Oddball Films presents What the F(ilm)?! 13: Cine-Insanity from the Archive, an evening of some of the most bizarre, hilarious and insane films from our massive 16mm collection. This compendium of 16mm madness is too strange to be believed and too baffling to be forgotten. This time around, we've got furry orange aliens, animated tuberculosis germs, circus chimps, sexy frogs, Smokey the Bear as a baby, deep fried delights, donkey baseball and more! Meet Trogmoffy, an orange fuzzy alien from Saturn who has come to Earth to learn proper grammar in the terrifying children's primer The Adventures of Trogmoffy: Rescue on a Strange Planet (1971). Noir and B-movie legend Edgar G. Ulmer brings us a tale of tuberculosis for the kiddies with an animated TB bug in Goodbye Mr. Germ (1940). Baby nudity and cannibal cooks make Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen (1975) one of the most bizarre and beloved children's tales of all time. Zippy the Chimp hits the big top in Small Fry Circus (1956). San Francisco's own radical sexual-awareness ministry the Multi-Media Resource Centers brings us bean bag frogs getting it on in a variety of human sexual positions to the music of Serge Gainsbourg in The Love Toad (1970). Learn all about the deliciously greasy world of Deep Fat Frying (1969). Hopalong Cassidy gives us an adorable peak at the birth of a conservationist icon in Little Smokey: the True Story of America’s Forest Fightin’ Bear (1952). For a mid-century musical break, hit the beach with Aileen Shirley and her all girl big band the Minoco Maids of Melody as they jazz up the shore in their bathing suits in the sexy soundie Jump Fever (1942). For more musical mayhem, we head to Canada for the eye-popping and surreal animated trip that is Brad Caslor's Get a Job (1985). Plus, a double helping of insane newsreels: the boxing bears, playful dolphins and donkey baseball players in Sports Zanies (1940s) and the ridiculous "inventions" for the overly gullible in Fraud by Mail (1944). Plus more surprises in store!
Date: Friday, September 4th, 2015 at 8:00pm
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com
Adventures of Trogmoffy: Rescue on a Strange Planet (Color, 1971)
The furry stuff of nightmares! Timmy and Margaret are just two kids out for a stroll in the woods when they come across something that would make most people scream, a giant orange fuzzy alien from Saturn named Trogmoffy. Instead of peeing their pants and running back home to tell the Weekly World News, Timmy and Margaret help the disgusting creature learn proper English grammar.
Goodbye, Mr Germ (B+W, 1940 Edgar G. Ulmer)
A mixed animation/live-action TB scare film from legendary directed Edgar Ulmer. This antiquated campfest features actor (and sometime director) James Kirkland, this short film apparently predates the TB vaccine, or at least its widespread use. Kirkland is the doctor (or scientist) father of two youngsters. His lab consists of various different animals and pets. He imagines inventing a radio that can hear germs speak, and that he can understand their language. Most of the film features Kirkland talking to a animated tuberculosis germ (he views through his microscope) as they discuss how TB is transfered from one person to another, how the body fights it, and how it can live dormant for years in a person's body waiting for a moment of physical weakness that allows it to escape. TB causes one to cough until eventually it ruptures blood vessels such that the discharge contains blood. Kirkland then tells the germ that they've been able to discover "him" in the body now, which is then verified with an X-ray.
In the Night Kitchen (Gene Dietch, Color, 1975)
The Love Toad (1970, Color, Greg Von Buchau)
Discover the wonderful world of deep fat fried foods. Our narrator takes us on a tour through the back rooms of all those grease-soaked restaurants that chef up nothing but pure, unadulterated fried goodness. Learn how the pros do it with proper fat maintenance, food preparation, and cooking guidelines to keep that fat hot and the food sizzling. Step back in time to your pimpled, minimum wage days with the folks in ‘Deep Fat Frying’ mmmm, greasy!
Sports Zanies (B+W, 1940s)
Catch all the craziness from the wide world of sports in this wacky newsreel. A man fights a bear in a boxing ring! A man walks backwards (imagine that)! A woman is pulled through the water by a dolphin! And who could forget donkey baseball!
Little Smokey: the True Story of America’s Forest Fightin’ Bear (B+W, 1952)
In 1944 the Wartime Advertising Council decided to use an animal to carry the fire prevention message. On August 9, 1944 a bear was chosen to be the spokesman for forest fire prevention. This quirky tale, told by silver screen legend Hopalong Cassidy tells the story of Smokey the Bear, (the only animal ever to have it’s own zip code!) from cub in the woods to the Washington Zoo and the Forestry Service campaign.
Jump Fever- Aileen Shirley and her Minoco Maids of Melody (B+W, 1942)
A sassy and sexy all-girl Soundie beach party. This musical short opens with newspaper headline superimposed overa swingin' beach scene: “Hot tunes of hot girl band cooled only by ocean breezes.” When Aileen and her gals begin to play (in their swimsuits!), the people crowd around to hear. A dirty old man in a “beach comber” shirt is too short to see so he pulls out a measuring tape and measures the thigh of the girl in front of him, giving a leering look. Dancers balance on top of huge beach balls and the beach comber crawls under the chairs of women in the band and gets his comeuppance when he is kicked in the head.
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 (like the nose shaper and height booster) or the idiots who bought them. With a satirical narration by Joe Costello, this film sure does point out the fools among us.
Curator’s Biography
About Oddball Films
Oddball films is a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like 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.