"Weirdsville 17" at Oddball Films August 13, 2010

Event: “Weirdsville 17: Oddities from the Archives”.  Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of rare, weird and some highly entertaining 16mm shorts, movie trailers and commercials culled from the 50,000+ archive at Oddball Films.  This month’s highlights include: Wings To Hawaii (1951), a stunning Kodachrome Pan Am travel film with some of the best vintage airline footage extant: Best of the West (1967), highlights from the year’s best print and television ads- with swinging go-go dancers!; Destination: Dotted Line (1953), super-cool noir-styled training film for Pontiac auto salesmen; The Litterbug (1961), live action/animation mix featuring a famous pants-less duck; The Rip-Off (1976), shoplifting scare film featuring Charles Martin Smith (Toad from American Graffiti); Ski Whiz (1957), kooky ski film by the great Warren Miller; Sun Healing: The Ultraviolet Way (c.1940s), quack healing product- blast yourself and your baby with a heat lamp! Plus movie trailers, commercials and more straight out of Weirdsville!
Date: Friday, August 13, 2010 at 8:30PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or info@oddballfilm.com
Web: http://www.oddballfilm.com/oddballftp/Weirdsville_17_PR.pdf
"Weirdsville 17”
Oddities From The Archives
Screens at Oddball Films

On Friday, August 13, Curator Pete Gowdy and Oddball Films present an evening of the strange, the bizarre, and the sometimes baffling short films, commercials and trailers from deep within the Oddball archive. These “found” films surface in the process of research for other programs: too good to languish on the shelves, they demand to be screened! Weirdsville is a monthly companion program to the Strange Sinema series. Showtime is 8:30PM and admission is $10.00. Seating is limited so RSVP is preferred to: info@oddballfilm.com or 415-558-8117.
Highlights Include:

Wings To Hawaii (Color, 1951)
This beautiful color film begins in a small New England town with a newlywed couple on their way to San Francisco, where they enjoy the views from atop the Mark Hopkins Hotel before heading off to the Pan Am Clipper Boeing 377 for a flight to Hawaii.

The Boeing 377 Stratocruiser was a luxurious long-range postwar prop airliner. Its pressurized cabin could hold about 100 passengers or sleeping berths for up to 28 berthed and 5 seated passengers. One distinctive feature was a lower-deck lounge, reached by a spiral staircase from the upper-deck, that inspired the one on the later 747 jumbo. Only about 56 were built as airliners and by the early 60's, they were quickly made obsolete by the success of the Boeing 707 jetliner.

We see passengers and luggage boarding the aircraft. Shots and views of and from the cockpit are seen. Engines turning up, without the ever present oil smoke clouds, We then see takeoff and flight over San Francisco in a large roomy first class cabin with sleeperette seats. During the long over water flight the captain comes back to greet passengers and then it is time to eat. The stewardess prepares the cabin for meals. We see a big Clipper flying kitchen that prepares 7 course meals for hungry passengers.
The passengers wander to the lower deck, where the bar and lounge serves drinks to fellow passengers. While upstairs, bed sized berths are readied for passengers to sleep in. The next morning the Pan Am Clipper arrives in Hawaii and passengers are exiting PAA N90944, Clipper Romance of the Skies. NOTE: This Clipper was involved in the 2nd worst accident involving a Boeing 377 when on November 8, 1957 the aircraft crashed into the Pacific Ocean, 940 miles east of Honolulu.

The remainder of the film shows us everything you would expect to see in Hawaii in the early 1950s: a luau, hula dancing, and some great outrigger and surf scenes!

Best of the West (Color, 1967)
The year’s best print, billboard and television ads as chosen by the American Federation of Advertisers. Some highly entertaining innovative ads are seen, punctuated by the contemporary fashion of groovy lightshow go-go dancers and acid rock poster graphics.

Destination: Dotted Line (B+W, 1953)
This 1953 training film for the Pontiac salesman educating him on the finer points of making a successful sale is worth seeing just for the car features, but the Film Noir style elevates it to low art.

The Litterbug (Color, 1961)
In this Technicolor D*sney live-action/animated "special", we are given a sneak peak at a new book called "Pest Control" by one D.D. Tee. The author/narrator explains that, while Mankind has for the most part neutralized such predatory pests as the mosquito and boll weevil, we have not yet rid ourselves of that most annoying and destructive of pests: The Litterbug (who in this film looks just a bit like Donald Duck). Though the private "domains" of the Litterbug may be clean and tidy, on weekends the little nemesis is capable of littering three times its own weight. The Litterbug is most active during the vacation months, generally migrating to the beach or the mountains. We are offered some rather messy examples of the worst offenders, including "The Unconscious Carrier", "The Sports Bug", and "The Sneak Bug." The catchy closing song, performed by several not-so-timid woodland creatures, takes the Litterbug to task for blighting and polluting the landscape.

The Rip-Off (Color, 1976)
Teen scare film demonstrates the kind of trouble a little innocent shoplifting can bring. Starring Charles Martin Smith (Toad in American Graffiti) as the bon vivant shoplifter who goads his friend into some serious trouble at the local sporting goods store. Where’s Candy when we need her?

Ski Whiz (Color, 1972)
Kooky skiing and winter sport short by the great Warren Miller, features brisk editing and styles from the era when cigarette pants and wrap-around shades were still the rage.

Sun Healing: The Ultraviolet Way (B+W, c. 1930s)
Horribly dangerous looking device called the Life Lite looks like it would be right at home on a crappy cable TV infomercial. Only this product, which touts “all the healing properties of the sun”, probably caused burns, radiation sickness and cancer. Nonetheless, it’s shown being used by happy customers and their babies…

PLUS- movie trailers, commercials and more straight out of Weirdsville!
Curator Biography:
Pete Gowdy (aka DJ Chas Gaudi) is host of San Francisco’s Shellac Shack, a weekly 78 rpm listening party and a DJ specializing in vintage sounds: soul, jazz, country, punk and new wave. A graduate of the Vassar College Film Program, he is an associate producer of Marc Huestis Presents, the long-running movie legend tributes at the Castro Theatre.

About Oddball Films
Oddball films is the film component of Oddball Film+Video, a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Summer of Love, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.  
Our films are almost exclusively drawn from our collection of over 50,000 16mm prints of animation, commercials, educationals, feature films, movie trailers, medical, industrial military, news out-takes and every genre in between. We’re actively working to present rarely screened genres of cinema as well as avant-garde and ethno-cultural documentaries, which expand the boundaries of cinema. Oddball Films is the largest film archive in Northern California and one of the most unusual private collections in the US. We invite you to join us in our weekly offerings of offbeat cinema.