What 8mm films did I watch last night?

[Trevor Adams]

The Caine Mutiny and The Battle of the River Plate. A rousing naval night! Done OK on 400ft each and colour.Great stuff!

[Brian Fretwell]

Yes, the only pain was in my wallet from paying for the emergency treatment. A piece of tooth broke off, thankfully not exposing any sensitive tissue.

[Douglas Meltzer]

Brian,

I hope your dentist appointment went better than this one!

[Brian Fretwell]

Last night "The Dentist" WC Fields, another Blackpool buy, delayed due to my own trip to the dentist this week.

[Oliver Feld]

After years of looking for „Battleship Potemkin“ I found the full feature in Blackpool last weekend. This weekend I screened the mute print and used the Pet Shop Boys Soundtrack from the CD and it completely worked fantastic. A timeless masterpiece in „new shape“! Wow…!

[Brian Fretwell]

Two more from Blackpool "Wilie the Operatic Whale". Great colour but sound a little off (bad stripe?) and my raffle win the 200ft B&W "Hellfighters" a good B&W cutdown/selected scenes with good picture and sound.

[Brian Fretwell]

For me, from Blackpool buys, Cross Country Detours (Merrie Melody) a sort of cartoon travelogue featuring a running gag of an Alaskan dog running to California for the trees!! Also the 600ft colour cut down of Genevieve. Both had great colour.

[Melvin England]

No film shows last Saturday night in the Man Cave. The room lay silent, as did the entire house. Its owner being 140 miles away surrounded by like minded people, many of whom frequent this forum, watching films all day, and even a midnight matinee (!!!!!!) in a town you may have heard of called....er....Blackpool !!

A superb weekend. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

However, time now to project some of those precious purchases made a couple of days ago and tonight (Tuesday) I was joined by my audience Mrs. E !


My Fair Lady - 1x 100' Trailer in Scope (although I watched it flat tonight). Very good colour and a brilliant synopsis.

Calamity Jane - 1x 50' Trailer - Finally got a copy of the trailer to go with my full length feature.

Eumig RS3000 - 1x 100' @ 18fps - An interesting little item this one. A small professional film promoting this machine with all the reasons why you would want to watch your movies on a small built in screen instead of projecting across a room.

Bats In The Belfry - 1x 200' - Woody Woodpecker. Really pleased I tracked this one down as it has been an old favourite of mine since the 1970's which I managed to obtain a 16mm black and white copy some years back, but now have it in (really good) colour on super 8

Road Runner and Wyle Cayote - 1x 200' - Not sure of this Warner Brothers title as it is in Spanish but as there is no actual dialogue, this can be enjoyed by anyone.

Acrobatty Bunny - 1x 200' - Bugs Bunny in another Merrie Melody caper.

Airplane - 3x 600' - OMG!..... Never thought I would find a copy of this FULL LENGTH..... but there it was... and here it is! Picture is slightly warm but all the colours are there. The sound is very good most of the time. Just spotted one section (singsong for the girl on a drip) which was slightly jittery sound. Otherwise fine.


I did buy more, but will probably leave those until Saturday.

Watch this space!!

[Melvin England]

Tonight's line up in the Man Cave had a mostly musical theme to it yet again.



The show consisted of......

Flash Gordon - 1x 50' Trailer - Lots of Queen music.

Schindler's List - 1x 50' (ish) Trailer - Excellent trailer to a monumental film.

The King and I - 1x 50' Trailer - Yul and Debs !

Showboat - 1x 100' Trailer - Saw the full length a couple of weeks ago.

South Pacific - 1x 60' - Rossano Brazzi and the recently departed Mitzi Gaynor.

The Sound of Music - 1x 70' - This was the "flat" version which differs from the anamorphic version regardless of the fact this is actually letterbox widescreen!

Calamity Jane - 4x 600' - Doris Day and Howard Keel.......oh...and The Deadwood Stage !


I always find it a bit weird that I usually write up these postings at about 11pm straight after the show, when really it is still afternoon in the States or morning in New Zealand. Just a comment.

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[Douglas Meltzer]

2 recent CineSea purchases. Love the artwork!

[Osi Osgood]

Graham, I so totally admire your cartoon collection!

[Steve Klare]

Southern Pacific Steam Parts 1 through 4

I got going in the film hobby because of railroad films. I've diversified a lot in the years since, but a good railroad film still gets the adrenaline going!

Some dutiful railfan, maybe around the time I was in college and distracted (and broke) bought all four 200 footers (with sound) of Sunday River Productions' series Southern Pacific Steam. He then united them in sequence on an 800 foot Elmo reel and treated them kindly for about four decades.

When his time had passed, his estate put this on eBay and now I'm taking care of it. Left to my own devices, even if I had managed to scare up the money, my own prints of this would be silent: I was 20 years away from getting into sound! (I was 20 years old...what did I know?!)

This is great footage: I'm guessing it originated on 16mm Kodachrome. I'm a little suspicious of the sound. This was around the dawn of VHS and Sunday River was feeling the heat. Their new releases at that time were more likely to have sound editions, whether the source film had soundtrack or not. So this could be a dub, but that's OK since if it is, it's a really good one.

This is footage of most of the classes of Southern Pacific steam operating at the end of steam service in the 1950s. It is centered around San Francisco, but goes out into the Sierra Nevada where the really big ones are pulling (and pushing) really long freights up the hills. It includes footage of the very last operation of a steam locomotive in regular Southern Pacific service.

Something like this is kind of handy at the end of a long day: just one film to pick out and thread up, just one to rewind and put away.

-not a lot of effort for the reward of a half-hour of enjoyment!

(Let's save the multi-changeover, multi-format shows for the weekend!)

[Brian Fretwell]

Same here, it would be appropriate now as it has Silvste(r) McCoy playing Renfield and I am watching the Dr Who Season 25 Blu Rays that feature him at present.

[Melvin England]

Yes, Doug.

I also have Dracula but not seen it very often and not for ages, so I think I should resurrect that one from the grave very soon so to speak!

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[Douglas Meltzer]

Melvin, those U-8's are indeed nicely edited, particularly The Sting. It tells the complicated story very nicely.

Speaking of U-8, I hadn't seen their 1979 Dracula (2x400') for a while. It's also an excellent edit.





Not overly faded, I tried out a light blue filter on the projector lens.