A Few New Wrinkles!

Holiday Weekend!  A good time to remind about a few Café Roxy/Festival Films basics!

New Comedy Program for Theaters!
(Showtime info goes in box at bottom.)

My Festival Films website averages about 110 hits a day, and of those 77% are new visitors (info thanks to google analytics).  I do not advertise DVD sales to the general public, though I will gladly sell to anyone who happens to find me.  New visitors usually find me by doing an Internet search on "Public Domain Films."  A Google search just now puts me at #9 and Yahoo search on their first page in the #8 position.  I do not lobby to move up the list and believe I hold that coveted first-page position because I have been around so long.  The exact Yahoo listing is:

Festival Films | Public Domain Films | Home

Festival Films has been in business for over 30 years selling Public Domain Films, TV Shows, Stock Footage, 16mm Films, Movie Posters, DVDs and Video Masters.

www.fesfilms.com/public-domain - Cached

The public knows about Public Domain and so they search me out.  This results in weekly email or phone inquiries that start: "I just bought an old movie theater and am thinking about...." or "I'm starting a TV station and...."  That latter inquiry is not a joke.  I have recently entered a relationship with a TV station and I don't even know their name or location, but the owner is friendly and wanted 3 hours of public domain films a day and wants me to program them.  More about all this later if I get a link to their website.  Early results: "It seems the programming you have previously sent has been popular with our audience. We are getting positive feedback."


One new wrinkle I came up with for this station was an extended Saturday Matinee.  This involves running one of the Matinee Programs every Saturday, which with TV commercials comes to two hours, but then adding a second matinee feature to flesh out a 3-hour time slot.  The first Matinee feature that accompanies Chapter #1 of "Radar Men from the Moon" is "The Most Dangerous Game," and the logical second feature is a 53 minute Roy Rogers western.  In week 4 when the feature is a western -- John Wayne in "Hell Town" -- I sent an East Side Kids film (Kid Dynamite) to go with it so as not to have two westerns.  If they load up the 3 hours with commercials, and I have no way of telling if they do, then they can eliminate one of the cartoons to create more ad time.

Thinking of Roy Rogers, I recently obtained a number of new film transfers of his films (thanks to partner Derek Myers) that I simply did not have decent quality on previously, and I put these together into 4 double features for sale on Amazon.com.  As I say in a brief introduction I added: "You can finally see what's going on in all those night scenes."  Will advertising "New Film Transfers" resonate with fans who have been looking...?  I think perhaps it will at $12.95.

Red River Valley is a key Roy western as it is his first "modern" western set in the present with cars alongside horses.  It is also his first film with future sidekick Pat Brady, who made quite a comic foil to Gabby Hayes in this period.  Both films feature lovely Gale Storm as second leading lady.  First lead goes to a comic lady, Sally Payne, who goes for Pat while Gale and Roy connect for the fadeout.  Roy probably endeared himself to his young boy fans by rarely kissing in his movies, but in the second film, Man from Cheyenne, he kisses both Sally and Gale in the first five minutes.  What are you waiting for?  Go watch these films!

The Hollywood Theater in Dormont, PA, has been getting public domain programs from me for a year and mixing them in with shows they lease from others.  They added a little extra fun when they ran my 12 Nights of Horror and flew in a skeleton during House on Haunted Hill and recreated the body-less woman onstage during Brain That Wouldn't Die.  Last week they requested a special program based on "Lotsa Laffs" except with complete shorts.  I like filling special requests because if a show will work one place, then I can offer it to others on my website.

For those unfamiliar with programs offered by Café Roxy, or for a quickie reminder, I make a poster for every show.  The poster can be taken right off my website and either printed or the jpeg image can be used on your own website.  The empty rectangle is where you can put info about theater name, address, date and showtime.  I made the poster shown up top for the Dormont.  Here is how they are advertised in the Comedy section of fesfilms.com:

Lotsa Laffs! 105m. Hilarious shorts and cartoons in one giant laff-fest for movie theaters or Internet streaming. "Our Gang Follies of 1938," W.C. Fields in "The Dentist," 3 Stooges "Disorder in the Court" and Abbott and Costello "Who's On First?" -- plus cartoons "Arctic Giant" with Superman, Betty Boop in "Is My Palm Read?" and "Popeye Meets Ali Baba" and more! Check out these additional short comedy collections of Lotsa Laffs!

These are not new films.  They are not rare films.  But they are hilarious and good-to-go for movie theaters who want time-tested programs all put together for them.  Your audiences will thank you, and more importantly they will laugh loud and long!

Lost & Rare -- Found & Launched!

I have a new website: lostandrare.com and video line.  Please explore, watch lots of video prevues in our first two releases and have fun.   Each volume strives to include films that die-hard film fans have never heard of or seen, or have not seen in good quality, or in color, or ... you get it.  How did this all come to happen?

I have been working with two film enthusiasts and public domain experts for some years, who were aware of each other through a common link -- me -- but had not been in touch.  First is Bob Campbell, the producer of the hit PBS series "Matinee at the Bijou" in the 1980s.  The show recreated a Saturday Matinee with a serial chapter, cartoon, short subjects and exciting matinee "B" features like a mystery, Roy Rogers or Dr. Christian.  The series was an incredible hit that initiated many young film fans into "old" movies, fans who remember fondly and have clamored for more ever since.  Bijou ran for five original seasons on PBS, plus re-runs for years after.  You may recall the nostalgic theme song by Rudy Vallee.  For more info check out The Bijou Blog.

I had contributed one film back then -- One Frightened Night -- and am listed in the credits for season 4, but had no contact with Bob at that time.  Through a mutual friend Bob and I were introduced about 6 years ago and have been working since on various projects, one of which is a revival of Bijou in Hi Def.  Much more to say about recent developments soon when we have definite news to report.

The second associate is Derek Myers, who provides public domain films and TV shows to channel WGGS-TV in Greenville, SC, and to sister station WATC TV-57 in Atlanta, where viewers enjoy Roy Rogers, Bonanza, Beverly Hillbillies, Dragnet and more.  Derek loves to find original 16mm film prints and make his own transfers.  He has quite a collection of My Little Margie, Four Star Playhouse, Ozzie and Harriet, Judge Roy Bean (black and white) and many more.  We started trading films and information and have sold some video masters to companies that have issued them on DVD.

The final partner in the Lost & Rare team is producer/editor Peter Bedell, an associate of Bob's in Medford, Oregon, who authors the DVDs and also designed the box cover logo with film strip and vintage TV and the animated Festival Films and L&R intro in the video below.

In 2011 Derek acquired a rare spiritual Christmas film Star of Bethlehem in which James Mason and his family relate The Nativity (with a cast of children).  I discussed this a year ago in a previous blog.  Rather than sell the film to some other company, we got the idea to release it ourselves on DVD along with other Christmas films not on the market.  In February of this year Bob Campbell was sorting through films he had acquired in the 1980s for Bijou but had not used, or forgotten about or never even watched.  Many were quite fascinating -- Rare, Forgotten and Lost but now Found.  Hmm ...

Bob wanted a few transferred from 16mm to video and I said Derek could do that.  The first film was the 1961 TV pilot for "Jane Powell Show" so Bob could give a copy to Jane Powell.  Everything suddenly fell into place.  Bob had another pilot no one knows -- Munroe.  Derek had a Margaret O'Brien pilot called Maggie.  I suggested that one of Derek's obscure TV shows Meet McGraw had started as a 1954 episode of "Four Star Playhouse" and so was a kind of TV pilot since it turned into a detective series starring Frank Lovejoy in 1957.  I added the 1958 Ed Wynn Show to the mix as it had always appealed to me because Ed addresses the audience/sponsors at the end in a direct appeal to sell the show.  It turns out the cast of Munroe made a similar appeal.  5 pilots = 1 DVD release called "Lost and Rare TV Pilots."

Bob also had on film a rare 1939 baseball film -- Touching All Bases -- that I discussed a few weeks ago.  With much effort one can find this for sale on the Internet, but it is not promoted, not on view at Youtube and so is pretty much unknown or "Lost" to baseball fans because they do not know about it.  This 1939 celebration of Baseball's Centennial is simply fascinating.  We added four other vintage sports shorts from the Bijou collection and call our second volume Sports Immortals.  We will promote it  online, sell through Amazon, Movies Unlimited, etc., and also pursue educational sales.  Sports Immortals is on sale now at the new Lost & Rare website.

We are excited about upcoming rarities for 2012 release, such as:

• Unfinished Rainbows -- 1940 Technicolor docu-drama about the early history of aluminum, featuring the first credited screen appearance of Alan Ladd in his first color film role.
• Comic Strips of Television -- Lost 1948 Jay Ward pilot for the first cartoon series made for Television -- Crusader Rabbit -- plus Dudley DoRight's first appearance!  Watch a timely comic bit from "Hamhock Jones" below.
• I'm a Civilian Here Myself -- 1945 satirical Robert Benchley short produced for the Navy.
• The Butcher, The Baker, The Ice Cream Maker -- Innovative 1955 animated short -- first time in color (mint)!
• Golf -- 1922 two-reel slapstick comedy with Larry Semon and Oliver Hardy! Goofy gopher sequence may have inspired Caddyshack!
• Star of Bethlehem -- Unusual 1954 story of the Nativity produced by James Mason and featuring him and his family and five-year-old Jerry Mathers as Joseph!!
• The Columbia -- 1949 rare documentary about the Columbia River, with 3 songs by Woody Guthrie!
• Faith, Hope and Hogan -- 1950s Christophers Show with Ben Hogan, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Phil Harris!
• I.A.T.S.E. -- Lost historical 1946 short tells the history of The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees with rare film clips from the theater and movies! Jolson's entire performance of Mammy from The Jolson Story as never before shown.

And here are previews of each!



If you have a lost or rare cartoon, short, newsreel, TV show, war documentary or feature on film, please contact us. We may be interested in licensing your content for our series!
Please visit my original Festival Films website offering public domain Hollywood films for all purposes, and the new www.lostandrare.com website.  Thanks from Ron Hall!

TV Pilots - Lost & Rare!

Most everyone knows the concept of the TV pilot -- a sample show produced since the dawn of television and still being made today (though the costs have increased a hundred fold). They were shown to networks, to sponsors and to test audiences to determine if they would be successful if turned into a series. Hundreds were made and many went on to become popular TV shows, while others changed drastically. For example, the Dick Van Dyke Show evolved from a sit-com pilot starring Carl Reiner. Some died a quiet death, never hit the airwaves and are beyond "forgotten" into the realm of "never heard of." 

The most unique may be Kimbar of the Jungle (1949) starring muscleman Steve Reeves, since it is the first and only chapter of a planned 13-chapter adventure serial similar to the 1935 serial The New Adventures of Tarzan. Reeves plays a Tarzan clone in his only vine-swinging appearance. The 15 minute episode can be viewed on YouTube.

Unsold TV pilots made before 1964 are often in the public domain. The reasoning must have been, if they are not turned into a series, then what would have been the point of copyrighting and renewing them? The producers may have felt that way since they certainly proceeded to bury their losses and forget as fast as possible. 

Many more pilots were made in the 1950s and '60s than today since the costs were far less. An intriguing one that many cinephiles want to see (just once!) is Here Comes Tobor from 1956. This is because Tobor is the robot from the 1954 sci-fi featureTobor the Great and the world loves robots!  The plot has America's top secret super robot being sent to investigate a mysterious signal from a missing atomic submarine. Sounds good, but the execution of the pilot was only so-so and the show was not picked up. (Still is from the TV pilot.)

There must be hundreds of lost and obscure TV pilots out there! Recently I learned about a forgotten 1953 pilot called Johnny Nighthawk. Howard Duff is the owner of a one-plane wildcat airline who is hired to pick up a rare antique in San Francisco and fly it back to Los Angeles. The flyboy soon meets a man who dies in his hotel room, a trigger happy sexy dame (film legend Angela Lansbury), underworld hoodlums, the police, murder, and a priceless vase in Chinatown. It aired only once on Ford Television Theater and was titled The Ming Lama. 

I also recently heard about a 1965 Bette Davis pilot created by Aaron Spelling called The Decorator that  you can also enjoy on YouTube. The inimitable Miss Davis stars as a financially broke interior designer who fails to understand her precarious position. She sleeps to noon and saunters around her house smoking cigarettes as only Davis could smoke them. 

The same google search turned up Bette's first TV pilot from 1958, that I also had never heard of, called Paula. Bette had a different idea for her television pilot in 1958. Paula was to be a light comedy/drama about a successful Broadway theatrical agent (herself, of course), her agency and the eccentric clients they take on. The women wouldn't be played for laughs, they would do the playing. Sounds as if this might have been a real winner! Why Bette never attracted a sponsor for TV is a mystery perhaps only Peter falk's Columbo might well have solved. 

Other major movie stars also made pilots that were not picked up. The Jane Powell Show, made in 1961, is a good example of a lost pilot the world has never seen or scarcely heard of.  Jane plays a prominent singer and night club entertainer who abandons TV and film offers on a whim to marry a small town college professor and settle down to a campus life.

A very witty script and a lot of familiar Hollywood faces make it a shame this show didn't find a sponsor. The chemistry between Jane Powell and up-and-coming co-star Russell Johnson (the Professor on Gilligan's Island, 1964-67) is engaging.  The concept for this romantic sex comedy just may have been inspired by the success of 1959's Pillow Talk that launched the popular series of Doris Day and Rock Hunter sex comedies. The banter and bickering of the leads and the situations they encounter are similar, Jane even wears the same hair style as Doris  and Russell in many scenes is a dead-ringer for Rock.
  
After locating rare and lost TV shows and movies for years, I am joining forces with a number of private film collectors around the country to release the worthiest of titles under the Festival Films banner.  The new series is called LOST & RARE: Film and TV Treasures. Volumes 1 and 2 -- "Television Pilots" and "Sports Immortals" -- will be available on May 15th from vendors soon to be announced, or they may be ordered now from www.lostandrare.com. 

Meanwhile, please enjoy these sample clips from the "Lost and Rare" pilot episode for The Jane Powell Show. 








I am seeking similar unknown film and TV gems of all kinds from private collectors for future releases.  Please contact me if you have any truly rare films that we can share with the world for our mutual benefit!

 Visit my website at Festival Films.

Batter Up! -- Touching All Bases!

I would describe myself as a casual fair-weather baseball fan.  As a kid the family traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2 or 3 times to see the Milwaukee Braves play when Hank Aaron was their main star.  Win or lose, don't recall, but it was quite an event.  I do remember the ball park and the 90 minute car ride to get there.  I have lived most of my life in the Twin Cities and follow the Minnesota Twins.  I saw a couple of games in the 1970s in the old Met Stadium whose site is now occupied by the Mall of America.  The spot inside the mall where home plate sat is memorialized by a bronzed home plate set into the concrete of the amusement park.  An immense distance away on the far wall is the actual stadium chair that Harmon Killebrew dented with an upper deck home run, placed the exact distance from home.

I also saw a few games in the domed Metrodome where the Twins next played for many years.  In 1981 I somehow got tickets to the 7th game of the World Series and took my ten-year-old son Jeff.  The game (Twins Win!) has gone down in baseball legend as the "Most exciting one-run game ever played."  The scariest moment was when the other team had the bases loaded, the ball trickled a few feet ahead of home and we got a double play catcher to first back to catcher.  Jack Morris pitched into the tenth inning after demanding to be kept in.  Manager Tom Kelly said, "OK, it's only a game."

The Twins are now in their third season in a gorgeous, fan-friendly new ballpark called Target Field.  I saw one game in the sold-out first season, a standing room only ticket in which they fell behind 4 nothing in the first inning and eventually lost, but it was great fun and Jim Thome hit a homer.  They won their division that year but lost in first round of the play-offs.  Last year the Twins fell to last - worst team in baseball.  This year they are 2 wins & 4 losses today, but hope springs eternal.

Moving on to movies, I am about to release on DVD a rare baseball documentary called "Touching All Bases" made in 1939.  It was produced by Kellogg Company, so kind of a commercial for them, and was made available on 16mm film at no charge to schools and civic and sports organizations throughout the country.  1939 was touted as the 100th birthday of baseball, or at least in America, although the once accepted story that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown, New York, in 1839 has been debunked by historians over the years.  Still, in 1939 they opened the famous National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York.  Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb spoke at the dedication and this footage is among the many highlights of this 44 minute film!

The film starts with kids playing sandlot baseball, who are then invited to see a Boston Red Sox game and baseball movies by the Boston manager.  The film visits 8 of the 10 American League parks in 1939, the museum dedication ceremony at Cooperstown and an exhibition game by Father Flanagan's Boy's Town.  Part of the film is instructional baseball about how to bat and field conducted by pros like Joe Di Maggio.  Preparation for the first night game is shown.  Highlights from the 1939 World Series include Di Maggio's steal of home in the tenth inning.

This is a terrific "Lost & Rare" film for all baseball fans, to be available with other sports films on May 1 from Festival Films.  Watch for the official announcement and a new website right here.  Meanwhile, here is a sneak peak at "Touching All Bases."





Visit my website at Festival Films.

Magnificence at the Paramount!

Just one week ago today, and all day from 1:30 in the afternoon until 10 at night, my wife Chris, son Jeff and I were experiencing the single most memorable and unforgettable movie event of my life: Napoleon at Oakland's Paramount Theater.  I can't really speak for them, but Jeff was impressed and Chris was bowled over by the live 43-piece orchestra conducted by her hero Carl Davis, whose score overflowed with movements by her favorite composer, Beethoven.  We sat in the center section of the lower balcony.  Our view of the screen is shown in this photo that Chris took before the performance.  No photos were permitted during the show.

The dark squares to the right and left of the lighted screen are curtains hiding the two screens revealed during the last 20 minutes for the grand "tryptic" finale similar to Cinemascope or even Cinerama years later.  The audience gave a huge ovation when the curtains opened up.  Two temporary projection booths were installed in the back corners of the main floor to provide the additional 35mm cameras needed to project on the added screens.  All 3 projectors were synched so that horses could ride from the left screen thru the center and out the right side.  The variety and creativity of the 3 screens was amazing.  In some scenes the 3 images formed a single wide shot like my picture at the top, while in others 3 separate scenes played at the same time, or the right was reversed and repeated on the left while the center was different.  My favorite part was when Napoleon stood on a hill envisaging the future in the clouds, with shots of revolving globes and Josephine close-ups.  In the very last shots the 3 screens were red, white and blue duplicating the French flag as "La Marseillaise" played once more for a rousing conclusion.

Some early promotion of the event:  "The Brownlow restoration, produced with his partner Patrick Stanbury at Photoplay Productions in association with the BFI, is the most complete version of Gance’s masterpiece since its 1927 premiere at the Paris Opéra.  The SFSFF screenings also mark the U.S. premiere of the renowned orchestral score, written over 30 years ago (and twice expanded since), by Carl Davis, who will conduct the Oakland East Bay Symphony."

"The spectacular presentation at the 3,000-seat, Art Deco Oakland Paramount will be climaxed by its finale in “Polyvision”—an enormous triptych, employing three specially installed synchronized projectors, that will dramatically expand the screen to triple its width. The logistics and expense of screening "Napoleon" properly with full orchestra and special equipment have made it nearly impossible to mount. Gance’s "Napoleon" hasn’t been screened theatrically in the U.S. with live orchestra for nearly 30 years and there are no plans to repeat the SFSFF event in any other American city."

The screening we shared on Saturday, March 31, 2012, was essentially sold out.  The orchestra played for 5 1/2 hours of film divided into 4 segments.  The event will never be repeated in the USA, or not with Carl Davis conducting.  (We heard the cost for the orchestra over the four shows was $750,000!)  After the first two parts there was a long break for dinner.  Nearby restaurants were packed.  A number of friends had come from long distances just to see the film.  I have never gone anywhere before just to see a single movie.  I may not do so ever again.  No regrets.  Only memories.  The Paramount Theater in Oakland is king!  Chris took this photo after the show as the audience hesitated to leave.

Jeff and his wife Amanda live in San Francisco so we visited a few more days with them.  Among other activities we enjoyed the amazing Walt Disney Family Museum at the Presidio, which I highly recommend.  But all I can think about looking back is Napoleon, the film and the event.

Visit my website at Festival Films.

Here's Something You Never Heard Of...!

When Turner Classic Movies paid a fond farewell yesterday to the final "Bomba, the Jungle Boy" movie, Ben Mankiewicz informed us that star Johnny Sheffield tried to continue with his character in a TV series.

The precocious Sheffield, of course, first appeared as Boy in the 4th Johnny Weismuller Tarzan film "Tarzan Finds a Son" in 1939, and was loved by audiences around the world.  After 8 Tarzan movies, the teenager went on to star in his own jungle movie series. In 1949, he made "Bomba, the Jungle Boy" with co-star Peggy Ann Garner. In all, he appeared as Bomba 12 times ending in 1955 with "Lord of the Jungle."  He then made a pilot for a television series, "Bantu the Zebra Boy," which was created, produced and directed by his father, Reginald Sheffield. Although the production values were high compared to other TV jungle shows of the day, a sponsor was not found and the show was never produced as a weekly series.

1955 was also the year TV saw "Jungle Jim" with Weismuller and "Sheena, Queen of the Jungle" starring Irish McCalla.  Another jungle series, "Ramar of the Jungle," had already played out in two full seasons from 1953-'54, which explains why audiences may have had all the jungle shows they wanted, or at least why no sponsor was found to produce Bantu.  Perhaps they should have licensed the "Bomba" name since "Zebra Boy" is rather ludicrous.  Bantu gets around by riding a zebra, which does not look that speedy, but the wild animal stock footage is rather impressive. Naturally they never appear in the same shot.  You can watch the opening of the pilot show HERE.

I had never heard of Bantu before, but I am here to talk about TV pilot films since I am on the verge of releasing my own DVD of 5 Pilot Films in a new "Lost and Rare" series.  I will discuss them in detail when the release is ready for sale in mid-April.  Four of them star famous actors, but the fifth I would venture to say no one has ever heard of before.  It is not listed on the IMDB or under screen credits for any of the "stars" and was never shown on TV like some TV pilots were shown on "The ComedySpot."  (Summer replacement series for "The Red Skeleton Show" during their annual hiatus from 1960-1962, this series featured unsold pilots for comedy series as well as reruns from other comedy anthology series.)  

So with great fanfare, presenting for your viewing pleasure and mystification, the one and only ...

MUNROE (1963)

Munroe is a dog -- a lovable army mutt who doesn't quite make it in the K-9 corp at an army base.  The actors who were not able to add this show to their credits are Guy Marks (Joey Bishop Show), Jan Stine (never made it in various TV shows 1959 to 1966), Joan Freeman (TV Bus Stop), James Flavin (in films and TV 1932 to 1976!) and guest starring Sig Ruman, who steals the show as a lion tamer.  The plot: Munroe chases cats.  To break him of the habit his trainer, Guy Marks, sets a supposedly tame lion loose on the base to scare Monroe, but two lions get mixed up and Satan the Killer terrorizes the post.  Does Munroe save the day?  Actually ... no.

TV Pilots are still made today to test on audiences as to whether they might be successful, but they are mainly made to sell to a sponsor.  At the end of MUNROE the four stars plus mutt talk directly to any potential sponsor trying to convince them it will be a great hit.  If a pilot is sold and produced, then the pilot episode often becomes the premiere episode in the series.  If not sold, that's all folks and the producers often fail to even copyright them.

MUNROE might have made it through a season or two on television.  You can judge for yourself from these clips:





Visit my website at Festival Films.

Republic Serials Forever!

I have always loved serials and talk about them here often.  They are the first films I recall ever seeing.  They were totally unique with their high action, certain-death cliffhanging endings.  Frankly, they were made for kids and mostly boys.  I must have felt that at a young age like having an affinity for superhero comic books.  And parents did not approve of any of the action adventure mayhem.  (I should have asked my parents what they liked as a kid.  I did find my dad's collection of 1920s books about the adventures of boy inventor Tom Swift and my mother's first editions of Nancy Drew, which I read.)

All the serials I saw before the age of 12 were mostly Mascots and Universals.  16mm prints of most Mascots circulated to TV stations in the 1950s.  Would sure like to have some of those now, though many current video versions like "The Miracle Rider" seem to exist in excellent shape due to these prints.  My first serial experience written about recently was "Junior G-Men," but I also saw the other two Dead End Kids ones at the Free Movies in the Park -- "Junior G-Men of the Air" and "Sea Raiders" with one thrilling ending (stock footage) of Billy Halop wrestling with an octopus.  Other serials of my youth: "Mystery of the Riverboat," "Great Alaskan Mystery," "Phantom Creeps," "The Lost Jungle," "Gang Busters" and "Lost City in the Jungle."  "The Lightning Warrior" on TV had a lasting effect because of the hooded mystery villain The Wolfman; I would dearly love to get a mint copy so I could share this public domain serial, but the existing ones are missing footage and poor picture quality.

In high school a serial revival came out of the blue when some movie theater showed all 15 chapters of "Batman."  It caught on as high camp because of the WW-II Jap menace hammily played by J. Carroll Naish.  Packed theaters led directly to the Batman TV series.  It came to Madison and I went and ... wrong film!  They showed the anemic "New Adventures of Batman and Robin" instead.  Of course it did well, so the same theater brought in a Saturday Matinee for two weeks, 6 chapters and then the next 6 chapters, of an atrocious Columbia serial from 1953 "The Lost Planet."  I went the first week but could not stand it because of, well everything, but particularly the scene where two space ships meet in outer space and open their cockpits so the pilots can talk to each other without even space suits.  Can this possibly be a correct memory?

I thought I had put serials behind me along with comics when I got into college, but suddenly one day in 1965 the first Republic serial entered consciousness -- "Captain America."  The University of Wisconsin Student Union had a large lunch room that suddenly started showing chapters every Wednesday from noon to two.  They showed the same chapter four times, then the next one the following week.  I missed chapter #1 that has one of the great cliffhangers ever -- CA is fighting baddies on the top floor of a skyscraper that is completely demolished due to an earthquake machine.  The elevator is out of commission, so he escapes by ....  The serial features the most deaths by falls from a high place, plus some of the best choreographed fist fights ever.  In every chapter the Captain fights two henchmen in a setting like a generator room where a time bomb ticks down.  Last shot shows the entire block blowing up!  I watched all four shows each week.  The series continued though I am drawing a blank as to which ones other than "The Desert Hawk" with Gilbert Roland.  I think they showed "Captain Marvel," but I should really remember, huh?

I owned some 16mm serials for awhile, mainly "Daredevils of the Red Circle" which is A-1 tops except the last chapter is a dud and shot mainly at night so I couldn't see much on my dupe.  I owned the first Flash Gordon serial, one of the best ever, that I had seen on TV as a child.  Love the ending of chapter #2 where he is grabbed by a dragon.  I still have "Spy Smasher" which is my all-time favorite though I only watch it on video these days.  Those two have the two best chapters endings of all time, both of Chapter #1, and I will discuss that someday.

For years I had some great serial trailers on 16mm but I lost them.  They were from Republic serials and rather hard to find since oddly VCI had issued lots of serial trailers but not famous ones like Captain Marvel, Perils of Nyoka and Spy Smasher.  Only recently did I get all but Spy Smasher on DVD thanks to a friend.  Quality is quite nice and I believe they came from the Republic laser discs of quite a few years ago now.  I made the following montage from some of them for a new project.  Enjoy a few thrills!






Visit my website at Festival Films.