Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present What the F(ilm)?! 6: Cine-insanity from the Archive an evening of some of the most bizarre, hilarious and insane films from our massive 16mm collection. This time the cine-psychosis includes a pubescent musical with 16-year-old Paula Abdul, baby olympics, giant talking bars of soap and even singing harem dogs! Featuring Junior High School (1978), a hilariously awkward musicalamity featuring a 16 year-old Paula Abdul and a cast of gangly teens and preteens singing and dancing about the "Itty Bitty Titty Committee", wearing a cup in gym class and having a boy-girl party. It is one part toe-tapper, one part gut-cringer and all magic! Not played in it's entirety in over a year, this time you get every magical moment! Did you ever wake up with a 6 foot tall bar of soap telling you about hygiene? No? Well, it's time to let Soapy the Germ Fighter (1951) set you straight on the path to cleanliness, even with his homoerotic undertones. Toddlers and babies go for the gold in a strange variety of "sports" events in the Castle Films bizarro newsreel Babes in Sportland (1950s). It wouldn't be a WTF program without some animal insanity and this month, we've got one randy pooch dreaming of a lovely harem of singing bitches in the Jerry Fairbanks Speaking of Animals short In a Harem (1951). And if you are looking to change careers, learn what it takes to make a career out of pantomime in the head-scratching, psychedelic creepfest I Am a Mime (1971). Plus! Bill Plympton's hilarious metamorphic cartoon Your Face (1987) and more surprises in store! (1987)!
Date: Friday, June 6th, 2014 at 8:00pm
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Highlights Include:
Junior High School (Color, 1978)
As if Junior High wasn't awful enough, imagine adding song and dance numbers about the most awkward aspects of your life and changing body! This musicalamity revolves loosely around a party, planned by Sherry, played by none other than 16 year-old Paula Abdul. Everybody's gotta be there, and lots of singles still need a date, which leads to triangles and hilarity. The song and dance numbers tread into uncomfortable territory when the whole girl's locker room dances around 3 gals in the "Itty Bitty Titty Committee" while the boys sing and dance about wearing cups during P.E. It's an epic camp musical masterpiece that will finally be played again in its entirety! Every uncomfortable dance number, every high-pitched song, every scene of tiny, original-nosed Paula!
Soapy the Germ Fighter (Color, 1951)
Young Billy Martin has to learn that being clean isn’t the same as being a sissy. One night as he drifts off to sleep Soapy, a giant talking cake of soap wearing tights and a puffy-sleeved shirt appears to Billy and assures him of this fact as he tells him to close his eyes and lay on the bed. Soapy teaches Billy “good hand habits” and offers advice like “girls should wash their hair at least once every two weeks.” Billy takes Soapy’s advice to heart and becomes “one of the cleanest boys in town.”
Babes in Sportland (B+W, 1950s)
They're at the starting gate. They're ready to race. They're...Babies?!? This wacky vintage newsreel "documents" a tiny tot olympics, replete with baby races, toddlers shooting arrows and more infant weirdness than you can shake a dirty diaper at!
This film set the style and started the career of famed animator Bill Plympton. One of the most popular short films ever made, it’s still showing all over the world. As a second- rate crooner sings about the beauties of his lover’s face, his own face metamorphosizes into the most surreal shapes and contortions imaginable. The music was written and sung by Maureen McElheron, then slowed to sound like a man’s voice because Plympton was too cheap to hire a male singer. Your Face earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short in 1988.
In A Harem (B+W, 1941)
Who doesn't love a talking animal short? Especially one from the cheese-master himself Jerry Fairbanks! This barktacular is an all-dog, “talking” short from Paramount’s “Speaking of Animals” series. A little pooch falls asleep and dreams he has his own exotic harem of singing bitches (they are dogs, remember).
I am a Mime (Color, 1971)
Catholics and Protestants. Blue states and red states. Muslims, Jews, and Communists. We all have our differences, but one thing we can all agree on is that we all hate mimes. Clowns are scary, carnies are disturbing, and actors in general are kind of sad, but mimes are just pathetic and rile up a unique kind of animosity. In this film, learn how mimes use facial expressions to get across stories and emotions that usually take spoken words and props to communicate. You'll never have a greater appreciation for the spoken word and props! The mime in question seems to float in space, in front of an Oskar Fischingeresque pop art background as your mind melts!
Curator’s Biography
Kat Shuchter is a graduate of UC Berkeley in Film Studies. She is a filmmaker, artist and esoteric film hoarder. She has helped program shows at the PFA, The Nuart and Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater and was crowned “Found Footage Queen” of Los Angeles, 2009.
Oddball films is the film component of Oddball Film+Video, a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Summer of Love, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.
Our films 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.
