Hello!

Nothing on the Column item docket today — except for goofy online videos old and new … which people keep saying they like.

First up is a homemade video mashup from ‘Tvcrazyman’ — a clever editorial job that tasks The Man of Steel with defeating an armada of invading flying saucers. Ray Harryhausen worshippers may complain, but hey, re-editing the effects master’s work is always rewarding.

Fun is fun:

Up second is an old friend that’s forever winning new fans. Posted by ‘homemadespots’, it’s a musical excerpt from the 1965 Indian murder mystery-musical Gumnamm. A clip of the dance number shows up in Terry Zwigoff’s  Ghost World, just long enough to retard one’s consciousness by two or three evolutionary levels.

This one never gets old. The mindless, mind-warping music and the hyperfrenetic dancing are enough to shake one’s brain loose. The earworm guitar riffs will take possession of your frontal lobe for at least a week.

The choreography feels like a metaphor for modern life: people are bombarded by sub-atomic particles, just like David Byrne. It looks so frantic … psychologically speaking, the dance feels like a logical reaction to current national events.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Michael McQuarrie finds another good Internet Archive item. It’s an episode of the old PBS TV show Frontline. To explain, PBS was this great public-supported TV station that presented all manner of education and public interest programming, including original productions like Frontline that offered fine documentaries with journalistic integrity. Exactly what happened to public broadcasting is an entire different discussion.

The beautifully produced The Monster That Ate Hollywood is about the ‘corporatization’ of Hollywood. Produced in 2001, the process had been underway for decades, but it’s nicely spelled out, with excellent celeb interviews and relevant film clips.

Frankly, it’s hard to imagine anything produced about Hollywood that’s this good — most studio-based projects are so thoroughly corporatized, that anything not selling a product is pushed aside. We should know, having worked on video featurettes and docus for so long … starting in the late ’90s, the attorneys kept a close watch on was shown and spoken. What you wanted to say didn’t matter, what the piece said about their product did.

These are not just companies, says Peter Bart, they’re Nation-States, that want ‘Risk-Averse’ movies.

The final joke is the writer’s credit on the show …. Alan Smithee.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

Joe Dante circulated this Click Americana page from March 5, 2025. It’s a round-up of facts and insights about our American Drive-In Movie phenomenon — where it started, how it developed, and how its boosters thought it would never end.

There are photogenic images of Drive-Ins on view, but also a lot of shop talk from an article within the article — Charles R. Underbill Jr’s assessment of the state of all things Drive-In, from 1950. When WW2 ended there were only 60 of the things, but in five years over a thousand were constructed. Only a few hundred are left today.

And Michael McQuarrie, bless him, comes up with another rewarding link, one I’ll be going back to myself.

It’s from the Internet Archive and it’s simply called ‘The Tarantino Collection.’ It’s described as a collection of film reviews and writing, most of which appeared on the Beverly Cinema website. It says they were written between 1982 and 2022 … a goodly chunk of time.

Tarantino is always a good read — his tastes and knowledge are refined, and his comments are seldom predictable. His 3 or four pages on Bogdanovich’s  Targets were an excellent start.

There’s an index but you have to peck your way through the pages to find individual topics. We like it.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Hello!

What, another atom bomb-related movie?  It’s a Michael McQuarrie find, a twenty-minute documentary produced by the Air Force for the Atomic Energy Commission, on a series of bomb tests at the Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands in 1948.

Screenwriter Carey Wilson is listed as the narrator. Could he have tweaked the narration as well?  The tone of the writing matches the MGM short subjects where Wilson’s voice is frequently heard.

Only  Peter Kuran would know if better materials for this short subject are lost, as this looks like a 16mm dupe. We’ve seen some of these shots of men at electronic equipment, repurposed for science fiction movies (in better condition). That narration script is very well done, with no thoughtless or extreme remarks to exploit as madness in  The Atomic Cafe. Operation Sandstone is three separate detonations. The opening title card looks like a birth announcement for a new baby.

The final speech is quite a poetic mouthful, however:   “So can it be with the energy Man has created. The road is open, a road which may show us the cure for cancer, a road which may enable us to produce heat, and power and new metals with atomic furnaces. New fuels, new ways to nourish the soil, and correct vitamin and mineral defiencies in the very food we eat.”

Yeah, but the only aim we see is to make bigger and better bombs …

Thanks for reading!

Hello!

Intrepid correspondent Michael McQuarrie comes up with a winner from my past … I remember leafing through this at the UCLA Research Library’s Theater Arts Reading Room, the moment it arrived … ulp … 52 years ago.

The irreplaceable Internet Archive has issues of Take One, the magazine that published the fine interview with Ivan Reitman about  Cannibal Girls.

This issue from May of 1973 features has an impressive lineup of must-read items: The Horrible Hammer Films of Terence Fisher by Harry Ringel,  Carl Foreman Interviewed by Joe Medjuck,  The Murder of Fred Hampton by Gerald Peary,  The Grotesque West of Sergio Leone by Stuart Kaminsky,  Sergio Leone Interviewed by Noel Simsolo, plus review coverage of the movies  Pulp,  Ludwig,  Ulzana’s Raid and  High Plains Drifter.

Harry Ringel’s Hammer-Fisher piece is a particular good read … analyzing the Gothic horrors from a different perspective. Carl Foreman talks directly to his blacklist experience. The letters and ads are of interest, too.

And Michael McQuarrie scores with a second item from The Internet Archive … an entire feature film from Turkey. It’s a horror comedy from 1974, apparently patterned after Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein. Why, oh why, was this not given a major U.S. release?  . . . . You’ll soon understand why it wasn’t.

The whole show appears to be here, and it’s a great opportunity to brush up your Turkish … having no subtitles would make this a sink or swim teaching lesson. But the comedy is so basic, I doubt anyone will get too lost, or really want to know what’s going on.

I know, I know, there’s not enough money in the world to repay Mr. McQuarrie for this public service. Like I said, this show’s from Turkey … do I need to pay a tariff to watch it?

The title translates roughly as ‘My Friend Frankenstein.’

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson