jeffoc_99 Reviews

All This and World War II (1976)

Four Clues To Its Whereabouts...

[1 January 2009]

About a gazillion copies of the soundtrack (on CD and vinyl) are being sold via Amazon.com and eBay, but the film?

Well, here are 4 possible sources to acquire this movie (at your own risk). Since I cannot post direct online links, you will have to do the searches for yourself on Google and YouTube.

1. Subterranean Cinema (do search on Google with "All This And World War II DVD")

IMDb will not allow this web address to be posted. You must e-mail the site's proprietor for information on obtaining a DVD copy, which is listed at the site.

2. The Video Beat (do search on Google with "All This And World II DVD")

(apparently selling a DVD or VHS copy for $29 plus s/h, with the following bonus features:

JOHN LENNON : MAN OF THE DECADE

1969 U.K. TV special. Dec-30-69. Rare ATV special that examined three influential men of the 1960s; John F. Kennedy, Ho Chi Minh and John Lennon. When esteemed sociologist and anthropologist Dr. Desmond Morris was asked whom he felt was the man of the decade, he chose John Lennon. Dr. Morris presents the John Lennon segment which included analysis of John Lennon's contribution to the 1960s, Beatles footage (selected by Lennon) and interviews with John as he strolled through the grounds of Tittenhurst Park. Topics discussed by Lennon include youth culture, Vietnam, peace, love, LSD, the establishment, Woodstock, and more.

BEATLES COVER GROUPS 1960s

From U.S. TV. The girls from TV show Petticoat Junction call themselves "The Lady Bugs" and perform "I Saw Her Standing There." From TV show Shivaree "The Mermaids" perform Twist and Shout." From an unknown Chinese movie a group of mop-top Orientals perform a very weird version of "I Saw Her Standing There." )

3. Shocking Videos (the website name is actually "revengeismydestiny") has advertised a DVD copy for $14.95 plus s/h (do search on Google with "All This And World II DVD"). It is listed in their "Hot 100" section of cult movie offerings on DVD.

4. The ENTIRE film has been posted on YouTube, with a catch: the soundtrack has been re-dubbed with the music of Beatallica, a comedy speed-metal group that covers/rewrites Beatles songs in the style of Metallica...in 9 parts. Just do a YouTube search using the exact words "Beatallica - All This And World War II."

So the above four options are the closest ways that you'll ever have to view/own this film at home (so far...). I haven't seen the original version of "ATAWWII," so I cannot add any reviews or star ratings yet...

Frankenstein (1910)

Whence "Frankenstein" (1910)?

[25 April 2006]

The first time I had viewed excerpts from this film was a re-broadcast of the 1970s British anthology series "The Amazing Years Of Cinema," hosted by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. It had been produced before the AFI listed the Edison Company's "Frankenstein" on its Top-Ten "Most Wanted" list. I taped a number of episodes of this series in the mid-1980s from the Discovery Channel, on the Beta format (anybody got a Beta VCR they can spare?). Viewing the creation scene was beyond fascinating, and has imprinted itself upon my mind even to this day. I presumed that eventually the film would be archived, restored, and made available upon home video (the then-current, and future formats), but was dismayed in the early years of this century to find this was not so. Even the video/DVD "releases" of the late 90s were (from what I understand) of such horrible quality (the imposition of "time codes," for starters) because Aldois Detalff refused to make the print available to professional celluloid preservationists...he was paranoid about not being paid enough to have this important cinematic document claimed and preserved into perpetuity, so he hoarded the battered print, gave it only sparse public screenings, and refused any bid under $1-2 million to relinquish it into the hands of those better qualified to save this work.

Now, Alois Detlaff is dead (as of 2005). Which (at risk of sounding cold and disrespectful) begs this question....

What will become of the sole remaining "Frankenstein" print? If there are any silent film buffs or insiders that have knowledge to this question, I would very much appreciate an answer and/or updates. I really, really hate to say this, but sometimes (for human history's sake) the survival and fate of one very, very important physical artifact should place priority over "respecting" the misguided ego of the last person known to have shielded it from the rest of the world (especially if the concern was largely about money, collector ego, and a mild strain of blackmail/greed).

It would be tragic if the only source print of this film were kept under lock and key until it disintegrates beyond repair because of its final owner's rapacious whims.

Again, any feedback is more than welcome...

Hard Luck (1921)

Final Scenes of "Hard Luck" DO EXIST!!!! And it's on Kino DVD!!!

[20 April 2006]

Slight correction for the previous review (though admittedly it came before the actual discovery). The long-lost missing scenes (Keaton walloping the cement in the pool-dive sequence, his return with Chinese wife and child, both cute BTW) WERE found in a French archive (will have to check which one), albeit in terrible-but-watchable shape, and were restored on a special compilation DVD of Keaton rarities (home movies, TV appearances, cameos, and some restored films, including the missing scenes from "Daydreams").

The title is "Keaton Plus"...I found it circulating in the Buffalo Public Library. Not sure of the date, but would probably be between 2001 to 2004. And yes, it's released by Kino Video (in association with the Rohauer and Keaton estates, etc.) It's gratifying to know that the cherry on the top of Keaton's fantastic cinema career in the 20s has survived (barely, but serviceable), and it's a short, sweet coda for such a majestic American comedy talent.

Song of the South (1946)

Memories of SOTS...and how they affect modern perspectives.

[12 February 2005]

I recall seeing only one theatrical showing of "Song Of The South," and it's one of many nostalgic movie-going memories I cherish with deep affection. It was the 1981 theatrical reissue, unspooled at the Colonial Theatre in downtown Elmira, NY.

The Colonial (like many of its kind) was closed in the 1980s due to poor business, operation expenses, and poor maintenance. It's a sorrowful cultural loss. It had classic American Movie Palace interior embellishments: balcony, orchestra pit and stage, ornate interior decoration, and a curtain illustrated with elks and mythical Greek figures. For a brief period in the late 80s, the Colonial operated as a revival house cinema, and there had been vague discussion of reopening it as a performing arts venue. Instead, it was demolished to accommodate construction of a Coach USA indoor arena.

Another fond Colonial memory of mine was attending a brief reopening and retrospective screening of 16mm shorts produced by Hal Roach, Sr., back in Elmira for a hotly publicized hometown return (he was born there in 1892). As a 14 year old classic film fanatic, I had the pleasure of (briefly) shaking hands with one of the last (then)living links to the era of silent comedy.

And what does any of this have to do with SOTS? Time, distance, and memory clouds judgement.

My mother bought a VHS copy of SOTS's British PAL-C release. I watched parts of it again three months ago while visiting. Allegations of racism (viewed from the context of 1946) are overblown, but the stereotypical depictions (both black and white Southerners)are still hard to take. More relevantly....aside from isolated vigniettes ("Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah," et al) and James Baskett's magnificent performance (the sole compelling reason to bother viewing it today), it isn't a very good film. Mediocre Disney at best, in both live action and animation departments; the characters are shallow, unsympathetic, and uninteresting, and the Brer Rabbit segments painfully unfunny.

Worse, the print quality was poor, due to Disney's intentional neglect of the surviving nitrate materials. Nonavailability in the USA seems largely an issue of Disney's indecision on how best to please its stockholders, since Disney is a corporate megolith, with stakes in global mass media, real estate, and god knows what else (yes, Darth Eisner is a despicable rat-bastard, but he isn't solely to blame with the Mouse's ranks for SOTS's "supression").

Perhaps Disney should allow the film's copyright to expire, and wash its hands of responsibly marketing it for video release? I think the advent of DVD (multiple extra features, low costs) might save SOTS from Bootleg Purgatory and future nonexistence. It should be at minimum 3-disc set, packaged (along with the usual games and links)with separate well-indexed documentaries containing commentary from opposing ideological and historical sources.

Topics should include the history of the Joel Chandler Harris stories (positive and negative aspects), racist depictions of African Americans in 19th and 20th century American pop culture (and global animation), the harsh realities of black life in the antebellum South, black perspectives on folklore and cinema, the film's making (and subsequent release problems), a biography of James Baskett, and many more crucial details in confronting the film's troubling depictions of Southern black sharecroppers and former slaves (many of whom were lynched, castrated, or kept in servile labor throughout post-Emancipation times).

SOTS deserves to be widely seen again, but in a contextualized format, ethically distinct from the innocuous, candy-colored children's entertainment that Disney touts itself as a world leader in providing.

The Black Stork (1917)

Who ever thought that eugenics could be so much frigging' fun?

[7/10 · 4 February 2005]

Should deformed and/or retarded and/or terminally ill babies be left to die without medical intervention or supervision, for the sake of purifying the White Man's Sacred Genetic Map? Should they be saved from a life of sexual ostracizing and silent-era slapstick retribution? Should non-Aryans be spared the horror of living in a WASPy pre-civil rights existence with a lot of ugly Caucasian actors in flat pancake makeup? Was Margaret Sanger truly a feminist pioneer or a Nazi sympathizer in flapper drag? Have you ever seen such an impressive array of real-life genetic mutants since before the 1932 release of Tod Browning's "Freaks" (even if the surviving print is shorn of 30 minutes)? Should this peculiar, maudlin, hokey, but undeniably disturbing forgotten "hygenic" classic be revived and discussed/vilified in the same way as D.W. Griffith's "Birth Of A Nation" continues to be almost a century later? You folks out there are welcome to Play God and Be The Judge Of That. That is, if you can actually find a copy. "The Black Stork," under the 1927 re-release title of "Are You Fit To Marry?" (I think that's it) is a true curio: a cinematic Black Mark (ho,ho,ho) on the legacy of the Wharton Brothers, pioneers in cheap celluloid entertainment produced on the poisoned shores of Cayuga Lake in Ithaca. For more information (and maybe even a copy, if it's legal), contact Terry Harbin....find his e-mail by visiting the IMDb review of "The Lottery Man" (1916), another Wharton winner featuring Oliver Hardy in drag, auctioned off as a white-slave lover to the (un)lucky winner.