A Pipe Dream (1905)

A PIPE DREAM (1905)
Article 5245 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-8-2016
Director unknown
Cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Silent special effects short

A smoking woman causes a little man to appear out of the smoke on to her hand. He begins pitching woo. How will she respond?

This is one that had fallen onto my “ones that got away” list, but has now been rescued from it. When I did my earlier write-up of it, I was rather dismissive of it based on what I knew about the plot at the time, but then, with a one-minute running time, just how much of a plot can you have? Surprisingly enough, there is a bit of a plot, and thanks to an effective performance by the smoking woman, this little short pulls it off with a certain amount of wit. I’m glad this one showed up; it’s much better than I expected it would be.

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Hell-Bent for Election (1944)

HELL-BENT FOR ELECTION (1944)
Article 5244 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-6-2016
Directed by Chuck Jones
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Animated propaganda

If railroad man Joe Worker wants his shipment of War Materials to be used, he will need to load them on FDR’s train, The Win-The-War Special. But there’s only one track forward, and the train, The Defeatist Limited, is doing everything in its power to reach it first. If Joe votes at the railway switch, he can make sure the cargo reaches the right train; however, he is assaulted by a politician intent on lulling him into a slumber so he won’t vote.

Chuck Jones took a break from his Warner Brothers and Private Snafu cartoons to make this pro-Roosevelt propaganda piece for the 1944 election. As a whole, the piece is an allegorical fantasy, but it’s primary fantastic content is the portrayal of an anthropomorphized train “The Defeatist Limited”, a black-smoke-belching old train that looks antiquated next to the sleek Diesel engine of the one representing FDR. The Chuck Jones style is most noticeable in the portrayal of the politician, who splits into two people at one point and even transforms into Hitler at another. Though some of the political details of the cartoon are a bit obscure anymore, much of it is still relevant, but like all propaganda, it needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

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Goldtown Ghost Riders (1953)

GOLDTOWN GHOST RIDERS (1953)
Article 5243 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-5-2016
Directed by George Archainbaud
Featuring Gene Autry, Smiley Burnette, Gail Davis
Country: USA
What it is: Weird Western

Gene Autry arrests a man for murder who claims that he can’t be convicted for his victim’s death because he’s already served his sentence for killing the man. The whole story is then told in flashback.

Though you can’t really tell it from the plot description, there is a fantastic element to the story; one of the plot details involves a gang of ghost riders who emerge from Ghost Canyon to frighten prospectors away from their claims. However, I must admit that this element of the story is pretty disappointing; when they appear, they look very much like ordinary cowboys, and the only proof we have that they’re ghost riders is because Smiley Burnette says they are, and that means that the fantastic content of this movie has been left in the hands of the comic relief. Furthermore, the whole “ghost rider” part of the story is a pretty clumsy plot contrivance that does little more than lend an element of confusion to the story. Gene Autry does a fine job and sings a couple of songs, but I have to admit that I’m not a Smiley Burnette fan, and this movie just features way too much of him for my taste. The movie also tries to have it both ways as far as the fantastic content goes, but if the ending was supposed to send a shiver up my spine, it didn’t work. This is not a favorite of mine from this subgenre.

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La joie de vivre (1934)

LA JOIE DE VIVRE (1934)
Article 5242 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-4-2016
Directed by Anthony Gross and Hector Hoppin
No cast
Country: France
What it is: Experimental but not abstract animation

Two women dance at a power station, but when one of them loses a shoe and it is picked up by a man, they lead him on a merry chase.

I have to admit that I was quite taken by this odd little animated film from France. The animation is elegant and fluid; in fact, it’s downright seductive. Unlike much experimental animation, this one has characters and something of a story. The short has a lovely flow to it; it’s fascinating to just watch these characters move around the screen. I’ve never heard of either of the directors, but from the looks of it, this is their only movie. It’s a shame; I myself would like to see what else they could have done in this field.

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Japon de fantaisie (1909)

JAPON DE FANTAISIE (1909)
Article 5241 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 9-2-2016
Directed by Emile Cohl
No cast
Country: France
What it is: Exercise in stop-motion animation

That I’m foregoing a plot description of an Emile Cohl short should be no surprise; most of his work involves rushes of stream-of-consciousness images and doesn’t really have a story. Even by those standards, this one is slight. This short falls roughly into two segments. The first twenty seconds involves stop-motion animation involving Japanese figurines. The last forty seconds features an insect that hatches an egg of a Japanese mask, and mice emerge from the mouth of the mask. It’s mostly notable for Cohl trying his hand at stop-motion rather than his usual animated chalk drawings. However, with a running time of one minute, it’s over before it’s managed to work up any real impact; it seems more like a snippet of footage from something larger than a movie in and of itself, and maybe it is At any rate, this is hardly Cohl at his most interesting.

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Au pays de l’or (1908)

AU PAYS DE L’OR (1908)
aka In the Land of the Gold Mines
Article 5240 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-30-2016
Director unknown
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Special effects short

A woman spies a gang of dwarfs disappearing underground in a forest, and a fairy takes her into their abode where they forge gold.

There’s no director listed for this on IMDB, but it looks somewhat like the work of Gaston Velle or Segundo de Chomon to me. There’s no plot; it’s more like a series of fantastically derived set pieces with the theme of gold tying them together, and it feels something like a factory tour; the woman even gets free samples at the end. The neatest effect is watching the gold being forged to coins, which is basically achieved by creating filming several fake pieces of gold being melted in a pan, and then running that footage backwards. There’s a giant face that spits out gold coins as well as a series of woman being offered the gold of their respective nations. The whole thing is nicely hand-tinted as well.

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Ibong Adarna (1941)

IBONG ADARNA (1941)
Article 5239 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-28-2016
Directed by Vicente Salumbides
Featuring Mila del Sol, Fred Cortes, Ester Magalona
Country: Philippines
What it is: Epic fantasy

A prince embarks on an adventure to find a magical bird to cure his father, but his evil brother may have other plans…

This is the earliest movie I’ve seen from the Philippines, and though some of the opening credits are in English, the copy I found was in Filipino/Tagalog without English subtitles. This wasn’t a big problem at first; the story is from a fifteenth century novel, and the production gives it the feel of an Arabian Nights story, and the first half (the quest for the bird) is easy enough to follow. The second half is much more obscure, but it amounts to a second quest which involves the hero having further adventures and meeting several princesses and having to decide which one to marry. I found a summary of the novel on Wikipedia, and it appears the movie doesn’t quite follow the novel closely during this section. There’s the magical bird, a fight with a giant, several magical acts, and a musical number involving miniature people to add to the fantastic elements. The movie is somewhat similar to Bollywood productions in its use of music, and some of these moments are high points in the production. Overall, I found it a big long and dull, though this may have a lot to do with not being able to follow the dialogue.

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Hula-La-La (1951)

HULA-LA-LA (1951)
Article 5238 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-27-2016
Directed by Hugh McCollum
Featuring Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Shemp Howard
Country: USA
What it is: Three Stooges short

Three dim-witted choreographers for a movie studio are sent out to a tropical island to teach the natives to dance. However, when they get there, they discover the natives are headhunters…

It’s been quite a while since a Three Stooges short popped up on my hunt list. To my mind, this isn’t one of their better ones; it drags a bit and feels a little tired, though it does have some good moments. The fact that the natives are headhunters adds a bit of horror content, but the most striking fantastic content in the movie is a four armed statue that comes to life. It’s not particularly convincing (it’s obviously a real person), but it does come into play during the funniest scene in the movie, where it gives both Moe and Larry a taste of their own medicine. For the record, of the Stooges, Shemp seems to be not only the best dancer, but the most beautiful of the Stooges… at least, according to the tribe’s medicine man.

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How a Mosquito Operates (1912)

HOW A MOSQUITO OPERATES (1912)
Article 5237 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-25-2016
Directed by Winsor McCay
No cast
Country: USA
What it is: Sheer unadulterated horror

A man is followed home one night by an inhuman creature that seeks to drink his blood while he sleeps.

Okay, so it’s a comic animated short by the guy who gave us GERTIE THE DINOSAUR. And, with his top hat and little antics (such as sharpening his stinger), there’s no doubt that he’s played for comedy. But don’t let all that fool you – this is a horror movie. For one thing, take a good look at the size of this mosquito. Also take note of the fact that the movie does not flinch from actually showing the creature drinking the blood of its victim. And also check out the bloody conclusion. Even if you try to take it as a comedy, you’ll have to admit that this one gives you the heebie-jeebies. Not for the faint of heart.

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Holiday Land (1934)

HOLIDAY LAND (1934)
Article 5236 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 8-23-2016
Director unknown
Voice cast unknown
Country: USA
What it is: Animated holiday whimsy

A young boy, not wishing to get up and go to school, wishes that every day was a holiday. The wind blows the pages of his calendar on the floor, and from the holidays emerge characters to help him celebrate.

This is an early Columbia cartoon, long before they were the home of UPA, so it’s hardly from their greatest era. Scrappy was one of their regular characters, and he’s a fairly generic little boy character , and though he was featured in a lot of shorts, he’s not well remembered today. This particular piece of whimsy is something of animated counterpart to the movie HOLIDAY INN, in that it celebrates several of them (Christmas, New Year’s, Easter and Thanksgiving) rather than any one of them. There’s lots of singing and music, a few stabs at humor, and all in all, it’s pretty much what I’d expect from a minor animation studio at this period in time; it’s pretty routine.

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