Oddball Films presents Strange Sinema, a monthly evening of old finds, rare gems and newly discovered films from the stacks of the archive. Drawing on his collection of over 50,000 16mm film prints- the largest archive in Northern California - Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has compiled his 105th program of offbeat, quirky, experimental outtakes and unusual films. Strange Sinema 105: World’s Strangest Films is a tribute to the weird, the wacky and just plain stupid films in our archive. Films range from educationals, amateur and home movies, odd featurettes, news outtakes, screen tests, art films, stag films and wacky animal stars! We’ll start off with the The Cat Who Drank and Used Too Much (1987), an Oddball audience favorite about a beer drinking, drug addicted cat; the very weird Universal Studios featurette Fraud By Mail (1944) focuses on bizarre dangerous mail order fraud: nose shapers, spine straighteners, eye mallets, pendiculators and more; The Wizard of Speed and Time (1979), a supersonic and hilarious dash across the country at hyper-speed; Burlesque Screen Tests and Dancers (1950s), featuring Bunny Spencer’s screen test, a rooftop mambo and a masked Afro-Cuban dancer with a bowl of fire on her head; Deciso 3003 (1982), the world’s first alien teen sex ed puppet film where even puppets (designed by legendary Julie Taymor) feel ashamed; hop on board for what some say is America's first hardcore porn, the notorious silent stag film A Free Ride AKA Grass Sandwich (1915); Movie Sideshow (1933), an offbeat kaleidoscope of human marvels featuring a carnival barker, newsreel clips of a man sealed into sealed into a block of ice, and a "human fire extinguisher" who drinks water and kerosene, starts fires and puts one out; Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp (1971), Get Smart meets James Bond as A.P.E. (Agency to Prevent Evil) monkey detective Lance Link battles a C.H.U.M.P. (Criminal Headquarters for Underworld Master Plan) dentist who secretly implants radio transmitters into teeth; Frank Film (1973), Frank Mouris’s classic of independent cinema presents 11,592 separate shots of common objects forming complex, rapidly moving patterns that Andrew Sarris called "a nine-minute evocation of America's exhilarating everythingness” Plus! Airplane Wing Tests, Blind as a Bat and much more cinematic detritus from the archives! Sinema just doesn’t get stranger than this!
Date: Thursday, October 27th, 2016 at 8:00PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Web: oddballfilms.blogspot.com
Featuring:
The Cat Who Drank and Used Too Much (Color, 1987)
Wacky anti-drug film about alcohol and drug using Pat the Cat. He hits the skids before finally reaching out for help - another Oddball Films audience favorite! Narrated by Julie Harris and winner of 24 major awards!
Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp (Color, 1971) in To Tell the Tooth.
Get Smart meets James Bond in this TV spy spoof as the top agent of APE (Agency to Prevent Evil) detective Lance Link discovers a dentist working for C.H.U.M.P. (Criminal Headquarters for Underworld Master Plan) has been inserting secret radio transmitters into the teeth of military officials.
The Wizard of Speed and Time (Color, 1979, Mike Jitlov)
A young man in a green wizard costume runs throughout America at super speed. Along the way, he gives a pretty girl a swift lift to another city, gives golden stars to other women who want a trip themselves and then slips on a banana-peel, and comically crashes into a film stage, which he then brings to life in magical ways. A mind-blowing short-later extended to a feature length film.
Burlesque Screen Tests and Dancers(B+W, 1950s)
Watch these “Screen tests” and super-quirky burlesque dancers get way-out and weird. Shorts feature Bunny Spencer modeling the “stockings of tomorrow”, Barbara Nichols doing a Latin Mambo on a rooftop and “Afro-Cuban Genni”, masked and dancing with a bowl of fire on her head. Now that’s burlesque!
Free Ride AKA Grass Sandwich (B+W, 1915)This infamous stag short is touted as being the earliest example of American hardcore pornography, though its actual date of production is still hotly debated. A motorist stops to pick up a couple of lovely ladies from the side of the road and they embark on the ride of their lives! Silent with added soundtrack.
Fraud By Mail (B+W, 1944)
Meet ‘Joe Gullible’ and his cohort of dim-bulbed dummies in this Universal Studios short about bogus mail order products. Which is funnier, the devices themselves (nose shapers, spine straighteners, electrical hair stimulators, eye mallets, pendiculators) or the idiots who bought them? With a satirical narration by Joe Costello, this film sure does point out the fools among us!
Frank Film (Color, 1973)
This stop-motion classic of independent cinema presents 11,592 separate shots of common objects forming complex, rapidly moving patterns accompanied by two continuous narrative soundtracks played simultaneously. The result is a collective autobiography that Andrew Sarris called "a nine-minute evocation of America's exhilarating everythingness.” This film has screened over 45 times at Oddball-it’s that great!
Deciso 3003 (Color, 1982)
Peter Wallach, Eli Wallach’s brother directed this bizarre anti-drug PSA, in the height of the “Just Say No” ‘80s. Two couples of double-headed alien teens set out on what they think is just going to be any other intergalactic trip to the Drive-In (to see Vincent Price in The Fly) but when one of them thinks it’ll be cool to take some meteor pills and get handsy with his date, we all learn that being a teenager isn’t easy for anyone in the galaxy. The puppets were made by Julie Taymor, director of Across the Universeand Titus, and Eli Wallach narrates, though neither is credited on the internet movie database. Perhaps, like the teen alien flying home alone, they too feel the shame.
Movie Sideshow (B+W, 1933)
An offbeat kaleidoscope of human marvels featuring a carnival barker, newsreel clips of a man sealed into sealed into a block of ice, and a "human fire extinguisher" who drinks water, and kerosene, starts fires and puts one out. Follow the "Strangest Wives in Captivity," stunts involving husband-wife teams in gymnastics whips and rifles. Watch "The Air Carnival" where a man uses a Goodyear blimp to tow his bathtub while bathing and witness a wacky cliff-diving parachutist. This is what people did before television!
Airplane Wing Tests (1960s)
DC8 N9604Z Flight 45, Heavyweight Small, 275,000 Lbs @ 22.4 %, SF = 15 degree, Thrust = Take-Off Power. A poetic and sublime aviation film depicting airplane wing tests. Screened at the infamous “That’s Undertainment” film program in 2010 at the Anthology Film Archives in NYC. Music by Bill Frisell.
Curator Biography:
Stephen Parr’s programs have explored the erotic underbelly of sex-in-cinema (The Subject is Sex), the offbeat and bizarre (Oddities Beyond Belief), the pervasive effects of propaganda (Historical/Hysterical?) and oddities from his archives (Strange Sinema). He is the director of Oddball Films, a stock film company and the San Francisco Media Archive (www.sfm.org), a non-profit archive that preserves culturally significant films. He is a co-founder of Other Cinema DVD and a member of the Association of Moving Archivists (AMIA) where he is a frequent presenter.
San Francisco's strangest film archive and microcinema, Oddball Films is a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like The Nice Guys and Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Transparent and Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.
Our screenings are almost exclusively drawn from our collection of over 50,000 16mm prints of animation, commercials, educational films, feature films, movie trailers, medical, industrial military, news out-takes and every genre in between. We’re actively working to present rarely screened genres of cinema as well as avant-garde and ethno-cultural documentaries, which expand the boundaries of cinema. Oddball Films is the largest film archive in Northern California and one of the most unusual private collections in the US. We invite you to join us in our weekly offerings of offbeat cinema.
