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Reviews
Multiple SIDosis (1970)
Well documented autobiography of a man gifted in music, engineering, construction of electrical and musical instruments..
Multiple Sidosis is a very well documented home made movie by a talented and intelligent man who tells his life story and some genealogy. Sid Laventis was born in the 1920s and lived in Colorado until his father decided to buy an orange grove in Indian River City across from Cape Canaveral. Sid Laventis graduated from high school from Hillsboro High where he was in a electrical club that built crystal radios and experimented with static electricity and an x-ray tube. Sid's creativity would be reflected in his work as a metal and plexiglass worker before and after World War II. During WWII, Sid sailed with 5,000 other enlisted men from San Diego south towards Bora Bora where they stopped for recreation and repair of their transport ship. After stopping for fuel in Perth, Australia the ship was headed for Calcutta but did a U turn when Calcutta was bombed. The ship went around India and the troops were transported eastward across India by railroad in infested cars. Calcutta, India was poor but Sid helped the Chinese war effort against the Japanese by forming plexiglass for aircraft windows. As a 19 year old, Sid traveled as a one-man band across Florida from his home in Tampa to Sarasota where success led to a trip to Miami where a Shriner's convention over a long weekend gave him enough money to travel up the eastern US coast to New York and vaudeville. He and his girl friend who traveled as his sister until they got married were in Elba when the local river flooded and destroyed their costumes and washed their car a few blocks down from their wooden hotel which was severely damaged by the river that overflowed its banks. Sid and his wife and 18 others were ferried to safety two at a time. After the car was fixed they left for New York but were not successful. After WWII Sid lived in an RV and worked at the same aircraft plant that he was in before the war. Sid and his wife tried raising Chinchillas but bugs got in the pelts and they sold all the animals. After Sid was laid off after over 20 years he had trouble finding work but got another job and received a Sound over Sound reel to reel tape recorder for Christmas that he combined with film to make a story of his life as well as many documentaries which won enough awards to fill the walls of a couple rooms with plaques and trophies. Sid used his creativity to film 5 to 8 tracks which were all of him in a split screen playing instruments of making the audio for the film SidOsis. Sid reminded me of my father who was brilliant, creative and could work with tools and electronics to make whatever interested him. I have always admired the modern Renaissance man to which I aspire. A film worth watching and being stored in the National Registry for its depiction of the settlement, struggle and conquest of an individual on behalf of the creative and resourceful citizen of our United States.
Jailbreak (1936)
Good 1930s jailbreak movie
This 1935/1936 movie is about a reporter flirts with a prison worker while solving a state prison inmates murder. Mike Eagen is the main character who is put in prison for a minor offense. Mike Eagen told the reporter, Jane Rogers he had $300,000 cash in the clear. Pop Anderson, prison librarian is murdered while attempting to tell the prison warden what he found in a book "Epigrams" by Marcus Aurelius. Periodic prison riots are fairly well staged. The prisoners hide harmonicas in dough while guards are searching for the gun that killed the main character Mike Eagen, who allegedly had $300,000 and was being paroled. The key to the money was in the book in the prison library. Bad guy who hid the gun kills a guard and makes a jailbreak. $5,000 reward in the next days paper for the escaped prisoner, Ed Slayton. Jane Rogers is the girl that works for Mike Eagen who was killed in his cell. Charges were filed against both for the death of Mike Eagen. Captain Roark is in charge. The ending shows the reporter talking into a dead phone again proposing to Jane Rogers and ends with a kiss. A movie representative of its time with good and bad on both sides of the jail bars. Nothing extravagant but good sets in the prison laundry or kitchen. Well played. The reporter, Williams, filed a report about a real killer to a dead phone line while all the suspects where in the room with the reporter. The lights get turned off just as the name is announced.