Hello!

This one’s just bizarre: correspondent Jonathan Gluckman has dug up a link to a 1967 Indian science fiction movie about a trip to the moon … only it’s also a Bollywood extravaganza that clocks in at 2.5 hours and includes scores of musical numbers and scenes of romance. It’s indescribable. The actual link is under the title Trip to the Moon but the original is said to be Wahan Ke Log. No subtitles, so just make up your own Noël Coward dialogue and lyrics.

Jonathan includes a link to a helpful critical analysis by ‘Todd:’ Teleport City: Wahan Ke Log  Without it this would remain something I only thought I’d only dreamed, that it couldn’t possibly exist for real. We’re told that in there somewhere is a wild, frenetic dance number featuring Laxmi Chaiyya, the star of Jaan Pehechaan Ho, the extravagant Bollywood musical number excerpted in Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World.

Jonathan also offers this Wahan Ke Log one minute excerpt that is subtitled, although we wish it weren’t: the miserable dialogue could have been written by Vlad ‘the Impaler’ Putin.

Plus, here’s a timely disc announcement. The upcoming Blu-ray restoration of the Abbott & Costello Jack and the Beanstalk now has a street date, and can be preordered from ClassicFlix. It’s a 70th anniversary Special Edition, due out on July 12. It is a limited edition. The 3-D Archive has put a great deal of effort into the rejunvenation of the show, originally released in SuperCineColor.

A full rundown of extras is listed, which includes a number of rare film clips. I personally am interested to see Jack Theakston’s visual essay Imperfect Spectrum: A Brief History of Cinecolor. Here are links to the Jack and the Beanstalk announcement-information page, and to the ClassicFlix pre-order page.

I checked — we first shouted about Jack and the Beanstalk back in October of 2020, so it’s been a while — they originally predicted it would arrive sometime in 2021.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson