Continuing our series of weird auto-safety films, we now examine one told completely through the medium of toys. This looks like it was a lot of fun for the creators to make.
Could Russ Meyer be considered the grandfather of the popular Deadwood TV show? Check out this trailer for his WILD GALS OF THE NAKED WEST, and decide for yourself.
This is a little slow to get going, and we are denied seeing the children blown to smithereens. But it's pretty entertaining nonetheless. I thought the kids did some good acting. What about you?
According to Wikipedia, Luis Buñuel is "one of the most important directors in the history of cinema." His most notorious film is the 1929 Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog) which includes the infamous scene of a woman's eyeball being sliced with a razor in slow-motion. This is the one film of his that the professor discussed in the film class I took in college.
Much less well-known is his 1932 Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan (Land without bread). The film is a short travelogue about the poverty-stricken Las Hurdes region of Spain. What makes the film unusual is that as one scene of misery after another appears onscreen, the narration proceeds in a "flat and disinterested manner" and Brahms's Symphony No. 4 plays as background music. Some historians argue that the film was actually the very first mockumentary, parodying the documentary form.
The film can be seen in its entirety on YouTube, but not in English. I'm not sure if there is an English-language version of it. The only scene in English I could find was the one below, in which a goat supposedly trips and falls off a cliff. In reality, Buñuel's crew shot the goat and threw its body down the cliff. This was in the days before PETA. YouTube includes a "Warning: Animal Abuse" label with the excerpt. As a student of the weird, I've become pretty much shockproof, but if the sight of a goat plummeting down a cliff will disturb you, you might want to skip the video.
So long as we've started a toilet thread, let's all watch "Color It Clean," so that we appreciate the men and women who maintain our public lavatories.
This film reminds me of Barney Gumble's autobiographical entry in the Springfield Film Festival. I could find the clip only in Italian, but that adds a certain frisson to the viewing experience, I think.
Category: Money, Documentaries, 1940's