Leprechauns Gold (1949)
Article 5908 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-23-2020
Directed by Bill Tytla and George Germanetti
Featuring the voice of Jackson Beck
Country: USA
What it is: Noveltoon

When they run out of potatoes for their stew, a gang of leprechauns send out the youngest of the bunch to get some. But will this soft-hearted youngster be the cause of them losing all their gold?

Here’s an okay little leprechaun fantasy from Famous Pictures, and though the quality of the studio’s work did drop after the Fleischers were gone, they still did passable work. Apparently, leprechauns make shoes in their spare time and wash their gold on a regular basis (two facts I was not aware of, but then, I’m no authority on leprechauns). Part of the plot revolves around the hoariest of old cliches; the villain is a landlord demanding payment from a woman and her daughter. It’s more whimsical than funny, but I’m used to that by now. All in all, a passable timekiller.

A Lecture on Camouflage (1944)
Article 5907 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-20-2020
Directed by Chuck Jones
Featuring the voices of Mel Blanc and Robert C. Bruce
Country: USA
What it is: Private Snafu short

Technical Fairy First Class illustrates camouflage techniques using Private Snafu as an example.

The only reason most of the Private Snafu cartoons get included in this series is the presence of mystical character Technical Fairy First Class, who here takes place front and center to illustrate the theme. However, I was tempted to pass this one by because, outside of a couple of minor moments, he doesn’t really use his powers much. However, since the short ends with him consorting with mermaids, I gave in and reviewed it. There’s not really a whole lot to review here; all in all, it’s not one of the more interesting Snafu cartoons, with the best moment being one in which Snafu has to contend with a tree that keeps moving its shadow. This is a minor entry in the series.

The Last Straw (1934)
Article 5905 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-18-2020
Directed by Frank Moser and Paul Terry
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Terrytoons

When a crabby patriarch refuses to accept a baby delivered by the stork, the baby has to find a way to win the patriarch’s good graces.

It’s beginning to occur to me just how weird a lot of the Terrytoon cartoons were. There’s an occasional clever idea; I like in this one that the coming of the storks is not considered a happy event, but rather a disaster to be avoided. However, the execution is not up to the ideas, and the story arcs are pretty contrived; the cartoon tosses in the LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD story about half way through in order to find a way for the baby to get hold of a roasted turkey. In the end, my response to the cartoon as a whole is a confused shrug. It’s another Terrytoon that doesn’t really work.

Land of the Lost Jewels (1950)
Article 5904 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-16-2020
Directed by Izzy Sparber and Myron Waldman
Featuring the voices of Jackson Beck, Mae Questal, Cecil Roy
Country: USA
What it is: So-so fantasy adventure

Two children encounter a talking fish who takes them to the underwater Land of the Lost so the girl can discover what happened to her missing lucky pin.

This Famous Studios cartoon has a few cute moments in it. It’s mostly about the aforementioned pin who objects to being stuck in a museum when he’d rather be in Toyland, and he has to pass a test to see where he belongs. Oddly enough, the two children and the talking fish play no part in the story; they show up and watch the story play out, and they leave when it’s over. It made me wonder if the movie was a recycling of an earlier cartoon, but I wasn’t able to find any proof of that. Still, all in all, this one isn’t very memorable.

La lecon de musique (1909)
Article 5903 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-16-2020
Directed by Segundo de Chomon
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Special effects short about music

A manic conductor finds a way to illustrate the music he conducts.

I remember Georges Melies had a similar short called THE MELOMANIAC where he threw up copies of his head to form notes on a musical staff. This one is in the same vein, but fortunately the tricks are different, so this isn’t just a copy. The opening bit is the best; the heads of the seated singers are place in a stock, and as they sing their heads raise up into the air on extended necks, and those necks then turn into the bodies of dancing stick figures. The remaining special effects use straightforward animation, as various time signatures are illustrated on a staff, and after the music has been built, we have more dancing stick figures; the latter effect starts to get old as it’s repeated three times with different time signature and dancing figures. Still, it is entertaining to see how Chomon would come up with variations to Melies’s work.

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2001)
Article 5730 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-30-2020
Directed by Larry Blamire
Featuring Larry Blamire, Fay Masterson, Brian Howe
Country: USA
What it is: No-budget 50s Scifi thriller parody

Three groups of people struggle with each other to obtain a meteor made of atmospherium; a dedicated scientist and his wife, an evil scientist intent on resurrecting a skeleton, and two stranded space aliens.

One of the pitfalls of trying to make a purposely bad movie for comic purposes is that it can end up being tacky, exploitational and/or unfocused. Not so this little gem. By keeping his attention focused on creating a specific type of bad film (no-budget SF thrillers from the fifties), he manages to capture a very specific cinematic style as well as keeping the movie disciplined; it never spirals out of control. Furthermore, Blamire has a keen ear for dialogue, and he does an amazing job of capturing the clumsy goofiness found in the dialogue of Edward D. Wood Jr. The end result is a movie that to my eyes, ranks as one of the funniest movie parodies since Mel Brooks gave us YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. Wonderful “bad” acting abounds, with Andrew Parks and Susan McConnell my personal favorites as the hapless space aliens trying to pretend they’re earthlings. The only real problem I have with the movie is that it drags a bit during the final third of the movie, which gives me the feeling that it was padded out a bit to make its length acceptable to modern audiences; it really should only run about 75 minutes rather than an hour and a half. Still, I can forgive that, since the middle third of the movie in which all the major characters meet in a cabin in the woods is one of the funniest stretches of cinematic fun I’ve ever seen. Quite simply, I love this movie.

Last Days of Pompeii (1913)
aka Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei
Article 5715 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-22-2020
Directed by Mario Caserini and Eleuterio Rodolfi
Featuring Fernanda Negri Pouget, Eugenia Tettoni Fior, Ubaldo Stefani
Country: Italy
What it is: Mostly costume soap opera

Various lovers in ancient Pompeii interact with each other. Can a volcano solve all their personal problems?

The high priest who serves as the villain of this one has a few magical powers, one of which (an elixir that drives a man mad) plays a central role in the story. The plot mostly serves as a time-killer until the movie gets to what it’s really all about – the volcano destruction footage, and if you want to get to the good parts, feel free to skip the first three-quarters of the movie, My print runs less than an hour, but rather than title cards, the soundtrack features a narrator telling us what is happening, which no doubt shortened the telling of the story. Despite the fantastic content, it’s primarily a soap opera of sorts with a number of dull stretches.

The Lair of the White Worm (1988)
Article 5713 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-10-2020
Directed by Ken Russell
Featuring Amanda Donohue, Hugh Grant, Catherine Oxenburg
Country: UK
What it is: Ken Russell adapts Bram Stoker

A strange woman turns out to be a priestess of an evil snake cult.

I’m willing to bet that a great deal of the perversity in this movie is the work of the director rather than being from Bram Stoker; at the very least, I’m sure Stoker would have been more subtle. Still, in comparison with most of the other films I’ve seen from Russell, this is a relatively staid affair; most of his trademark weirdness can be found in some brief dream sequences. In fact, I would go so far as to say this one gets pretty boring at times; with all the weird stuff, there’s also a great deal of standing around and talking. As it is, I find the whole movie somewhat uninvolving; I don’t really find myself getting very interested in most of the characters or their situations. There are a couple of interesting touches; a Melies short (THE BRAHMIN AND THE BUTTERFLY) pops up at one point, and there are two actors here who have both played the Doctor (as in “Doctor Who”) albeit only one officially; Hugh Grant was one of several actors who portrayed him in THE CURSE OF FATAL DEATH, and Peter Capaldi played his twelfth incarnation. This one was rather disappointing.

Lena and the Geese (1912)
Article 5667 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-18-2019
Directed by D.W. Griffith
Featuring Mary Pickford, J. Jiquel Lanoe, Kate Bruce
Country: USA
What it is: Fairy tale short

A noblewoman gets rid of an inconvenient baby by passing her on to a peasant woman. Then, when on her deathbed, the noblewoman regrets her decision and sends for her now-grown daughter to reinstate her. However, the peasant woman decides to send her own child in place of the adopted one.

Let’s get the fantastic content out of the way first – there is none. However, I can understand why this was classified as a fantasy; it is based on a fairy tale, and in general it is assumed fairy tales are fantasies. It’s just that this particular story has no fantastic touches.

As for the movie itself, for me the most striking thing about it was Mary Pickford’s performance. I would not have noticed had I not been on my recent chronological coverage of fantastic films, but Pickford’s performance seems to take silent film acting to a new level; she seems to be the first actress to really master the art of acting in this medium. As such, this is one of the first silent films in which the acting itself is the main attraction, and it’s easy to see why she became one of the first silent film stars. The acting is what lifts the story, especially during the sequence when Pickford’s character tries to master the alien (to her) art of etiquette. Pickford herself chose the story based on the fairy tale “The Goose Girl”, though I wonder about the retitling, which seems to imply that the geese will play more of a role than they ultimately do.

The Land Beyond the Sunset (1912)
Article 5664 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-15-2019
Directed by Harold M. Shaw
Featuring Martin Fuller, Mrs. William Bechtel, Walter Edwin
Country: USA
What it is: Drama with fantastic elements

A poor newsboy lives in squalor with his abusive grandmother. However, he comes by a ticket to a picnic hosted by the Fresh Air Fund, an organization which takes poor city kids out to the country to enjoy nature.

From what I gather, the Fresh Air Fund was a real organization (which, according to IMDB, still exists), and this short amounts to a commercial for the charitable group. In some ways, it’s quite effective; the opening scenes with the boy in the city are rather depressing and make you feel for the boy. The fantastic elements have to do with a story told to the boy at the picnic about a boy who escapes from a wicked witch with the help of the fairies and is allowed to escape by boat to the Land Beyond the Sunset, a world without worries. The story is shown visually, and it’s pretty apparent who the witch and the fairies are within the context of what’s happening. The ending is both fascinating and problematic; when the picnic breaks up, we’re left wondering whether it was just a momentary respite in the boy’s life; does he have any option other than returning the squalor of his daily existence? The movie gives him an out, and even though the ending is somewhat haunting and ambiguous, one is left wondering a little whether the Fresh Air Fund may have been exaggerating their influence. Still, it’s the ending that really makes this one memorable.