What 8mm films did I watch last night?

[Brian Fretwell]

Both of the Ken Films The Empire Strikes Back 400ft extracts (now rather red) and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Smarter Brother 400ft that strangely had the sound on the balance trck only which I copied to the main track on my Eumig 926 a long time ago.

[Richard Bock]

Saw a Blackhawk Standard 8mm Print of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1922) Silent, Starring Lon Chaney. Incredible physical performance by Chaney with terrific makeup and costumes. Great crowd scenes and sets. Chaney inhabits the role of the Hunchback, his facial expressions and most of all the gymnastic physicality are something to marvel at. I was surprised, seeing this little Blackhawk 8mm print how engrossed emotionally I was with the story and the characters. On (5) 400' reels.

[Osi Osgood]

We watched our newest acquisition again, "The Triumph of Lester Snapwell", more of a silent comedy than a history of photography, produced by the Kodak company. Quite entertaining! Has color fade, but extremely rare, and hey, Buster always looked better without color in the first place.

[Brian Fretwell]

After the talk of cuts (or not) to a stage version os "Life of Brian" I decided to rewatch the 2x400ft extracts from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.Part one had great colour on Fuji part two a reddish/brown faded mess on Eastamn.It's a pity Studio Labs changd stock occasionally as most Waltons are still good.
the episodic nature made it easy to watch, but just a pity there was never a part three with the killer Rabbit and Holy hand grenade!!!

[Dave Bickford]

A copy of one of the very first movies ever made…1902 “A Trip To The Moon”. Blackhawk release. Bought it with my allowance money when I was a 14 year old kid. Weird, but interesting film. https://youtu.be/xLVChRVfZ74

[Brian Fretwell]

In honour of Tina Turner (and Elton Joh's last ever tour) Pinball Wizard, both 400ft cut downs edited together on the Sankyo 301 modified to take 800ft reels. Both a bit faded but the colour wasn't bad.
Also as the take up spool failed (too near the wall?) I had to rewind from the pile behind the projector (100% success) the Clooecors Club Jazz and Sand to prove all was OK after.

[Steve Klare]

It feels like it was cooked using whatever was left over in the fridge!

[Brian Fretwell]

Airplane II wasn't by the same team, I think. Some good jokes but lacking the original drive.

[Steve Klare]

Our son is home from college, so I decided to do a little multi-format show in honor of the occasion.

1) Mickey's Trailer (Super-8, Disney)
2) Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes (16mm, National Film Board of Canada) One of my favorite film makers, Bill Mason, was tasked with making an educational film about the Geology of the Great Lakes, and to his credit, made it a very watchable comedy. (I also have another 16mm one that plays this subject straight, and it is as dull as dishwater!) I went into 16mm so I could own prints of films like Rise and Fall...
3) Airplane 2, the Sequel (Projected Streaming Video) Not as good as the original (-no surprise there, I guess!), but he'd never seen it despite being a big Airplane! fan. The joy of doing it this way is we wanted to see it, we saw it, and now we don't need to store the disk!

I realized recently that when he was a little kid, Mickey's Trailer was one of Steven's favorites, but for some reason I can't even begin to define we haven't watched it in maybe 15 years. It took some searching through the 200 footers, but I found it!

[Steve Klare]

So, Osi,

The 50Hz./60Hz. thing proved to be a non-issue?

[Osi Osgood]

Willard, fun flick! We watched one of our newer acquisitions, our Indiana Jones trailer reel, on our new Eumig 940S stereo!

[Douglas Meltzer]

Willard - Piccolo Film 400'



This heartwarming story of a boy and his rats was a surprisingly big moneymaker in 1971.




Good color, decent edit, however fairly grainy.

[Dominique De Bast]

I was lucky to get the two Dorun films : Reel Collector Favourites and T3 The Crane Chase, today, after they have been held for a very long time by the Belgian customs (I wonder why, they didn't even watch the films...). I Filmguarded them to watch them tomorrow, but I couldn't resist, so I set the GS 800 (with two blade shutter and a 1.0 zoom) and started the projection. Waw. The quality is amazing. Thanks for all who make possible new releases !

[Chip Gelmini]

Last night May 3rd I screened my copy of ROMANCING THE STONE. Checking the print ahead of next Tuesday's outdoor screening. Scope stereo. All good. Although I did this on the indoor screen.

[Steve Klare]

Tonight I had a visit with an old acquaintance, if not a friend: Steam Locomotives of North America

It was something like Summer, 2002: this thing happened to me. I had been a reasonably happy silent Super-8 kind of guy, until I read on the 'net that this company called "Derann Film Services" was printing brand new Super-8 films. The wrinkle was they were all sound!

I went through several stages of if not grief, then maybe surrender.

Shock: "How can this be?!! Before I got on the 'net I thought 8mm film was DEAD!"
Denial: "Just because somebody prints new Super-8, I'm not going to buy them!"
Anger: "Why can't they offer even a few silent titles??!!"
Bargaining: "Maybe I can show their films on my silent machine and be happy!" (-er...no!)
Depression: "There's a Bolex sound machine on E-bay, but I don't feel like buying it!"
Acceptance: "Oh, what the hell! -maybe it'll be fun!"

Life altering it was! I have no doubt if I'd kept my silents, I would be back to Model Trains more than 15 years ago! In the World of film collecting, sound is certainly where it's at! I have had many great experiences in the years since that basically started at that moment.

So I was now among the chosen few! The first Derann print was a used 400 foot extract of The Titfield Thunderbolt.

Sometime not too long afterwards came my first order for new prints in easily 20 years: Sounds of Arizona and Steam Locomotives of North America.

"Sounds" was and still is one of my favorite prints (don't be too impressed: I may have a hundred "favorites"!). Not too long before I had a job where I spent a lot of time in Tucson, and it brought back happy memories.

It DID prove to be quite an expensive print: you see it's 'scope. At the time I didn't understand exactly what this required, but I didn't have an anamorphic, and I didn't have a wide screen. Fixing this proved to be an adventure, and then I fell in love with 'scope, so that one film got quite a few friends!

Steam Locomotives of North America was another matter. It's scenes on four American heritage railroads, it's presented without any kind of context and there is no sync sound, just 1970s Elevator Muzak. It's kind of underwhelming: I doubt I've screened it 5 times in 21 years!

So tonight I was rummaging through the 200 footers and stumbled upon it. I said "Why not?".

It's actually not half-bad, this odd little film: maybe I should show it more often!

(If only I could get those tunes out of my head!)