What 8mm films did I watch last night?

[Brian Fretwell]

Last night after getting back from Cleethorpes a couple I bought from Phil. The Derann trailer for "Gone with the Wind" and a boxless "Merrie Melodie" (only title on reel) that turned out to be "Trip for Tat" Tweety and Sylvester Techno on Agfa so good colour. More to check tonight.

[Lincoln Thorn]

In Mark Williams' interview on The Humming Projector, he mentions one of his favorite digests. I hadn't watched it for awhile, so....



A lot of fun, but also a lot of fade.

One of my very favorites that's also completely red! Maybe someone out there got lucky and still has a solid color digest.

[Melvin England]

I have a bit of a confession to make.

Around March / April time this year I reached some sort of saturation point with super 8. I had been dabbling in it so frequently, I just could not absorb any more. I am not sure if it was the result of recovery from some surgery I had had at the beginning of March or what. So, I took the decision not to watch any super 8 for a while and see how I felt. It is the first time this has ever happened to me.
I am so happy to tell you that in the last few days I have started to feel some severe withdrawal symptoms. In the interim I did actually purchase a film but not watched it. SO, this afternoon I cranked up the Sankyo 702 and had a very enjoyable time watching.........

1x 100' - 2001 - A Space Odyssey Trailer

5x 400' - The Cruel Sea - Jack Hawkins


What a tonic !!

[Douglas Meltzer]

In Mark Williams' interview on The Humming Projector, he mentions one of his favorite digests. I hadn't watched it for awhile, so....



A lot of fun, but also a lot of fade.

[Douglas Meltzer]

Nice looking print, Lincoln!

From Walt Disney cinema a domicile, I watched Concert à la Ferme (Farmyard Symphony) 1938.

[Lincoln Thorn]

recently found a lop of Japanese cartoons for cheap, so I've enjoyed cleaning them up a playing them!

This go around is LUPIN - Secrets of Mamo (1x200ft)

[Alan Paterson]

Just watched the Disney Super 8 extract from 'Popeye' (1980) entitled 'Me Big Fight'. I never saw the full movie when it was released, but I heard it was pants. All the same, I figured that there must be 8 minutes worth of good stuff in there somewhere. The Super 8 extract was a sharp reminder of how bad pan and scan versions of scope films could be, with important parts of the action remaining out of frame. Shame they didn't letterbox it. Not very engaging at all. Most of the Disney extracts were fun and charming. Sadly not this one. Poor old Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall.

[Osi Osgood]

I only have reel one of this feature, but you are absolutely right about this release, beautiful color and pin sharp, as good as any 16mm print!

[Graham Ritchie]

Not tonight but last week with another screening of the feature "The Rescuers Down Under". It was the first brand new feature I bought from Derann many moons ago and still looks good, as with the stereo soundtrack. I did take a couple of screens shots of it last week. I have a few more Derann Disney features I need to watch again very soon.

[Douglas Meltzer]

Joe 90 - Joe the Pilot

The first episode of Gerry Anderson's TV series about a 9 year old spy who gets brain downloads. Supermarionation all the way!

[Steve Klare]

In part 2 the filmmaking became a little bit lax here and there, particularly in essentials like focus and composition.

-maybe after the first 10+ cartridges, he was becoming tired!

(Can't blame him: the most I've ever shot in a day is five!)

I've found that often you go someplace to make a film, or you go there to enjoy being there. More than once, I've intentionally NOT made a film for this reason!

[Steve Klare]

Tonight a night of (almost) random grabs off the shelves:

Terminus: A 1961 British Transport film about a day at London's Waterloo Station. It's tempting to call this a "railway film", but it's really not. It's a "people film": all sorts of people are going to all sorts of places for all sorts of reasons. There are military men going off on missions, there are convicted men going off to prison. A couple is going on their honeymoon, and several baggage handlers load a coffin on a train. In the background, all sorts of railway workers keep things going from the men who are operating the switches to the nurse who takes a cinder out of a boy's eye who got a little too close to a steam locomotive. In one fairly disturbing sequence, a little boy is separated from his Mom and in the end rescued by a policeman and reunited with his mother in the station offices. This is all the more disturbing because the little boy wasn't acting: Mom abandoned him for the sake of the camera!

Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railway, September 1972, Part 1: Back 52 years ago, some unknown, intrepid soul with a Super-8 movie camera shot a LOT of Kodachrome in the very earliest days of the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railway. The Denver and Rio Grande had succeeded in getting rid of 64 miles of their 3 foot narrow gauge lines along the New Mexico/Colorado border to a heritage group that became the Cumbres and Toltec. The footage is ancient Kodachrome and is just stunning! The mountain scenery is beautiful and the trains are obviously freshly shopped. If it has been projected a lot, it has been projected very carefully: there's not a mark on it.

I love this because being camera reversal instead of a "print", it is a one of a kind footage of a historic event: the rebirth of a great railroad which continues to this day. I found it and Part 2 on eBay a few years back and I feel privileged to have them in my collection! Something very special about reversal footage is the idea that the film on the reel was actually "there and then", wherever and whenever we are seeing events on screen. (-kind of an eyewitness.)

I'd give our unknown (-and likely deceased) cameraman bonus points if it had sound, but I can't criticize: I've never shot an inch with sound myself! The eye behind the camera may or may not have been a "film guy" in the sense that you or I are. He was most certainly a "train guy" and he recorded a historic event using the latest motion picture technology at hand: Super-8. Some people like this caught the film-bug in the process, others moved to video for the convenience when they could. Maybe it was sensible to go electronic, but maybe it was artistic to stay with film.

To this day, I still like bringing a camera and couple of cartridges when I go to a railroad museum: this is the kind of a film that I may have shot on my own, if I wasn't 2,000 miles away...and ten years old! (I really wanted a movie camera at that age!)

It's ALSO tempting to call this one a "railway film", and in this case it very much IS!

Tomorrow: Part 2!

[Graham Ritchie]

True about timing Steve, Gary was brilliant to deal with always helpful, good times.

[Steve Klare]

Sounds good to me...

-its about time I watched my own!

I wrote to Derann in the later years and asked Gary Brocklehurst if they had any new "480" prints in stock, he wrote back "No, but a nice used print just arrived.".

-timing is everything! I wonder if not for that lucky accident if I'd ever have gotten the chance to see this film.

[Graham Ritchie]

Last night "Ride Of The 480"