The Flower Fairy (1905)

THE FLOWER FAIRY (1905)
aka La fee aux fleurs
Article 4110 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-19-2012
Directed by Gaston Velle
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Magic fluff

A woman waters her windowsill and flowers magically appear, attracting butterflies. Eventually a large flower opens up to reveal the face of the woman, and she bows and makes her exit. Oops, I just gave away the ending…

I don’t really expect much in the way of gravitas when watching shorts from the silent era, especially when they run about one minute long. But even by those standards, this is a piece of airy fluff. It practically dissipates while you’re watching it. I’d say it’s about as close as I’ve come to watching no movie at all for this series, but if you’re keen on flowers, fairies and butterflies, you could do worse.

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A Few Quick Facts About Fear (1945)

A FEW QUICK FACTS ABOUT FEAR (1945)
Article 4109 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-17-2012
Directed by Zack Schwartz
Featuring the voices of Mel Blanc and Robert C. Bruce
Country: USA
What it is: Private Snafu short

The concept of fear is illustrated, with emphasis on how the emotion can help us rather than impede us.

During the forties, the US government financed a series of animated shorts for the armed forces featuring the character of Private Snafu; these were designed to be humorous educational shorts for our men in uniform. Most of the ones I’ve seen have been from Warner Brothers, but this one is from UPA, and the graphic quality is therefore more abstract. The short chooses to approach its subject from the point of view of a medieval knight (played by Snafu) encountering a fire-breathing dragon, which is what gives this short its fantastic content. It’s a pretty bare-bones affair and lacks the comedic flair of many of the other shorts in the series, but it makes for some interesting viewing nonetheless; after all, at three minutes, it hardly wears out its welcome. Incidentally, one of the writers is none other than Dr. Suess.

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Fat and Lean Wrestling Match (1901)

FAT AND LEAN WRESTLING MATCH (1901)
aka Nouvelles luttes extravagantes
Article 4108 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-16-2012
Directed by Georges Melies
Featuring Jeanne D’Alcy and Georges Melies
Country: France
What it is: Comic trick short

Two wrestling matches are featured. The second features a fat wrestler pitted against a thin one.

The film opens with two women of about the same size, but those in the hope of witnessing some female wrestling will be disappointed, as they turn into men before the match begins. So who would win in a wrestling match helmed by Georges Melies? Why, it’s whoever doesn’t get turned into a big rag doll at the crucial time; the latter gets torn limb from limb. Fortunately, cartoon violence rules apply; those who are torn limb from limb come back together to fight another day. The effects are obvious, but this is one of the funnier shorts that Melies directed.

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Fun in a Butcher Shop (1901)

FUN IN A BUTCHER SHOP (1901)
Article 4107 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-15-2012
Director unknown
Cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Sausage machine

Butchers buy animals and turn them into sausage with their handy sausage machine. But they don’t stop at animals…

When I first got this movie, it was suggested I check out the synopsis from the original Edison catalog on IMDB to clarify some of the action. Though I originally didn’t think the action needed clarification, I’m glad I did. Basically, a curious man is also tossed into the machine, which took the science fiction aspects of this short and pushed it in the direction of horror. What I didn’t notice and what the synopsis clarified was two points. First, the curious man is supposed to be a Chinaman. The second is that after he is thrown into the machine, what emerges is not sausages, but rats. These two facts, taken together, point to a truly ugly racism underlying the short, a fact which pretty much curdled any enjoyment I would have gotten from it. That’s one of the perils of delving into other periods of time; you find yourself occasionally confronted with some modes of thinking that are hard to stomach.

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Fantasmagorie (1908)

FANTASMAGORIE (1908)
Article 4106 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-14-2012
Directed by Emile Cohl
No cast
Country: France
What it is: Abstract animated adventure

A clown in a theater has to deal with a woman with an enormous hat sitting in front of him, but soon embarks on a series of abstract adventures.

Emile Cohl was the first director of animated shorts in film history, and this may be his earliest work in that mode. It starts out with a simple comic situation, but soon the clown begins to warp through space, becoming a jack-in-the-box, encountering an elephant, escaping from the police, riding away on a horse… no story, just a series of scenarios that mutate into each other. This would largely remain his style, and it took Winsor McCay and his short GERTIE THE DINOSAUR to really bring character animation as such to the fore. Yet there’s something really fascinating about Cohl’s early experiments with the form, and this is a good place to start.

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Phantoms, Inc. (1945)

PHANTOMS, INC. (1945)
Article 4105 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-13-2012
Directed by Harold Young
Featuring Arthur Shields, Ann Shoemaker, Frank Reicher
Country: USA
What it is: Short in the “Crime Does Not Pay” series

A couple is bilked by a fake medium who claims to be in contact with their son, missing in the war.

This short was part of MGM’s “Crime Does Not Pay” series, which illustrated the various types of criminal rackets and the way we can get caught up in them. Most of the shorts in the series probably do not fall within the genre limitations of this project, but this one, as it deals with spiritualism (albeit faked), does. It’s the only one I’ve seen from the series, so I can’t really compare it with the others. However, I will say this much; it’s effective in making us understand how we can be suckered into the machinations of these con men, how they obtain the necessary information to make the con work, and in getting us to feel the tragedy of the innocent victims who get caught up in the schemes. It is less effective in convincing us that the phony spiritualists will be caught, at least partially because it points out that some of these rackets do operate within the bounds of the law; in order for the criminals to be caught in this one, we have a melodramatic series of events that forces the con man to commit murder, and it is for this act, and not the racket in question, that he is arrested. As for the fantastic elements, those drawn to the short for a full-blown seance will be somewhat disappointed, as the spiritualist does little more than tell the victims what they want to here; no fake voices, ghostly figures, crystal balls, or other paraphernalia come into play.

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Wonder Women (1973)

WONDER WOMEN (1973)
Article 4104 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-12-2012
Directed by Robert Vincent O’Neill
Featuring Nancy Kwan, Ross Hagen, Maria De Aragon
Country: USA / The Philippines
What it is: Faux James Bond, Filipino style

An evil female genius is kidnapping athletes to use their bodies as receptacles for brain transplants from unscrupulous millionaires. A man is hired by an insurance agency to investigate the kidnappings.

Though it’s not a spy movie, it’s pretty much in the James Bond mold; our investigator’s techniques are along the same lines, and the villainess is also in the same mode. It’s pretty cheap and features some of the lousiest martial arts fight scenes I’ve ever seen; all the editing in the world can’t cover up the fact that the only thing the fighters seem to know about karate is that you open by holding your hands in a certain way. There’s some perfunctory nudity (it’s only PG, you see), and features a brain sex machine, hideous mutants, Sid Haig (who is having a lot of fun) and Vic Diaz. It’s hardly what I would call good, but it does have that certain watchable grindhouse charm to it. And I will say this much; it’s a vast improvement for Robert Vincent O’Neill, whose previous genre movies I’ve covered are THE PSYCHO LOVER and BLOOD MANIA.

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UFO Journals (1978)

UFO JOURNALS (1978)
Article 4103 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-11-2012
Directed by Richard Martin
No cast listed
Country: USA
What it is: UFO documentary

UFOs are discussed and speculations are made.

Back when I covered WHEN MICHAEL CALLS some years back, I quoted extensively from the blurb on the back of the DVD of the movie, compared the description with the actual movie, and came to the conclusion “Never trust a blurb writer.” Well, it’s time to trot that lesson out again, as the blurb on the DVD of this one says, “This full-length feature film takes a hard, scientific approach to the whole question of UFO existence. Combining current knowledge of space mechanics and navigation with detailed accounts of historical sightings, the producers offer their own investigation of purported landings and visits. The end result is a better understanding of these previously inexplicable phenomena.”

So what do we get? We get lots and lots of still photos of UFOs, none of which I’ve seen before and some of which look very unconvincing. We get lots of anecdotal musings by various people, all of whom are absolutely convinced of visits by extraterrestrials and some of which have “Dr.” in front of their names. We get musings on the destruction of Atlantis. We get to see an arc-like model based on dimensions of the ark in the Bible that is supposed to prove that Einstein’s theory of relativity is wrong. We get a man who is psychically connected to an alien named Zoltar. We get claims that mankind came from the planet of Moldec, which existed where the asteroid belt is now found. We get to see an expert on Kirlian photography play a harmonica solo. We get to hear the story of the man who, while in a trance, tattooed a spider onto his arm. We meet a man who can provide proof that he met an extraterrestrial because he has a crystal. And we get lots and lots of references to the Bible, which, whatever positive things you might say about the book, is not a good reference source for those seeking a “hard, scientific approach.” And you get a documentary that feels like it was thrown together randomly from whatever odd bits and pieces that were lying around that could be remotely connected to UFOs, and which simply muddies up the UFO waters rather than clarifying them. And, for all that, this may be one of the dullest documentaries of its sort.

Now I don’t know how this movie was marketed back when it was made, but I suspect it was no better back then than it is now. However, the blurb was right on one point – this was a full-length feature film.

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The Famous Box Trick (1898)

THE FAMOUS BOX TRICK (1898)
aka Illusions fantasmagoriques
Article 4102 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-9-2012
Directed by Georges Melies
Featuring Georges Melies
Country: France
What it is: Magic short

A magician does several tricks on a small child that he pulls from a box.

This is one of Melies’s magic shorts, where a magician appears and does a variety of tricks. This is one of his earlier examples, and I couldn’t help but notice that he seems to have taken extra care with the jump cuts in this one; they’re some of the smoothest I’ve seen from his oeuvre. My favorite bit has him using an ax to cut the boy into two duplicates of himself. In and of itself this one is nothing special, but at least it was made early enough in his career that it doesn’t feel that he just churned this one out.

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Signale – Ein Weltraumabenteuer (1970)

SIGNALE-EIN WELTRAUMABENTEUER (1970)
aka Signals – An Adventure in Space
Article 4101 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 12-8-2012
Directed by Gottfried Kolditz
Featuring Piotr Pawlowski, Yevgeni Zharikov, Gojko Mitic
Country: East Germany / Poland
What it is: An adventure in space

A spaceship disappears. Another spaceship goes out to find it.

The bare-bones plot description is just my way of saying that the movie is in unsubtitled German, and ended up being mostly incomprehensible to me; even the details I did find were mostly due to finding a few short plot descriptions. That leaves me mostly with the visual look of the movie to cover, and I will say that it does look like it’s learned a few good lessons from its no-doubt stylistic model, 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. The trouble is that knowing a few cinematic tricks isn’t the same thing as using them wisely, and the few this movie has learned get repeated ad nauseum; people appearing upside down in the frame and rotating camera whirls are the biggest culprits, with the latter nearly giving me dizzy spells. Once again, it’s not strictly kosher for me to comment on the story, as I couldn’t follow it, but I sense that there’s a lot of dead space and arty padding, and there’s something about how the final moments play out to give me the sense that the story isn’t particularly special in the first place. And, given this movie has a rating of 3.7 on IMDB, I suspect my instincts will prove to be right. Still, the movie has some sequences that are just plain weird; I’d like to know why we have all the footage of gymnasts on the beach, and what the animated segment (showing one character’s love affair with a beautiful woman with eyelashes half the size of her body) has to do with anything.

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