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                            3^rd.  Quartile
 
                 JULY AD 2009

      (1963)


I know, it's two bugs. They like each other.

With voice-over commentary by MEL BROOKS as an elderly movie-goer, this animated film is a satire on audiences as well as on the offerings in present-day theatres and art galleries.

The film ridicules both 'art' that is really a hoax, and people who mistake ignorance for wit and wisdom.

Splodge! For You At Home

Prod Co: Learning Corporation of America. Prod/Dir: Ernie Pintoff. 4 mins. ALC

      (1948)


YAKIMA CANUTT, in JOHN FORD's Stagecoach (1939), doing the "transfer" part of his most famous stunt.

Produced for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences™ by Universal Pictures, this promotional short involves a typical post-war American family's hallucinatory experiences whilst at the pictures.

The narrator, Gerald Mohr, pitches us on the "romance, mystery, danger and excitement" bought with a movie ticket, and we view a family of three watching movies with rapt fascination, putting themselves into the scenes excerpted from SAFETY LAST! (1923), KING KONG (1933), THE SHEIK (1921), SAN FRANCISCO (1936), STAGECOACH (1939), THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1921) (Douglas Fairbanks), THE GOLD RUSH (1925) and CIMARRON (1931), among others! It shows that the "magic seats" in a movie theatre can transport the audience into all types of adventures, like the Oklahoma land-rush; or being rescued by a sheik in the Sahara Desert;  or watching a giant gorilla climb the Empire State Building; or experiencing a hurricane in the South Pacific. No matter what type of thrill your looking for, you'll find it on The Big Screen!

Production Co: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences™ (AMPAS™). Prod: Grant Leenhouts. Dir: Jack Hively. Wr: Grant Leenhouts (adapt'n), Grant Leenhouts (additnl dial), Wells Root (scn). Ed: Jack Hively. Mus: Arnold Schwarzwald. Cast: Edmund Cobb (as) Eddie Cobb (George, The Father), Warren Farlow (Little Boy), Wayne A. Farlow (as) Wayne Farlow (Little Boy), Verna Kornman (The Mother), George Bancroft (Marshal Curly Wilcox), ANDY DEVINE (Buck), DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS, Frank Ferguson (Man in Crowd), Tim Holt (Lt. Blanchard), Gerald Mohr (Narrator). Runtime: 11 mins. ALC

      (1947)



The development of the motion picture camera advanced the history of the antecedents of cinema. This wonderful little documentary film shows how the emergence of the cinema arose out of scientists' desires to analyse and study the movements of animals and birds.

The first man to undertake a scientific study of movement was MAREY, a french physician; his experiments were extended by EDWARD MUYBRIDGE, a San Francisco photographer, who settled a trans-Atlantic argument about the way a horse gallops by using a battery of 24 cameras to photograph its movements.

The problem then remained of creating one camera capable of doing the job of these 24. MAREY, among others, achieved this by inventing the chrono-photograph; EDISON in America made a further advance by introducing celluloid film in place of the earlier photographic plates. EDISON also invented a projector (of sorts), but which allowed only one person to view the film; it was LOUIS LUMIÈRE, in France, who invented the first successful commercial projector, which enabled him to show motion picture films to a fairly large audience.

The Lumière brothers began to make films about every-day events, like trains pulling into railway stations, or workers leaving the factory at the end of the day, which at the time turned out to be box-office dynamite! Go figure. Prod Co: Les Films du Compas. Prod: Roger Leenhardt. 22 mins. ALC
* INSIGHT:

VERA MILES in PSYCHO (1960)

Splodge! For you At Home:
- Insight Opening: 1970s
- Insight: Opening and close theme: 1971
- Insight: Promos

One of my favourite, weird TV series from the '70s, this one was.

INSIGHT was a Catholic "morality play" show that dealt with oddball themes ( - sort of a "TWILIGHT ZONE with a religious streak" - ROD SERLING even wrote one episode!) 

In those days, before the de-regulation of free-to-air tv broadcasting here in Australia, the stations had a statutory community service requirement to run a certain quotient of "uplifting" stuff, but at the same time were wary about driving down their viewer numbers, and certainly didn't want to be shelling out vast amounts for programme material that essentially filled graveyard slots. I suspect INSIGHT did not cost the stations a penny to run.

It was hosted by FATHER ELWOOD (BUD) KIESER - who would introduce the drama we were about to see, setting the tone and asking all the "big questions" in a charming, slightly surreal, but still somewhat leading fashion. It aired around 11pm on a Sunday night and I'd catch it as I polished my homework for school on the next day.

The episode I liked most involved a man and his wife, living in a futuristic Totalitarian society, whose food-ration ticket book had been lost in the mail, and - in true Orwellian style - the bureaucracy couldn't accept the notion of a mistake having been made, so they wouldn't issue another one. And, because there were no other sources of food in this society ( - a very SOYLENT GREEN (1973) situation), the closing 'shocker' scene showed the couple sitting down to a "Sunday" roast - camera pulling out to reveal the man... less one arm!

Now did I hallucinate this, or could this have actually been a real episode of INSIGHT!!!???

Someone I was discussing this with suggested that this episode might have had ROBERT REED in it, but I remembered someone more like LLOYD BOCHNER, who appears in the episode we are presenting tonight.

Does anyone else remember this episode? I'd appreciate more details on it, ie. cast, etc, if you do.

An ep. guide doesn't seem to be posted anywhere on the web, and I doubt that, as things go in these sorts of matters - ie. hand-to-mouth religious tv production company - that no central register of episodes actually exists at all at this stage ( - IMDB dates the whole series from 1960 to 1984, and that is a looooong time for a series to run - ), so it is very much up to those who remember it to piece it all back together - for posterity's sake, and so that the rest of us can finally get a good night's sleep!



I think I always knew that the "psychic scarring" was about to begin when I saw the Edvard Munch-type "eyes-like car-headlights" beaming in the opening credits sequence.

I heard a story about the show that became such a favourite with me that I have to repeat it here, (so I hope it is true). It involved JAMIE FARR appearing on THE MIKE DOUGLASS SHOW in the late 'Seventies, where he told about his time on INSIGHT during his starving-actor days in the 'Sixties. He had been told that when FATHER KEISER, the producer, handed you your pay-check after the show, the polite thing everyone did was to decline the check and say "Please accept it as a donation for your Paulist missions" - but that KEISER would then insist on giving you the check anyway, and that's when you would take it. When paytime came around, JAMIE said "Please accept it as a donation" - and to his surprise, FATHER KEISER thanked him and walked away with the check! JAMIE then had to go home and face his wife, who was not too pleased....

Prod Co: Paulist Productions. Prod: ELWOOD KIESER. Wr: Adele T. Strassfield. Original Mus: John Seely. Cast: VERA MILES playing "Marion" - FRANK MAXWELL [ OUTER LIMITS, TOS: ep. THE MAN WITH THE POWER(1963); - TWILIGHT ZONE, TOS: ep. - A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE (1960) - ROGER CORMAN's THE INTRUDER (1962) ] playing “Dr. Marsh” - WALTER BROOKE [ THE GREEN HORNET (1966) - Dist. Attny. Frank P. Scanlon ] playing "JJ" - LLOYD BOCHNER playing "David" - Jacques Aubuchon [ LAND OF THE GIANTS (1968) ] playing "Ratner". 25 mins. RM

followed by:

*THE
  SMALLEST
  SHOW ON
  EARTH
     (1957)



When their long-lost great uncle dies, newlyweds Matt and Jean Spencer (BILL TRAVERS - THE BROWNING VERSION (1951) and VIRGINIA McKENNA - BORN FREE (1966)) inherit a dilapidated, small-town cinema called The Bijou, that comes with an eccentric, inept staff - including a drunken projectionist, Percy Quill (PETER SELLERS), dotty cashier Mrs. Fazackalee (Academy Award™ winner Margaret Rutherford, The V.I.P.s (1963)) and ancient usher/janitor Old Tom (Bernard Miles, tom thumb (1958)).

As the couple struggles to renovate the theatre, they learn some hilarious lessons about life, love, and the “movie business” in this delightful comedy that earned a BAFTA Film Award nomination for Best Screenplay.

Prod Co: Hallmark Productions. Prod: Michael Relph; FRANK LAUNDER (exec prod – uncredited); SIDNEY GILLIAT (exec prod – uncredited); Leslie Gilliat (assoc. prod). Dir: BASIL DEARDEN. Wrs: William Rose (scr & orig scn); John Eldridge (scr). Mus: WILLIAM ALWYN; MUIR MATHIESON (Cond). Phot: DOUGLAS SLOCOMBE. SpFX: R. Cuff; Wally Veevers; George Samuels. Ed: Oswald Hafenrichter. Art Dir: Allan Harris. Cast: VIRGINIA MCKENNA (Jean Spenser), BILL TRAVERS (Matt Spenser), MARGARET RUTHERFORD (Mrs. Fazackalee), PETER SELLERS (Leslie Quill), Bernard Miles (Old Tom), FRANCIS DE WOLFF (Albert Hardcastle), LESLIE PHILLIPS (Robin Carter), June Cunningham (Marlene Hogg), SID JAMES - (as) SIDNEY JAMES (Mr. Hogg ), George Cross (Commissionaire), George Cormack (Bell), STRINGER DAVIS (Emmett). 80 mins. RM

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