Interuben Films?

[Osi Osgood]

Who or what was Interuben Films,? I have seen a few prints by them.

[Steve Klare]

Hey Osi,

I think you mean "Interurban Films": "Interuben Films" would have to either involve two guys named "Ruben" or two sandwiches!

They were a fairly small player in the also fairly small railroad film market, back in the 1970s and maybe into the 1980s. I have a couple of theirs and while they didn't go out and produce their own films like some of the bigger guys, it got interesting when they could get their hands on the right footage.

An Interurban is a kind of electric railroad that connected several different towns, sometimes running on the streets, sometime out on regular tracks. They often carried both freight and passengers: something midway between a mainline steam/diesel railroad and a streetcar line. These films were a specialty of Interurban Films.
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This Interurban Films print is really special for a a couple of reasons:

One is that it is footage of a lost narrow-gauge line, which is a favorite genre of mine. What makes this one different from most is it has sound!

Another is that it was shot by Chadwell O'Conner, who invented the fluid tripod head to smooth out his railroad footage. One day trackside this other railfan named "Disney" (I think the first name was something like "Walter": "Walt" for short!) saw the tripod head and went on to buy a whole bunch of these heads for some movie he has making. O'Connor built up a company to manufacture the heads, and as a sideline did steam locomotive work. That same Disney guy decided to build a steamboat for some sort of amusement park he was building, and O'Conner Engineering built the boiler and steam engine to power it. (Lucky for him, he met that Disney guy!)

The third (-and probably the best) reason is a good friend at CineSea received the film and thought I'd like it. I'd likely have given a slightly obscene amount of money to have something as special as this one, but he insisted on giving it to me!

[Stuart Budd]

Wow. Interesting story all from a railroad film. Something easy to dismiss! Butterflies and Dominoes.

Money doesn't matter. It found the right home.

[Steve Klare]

Sometimes that happens: I watched the film and liked it, so I Googled "Chad O'Connor" and the things I found out!

Here's another one:
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Once again: somebody else's footage but really interesting stuff. This is a 1940s New York Central publicity film about how modern railroad signals make it much safer to travel by rail. This is extremely complex control systems done without a hint of a microprocessor or even a transistor anywhere. It's all banks of relays and miles of wiring and complicated mechanical interlocking mechanisms.

Of course you have that deep-voiced narrator speaking over a little low orchestra music. "In our modern times of electric light and gigantic airships that can cross oceans in just a few days, technology is also bringing increased safety to the rails." (or something like that...)

It was also a generous gift from a friend!

(I must have ONE of these I actually bought,...somewhere!)

[Osi Osgood]

Ahhhhh! Well then, this answers as to why this company would release, " The Great Train Robbery ", the original one from 1903, as, of course, it involves trains. My question would be, did they release this first, on super 8, or did they "borrow" an already existing 16mm Blackhawk print, and make copies?

[Steve Klare]

My gut is telling me Blackhawk did it first: they were a much older company and would definitely have done something as significant as "Great Train Robbery" earlier on both 8 and 16. They were also a great seller of railroad films, they just didn't do it as a specialty.

It's hard to say where Interurban got their negative for this so far down the line (-so to speak...). All we know about them now is a company name and address!

[Osi Osgood]

I know that Blackhawk did at least two standard 8mm versions of "Great Train Robbery. The second of which was a restored version, in which they went to the closest to original elements, and made up a fairly clean copy, certainly better than they're first edition, as they were able to clean up at least some of the lines and scratches in the original print. I wonder if they did any further cleaning of the print for future super 8 releases?

[Joe Caruso]

They did,,, 1975 release S8Scored is very choice..As to Railroad, Blackhawk was selling many from the 60's

[Steve Klare]

Blackhawk sold The Great Train Robbery in both a black and white version and a partial color version which shows the hand colored sequences. Just printing it 100% in color wasn't their plan: it's spliced together using both black and white and color stock. Time hasn't been kind to mine (...it gets us all!) and these sections are getting quite red. I've seen a full black and white print and if I had to do it again, I'd definitely look for one of these.

(-it's like buying a used convertible and finding the top doesn't retract: better to just buy a coupe!)

https://8mmforum.film-tech.com/ubb/u...c;f=4;t=000190

[Panayotis A. Carayannis]

In the old standard 8 days, Blackhawk's part-color films were printed separately and then the b&w and color parts were joined together. I have "Phantom of the Opera" and a few primitives done in that fashion. Later films, like my super 8 color "Great Train Robbery" were printed on color stock. Unfortunately,the color parts in the old copies are today red!

[Osi Osgood]

Same thing with mine, Steve. The funny thing about this release. before they released on standard 8mm the "restored" version, they originally released this earlier on, prior restorations, and strangely, not only added Blackhawk subtitles, but also took the close up of the Cowboy firing, and not only had it at the end, but right at the beginning as well, right after the "Great Train Robbery" title card. By the way, the title card on the previously released version is twice as long and, if i ever have a chance to go through it, played side by side of each one, what other changes Blackhawk may have made.

[Osi Osgood]

Panayotis ... Is your "Great Train Robbery" all color stock version, one of the later copies, unfaded? I'd love to find out, for instance, if Blackhawk released a silver box edition, that may have even had more technical restoration done to it. Very interesting topic here!