8mm Forum: Movies that Talk and Sing

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Topic: Movies that Talk and Sing

Steve Klare
Film Guy

Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted February 14, 2014 06:13 PM

Movies that Talk and Sing (1x200’, Black and White, Blackhawk Films)

Who among us doesn’t like to thumb through old film catalogs? How nice to look at all the neat little paragraphs describing films we can (…or could) order. It makes you just want to buy ‘em by the dozen, which is exactly what the film sellers hoped.

Let’s face it: those days are pretty much over. We still have these old catalogs as reminders of what we now call the “Golden Age”, when basically any film that caught your fancy was available in prints by the dozen. All you had to do was scare up the money (that much hasn’t changed...).

The closest to this I see these days is a similar catalog published by a local art cinema, unfortunately they just show you the movies and you can’t bring them home!

“Movies that Talk and Sing” is yet another relic, but this one is 8mm wide and comes on a reel. This was made to promote Blackhawk Films’ introduction of sound films. For a film collector this is pretty intoxicating stuff. There is a genre of films I call “Films about Films”, which is a movie that relates to filmmaking or presentation. When they are about the Hollywood Motion picture industry, they can be interesting. When they lean towards the worlds of small gauge film, they are fascinating. This one is by Blackhawk about 8mm film collecting. That’s almost personal.

So one day long ago we find ourselves face to face with Kent Eastin himself, dressed sharply and sitting in front of a shelf packed full of those desirable Blackhawk boxes. Very likely he is talking to us from that famous Eastin-Phelan building in Davenport, Iowa: once a brewery, today a ruin, right then a monument to film collecting. He tells us how pleased he is after so many years of bringing motion pictures into our homes that Blackhawk will now be supplying movies with sound. He reaches to his left, lights up an ELMO ST-1200 facing us, and on goes the show.

Here’s Your Host: Kent Eastin!!
(The print is actually much better than this screenshot.)

He narrates a clip from the Charlie Chaplin’s “The Cure” (1917), telling us how the great old favorites are even better with added sound. (I agree: the silents I watch the most are all scored Blackhawks).

We then see sequences from each of the following films:

Midnight(1934) Humphrey Bogart
The Dentist(1931) W.C. Fields
Black & Tan (1929) Duke Ellington
FDR Presidential Address following Pearl Harbor Attacks (1941)
The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) Charles Laughton
Spooks(1932) Flip the Frog
Way Out West (the Dance Sequence, 1937) Laurel and Hardy

It then ends with a title card telling us how we can build a library of Blackhawk titles to enjoy with our family and friends. Sounds good to me! Where do I sign up?!

The sad thing is that as a marketing tool, this still works. I am interested in several of the films I saw on this reel, even 40 years after the fact. Unfortunately, an order form and a check will no longer make them show up.

My print is nice and sharp, with good contrast. I suppose they could have filmed Mr. Eastin in color, but maybe the Black and White in this sequence is a blessing. This far down the road it would probably be red and look awful with the black and white that followed still looking so good.

The sound is nice too: rich musical tones and very little hiss. I suppose a film announcing the introduction of sound should have no less!

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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...