if everyone involved is either only putting in enough effort to pull a paycheck or are hoping that something somewhere in this mess will work. After it was all over, I felt sad and embarrassed, not amused in the least. Yes, it may all be an overreaction to what is really no more than a bad comedy short, but that’s how I felt. Really, this one isn’t worth watching.

Georgie and the Dragon (1951)
Article 5839 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-31-2020
Directed by Robert Cannon and John Hubley
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Whimsical UPA cartoon

A lonely Scottish boy finds a tiny dragon and intends to ask his father if he can keep it as a pet. However, the tiny pet grows very swiftly…

UPA wasn’t quite able to compete with Looney Tunes in terms of comedy, but they do a fairly solid job on this whimsical cartoon. The humor grows out of the fact that despite the fact the dragon does all sorts of damage (to both the house and the father), the father never actually sees the dragon, no matter how big it gets. It’s all a set-up for the ending, which I won’t reveal here. It’s an amusing enough cartoon, but I do find that many of UPA’s cartoons don’t call me back in the way Warner Brothers’ cartoons do, despite the stylistic touches. However, they are truly superior to the cartoons Columbia put out before UPA came on board.