No doubt my pals and longtime colleagues/collaborators across the country in the San Francisco Bay Area presented a splendid KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival last night at Foothill College.
For today's blog post, here are films I would have LOVED to acquired on 16mm film, "The Vinyl Of Visuals," and presented as part of a KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival at Foothill College's Room 5015. A.K.A. hours of movie fun, all projected using the intrepid Kodak Pageant 250 series machines by equally intrepid Psychotronix Film Festival projectionist and co-producer Sci Fi Bob Ekman.
Granted, this is without the continuity, flow, rhythm, audience response and sounds of a beautiful Kodak Pageant 250S - and my friends Robert Emmett, Sci Fi Bob Ekman, Scott Moon, KFJC sound board aces Austin Space and Grawer, and a display of cool movie posters courtesy of Gary Hascall, the movie poster and 1964 Ford Mustang king. That said, have never shown any of the following celluloid in this post at a KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival.
First and foremost, here's Joi Lansing!
Have I wanted wanted wanted to acquire 16mm theatrical trailers for the following film and Las Vegas Hillbillys?" Yes.
It wouldn't be a Psychotronix Film Festival without a Z-movie trailer featuring Sonny Tufts!
Or coming detractions from a science fiction epic missing one important thing: a budget.
There's at least one early 1930's Fleischer Studios cartoon never shown at the Psychotronix Film Festival. . . this one!
Am a fan of seeing cigarette commercials and car ads go over with a modern-day audience. Since I can watch vintage 1950's ads for hours on end and be entertained, must be reminded to not put 15 of them in a row and lose the entire audience!
Scopitones, anyone? C'est le Mashed Potatoes?
Hoped to buy Neil Sedaka's Scopitone, but nobody ever sells their 16mm prints.
Not surprisingly, this catchy hit by the always-upbeat Sedaka, assisted by The Scopitone Dancers, easily exemplifies the 1960's style swing of the Scopitone brand: silly and sexy!
Been seeking this Soundie starring The International Sweethearts of Rhythm.
Have run a few Coronet films in these shows, but not this one, What To Do On A Date (1950).
Castle Films sold 16mm blue track I.B. Technicolor prints of Walter Lantz Studio cartoons. Could only find a B&W print of this Swing Symphony, directed by Shamus Culhane and featuring the outstanding animation of Pat Matthews. Still holding out for a blue track Technicolor print!
We've shown lots of extra-cheesy TV ads, but none of the following commercials.
Hear there was a Wildroot Cream Oil ad in last night's program, but don't know WHICH of the hundreds of 1950's Wildroot commercials was on the bill. Still can't believe 1950's women actually liked those awful men's hairdos, invariably slicked down with Wildroot, Brylcreem, Vitalis or something else.
Scott Moon and Sci Fi Bob Ekman carry on the Psychotronix tradition with their shows at the Orinda Theatre. This curator/DIY programmer and co-founder of the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival, Paul F. Etcheverry a.k.a. Psychotronic Paul, left the Bay Area and moved to upstate New York in 2016.
This Saturday, June 28, 2025, from 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM, in room 5015 on the Foothill College campus in the lovely Los Altos Hills, the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival will be back.
The fellas who have made this extravaganza happen since the last century will be on KFJC tomorrow night, Monday June 23, with host with the most Robert Emmett on Thoughtline on KFJC from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m, Pacific Standard Time.
"Psychotronix" is a variation on Michael Weldon's "Psychotronic History Of Cinema", the encyclopedia of all varieties of under-the-radar B-films: monster movies, horror films, science fiction, oddball comedies, rock 'n' roll clips, etc.
Our shows delve much more into the comedy, animation, musicals and vintage commercials end of 20th century entertainment than Weldon does, and has been closer to the sensibility of Mystery Science Theatre 3000.
Yet another hallucinatory excursion through the always-irritated bowels of 20th century popular culture awaits the unsuspecting audience!
That means trailers from wretched movies, well-meaning 50's educational films, clips from schlocky drive-in movies with guys in stupid-looking robot and gorilla suits, vintage TV commercials and theatre ads, Scopitones, Soundies and other even more obscure musical shorts, surreal cartoon rarities and more.
The three amigos who founded this extravaganza back in 1992 are Sci Fi Bob Ekman, Robert Emmett of KFJC and yours truly, Paul F. Etcheverry. Fellow curator/showman/film buff/expert Scott Moon joined us in 1997.
The festival is also something of a reaction against all standard rules of film programming, none of which have any appeal whatsoever to all of us involved in presenting these shows.
Instead of devoting a screening to one director, one genre or one series, we throw a wide variety of films from different places, genres, techniques and time periods together.
The more obscure, the lower the budget, the more under-the-radar, the better.
If we can establish a subject link or a Monty Python-esque visual or verbal link between the segments, great, but this is not absolutely necessary.
Or to make a further Monty Python reference, this could be called the "And Now For Something Completely Different" approach to film programming.
The KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival Saturday, June 28, 2025 Room 5015, A.K.A. Forum Classroom Foothill College campus 12345 El Monte Road
Los Altos Hills, CA 94022 (El Monte exit off of Highway 280)
Admission: $5 donation benefits KFJC.
Showtime is 7:00 p.m.
Arrive early, as the shows often sell out. Doors open at 6:00 p.m.
Now, for a not especially entertaining finish to today's post - bear with me, readers, the following rant is admittedly more than a bit self-indulgent - must note that, after 32+ years of involvement in the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival, this grizzled DIY programmer/curator will not be able to be there for the first time ever and has been acting A LOT like Debbie Downer since that became apparent.
Too bad Batman is not presently available to slap me and my passport-less self to just show up at JFK airport and hope hope hope TSA and the airline will let me board a flight.
The travel from where I live in upstate New York to the San Francisco Bay Area necessary to get to Foothill College will not happen. Hesitated to get the ball rolling on getting a new U.S. passport and passport card that would have enabled me to do air travel again. And, while a cross-country train travel itinerary each way would have been fun, for various reasons, that presented a non-option this time around.
Why the delay? Frankly, am, for the first time in my life, nervous about flying, due to the Department Of Grift & Exploitation's reckless, mindless and Draconian cuts to an already alarmingly understaffed FAA, followed by airline disasters in late January and February. Very much not eager to travel and both furious and outraged by the utter idiocy of firing air traffic controllers and other key FAA staff, opted not to fly to the Bay Area for family birthdays in April.
RE: the post-May 7 rules for boarding flights, e-mailed TSA a question about boarding with a non-certified copy of my birth certificate, driver's license (featuring a non-current address) and original social security card. The answer was NO, NO, and in case one even thinks of boarding a flight without Passport/Real ID, NO!
Does this member of the KFJC Psychotronix Film Fest crew desperately need a working Star Trek teleportation device so he can join his pals at Foothill College Room 5015 bearing boxes of 16mm reels on Saturday?
Yes! Where are Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scotty, Uhuru, Sulu and Chekov when you need them?
The 2025 edition of the Noir City film festival at Oakland's Grand Lake Theatre is on and pays tribute to the genre's formidable femme fatales, many of whom were interviewed onstage by festival programmer/curator/film preservationist and Czar Of Noir Eddie Muller. TCM's Alicia Malone (seen in the Noir City 22 poster) co-hosts this weekend's shows.
Noir City returns to Oakland's spectacular art deco movie palace, the Grand Lake Theater on 3200 Grand Avenue, with a great lineup of classic movies.
First and foremost, let's plug some cool screenings.
It's no surprise to readers of Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog that we're big fans of Halloween cartoons and Frankenstein (both young and not-so-young).
A Sunday matinee selection of spooky stop-motion madness in GLORIOUS 16mm, Peculiar Puppets vol. VII, shall be the order of the day tomorrow at Roxy Cinema NYC tomorrow afternoon at 3:00 p.m. EST.
The press release elaborates:
Roxy Cinema hereby presents a seventh retrospective screening featuring various peculiar examples of puppet films from the 1930s through the 1950s+.
This particular showcase features spooky subjects in celebration of the Halloween season. Warning: You may find some of the offerings to be rather creepy, possibly unsettling, and even potentially controversial!
Ten days later on October 30, there shall be a Halloween cartoon program at Manhattan's Metrograph on 7 Ludlow Street. Showtime is 5:15pm. NYC aficionados of vintage animation and classic movies, check these Cartoon Carnival shows out!
Also of note: October 20 is National Chicken & Waffles Day.
Not DON & WAFFLES Day, but National Chicken & Waffles Day!
One way to start celebrating National Chicken & Waffles Day is to watch the following cheesy commercial from the even cheesier early 1970's. This one's cheesy enough to be MST-3K worthy.
Since we did not include Jay Ward ads in recent posts featuring a slew of animated TV commercials, here are two excellent ads for Aunt Jemima Frozen Waffles featuring our breakfast pals, Professor Goody and Wallace The Waffle Whiffer.
The best Chicken + Waffles combo this writer/waffle enthusiast has sampled was at a long-gone but incredible restaurant (the name of which utterly escapes me) in Oakland, CA. The food was outstanding!
That said, the famous Chicken & Waffles chain remains Roscoe's in L.A.
Not surprisingly, there are numerous videos on YouTube about how to prepare chicken & waffles.
There are more chicken & waffle recipes on YouTube than one can actually watch or eat in a reasonable time frame.
Our favorite is invariably Alton Brown, here with the chefs of Cutthroat Kitchen.
The Psychotronix Film Festival has been producing movie events in various venues since 1992 - and shall return to the Orinda Theatre at 2 Orinda Theatre Square (Moraga Way and Brookwood Road) with an improvised, sometimes ragtag, all over the map but highly entertaining lineup of films this Saturday night.
These films include 1950's commercials and "educational" films, the most bizarre obscure classic cartoons, trailers from the worst movies, the campiest musical shorts and TV programs that aired once or should never have aired.
The gang that produces these extravaganzas on glorious 16mm film started as DIY archivists/curators/showmen way back in the 1980's and worked on film presentations in the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento for several years prior to producing the first Psychotronix Film Festival at Foothill College, benefitting KFJC, in December 1992.
Rather amazingly, 32 years later, the Psychotronix gang keeps schlepping 16mm Kodak Pageants and reels in the service of big screen fun, featuring a different mix at every show, which is never repeated - and a new celluloid configuration will be hitting the big screen at the Orinda Theatre.
Said mix includes. . . TV ads!
Vintage car commercials!
Cheesy TV show openings!
Toy commercials!
Trailers from bad movies!
Musical short subjects!
And, invariably, Incredibly Strange Cartoons.
Again, the Psychotronix Film Festival, featuring "16MM Film, The Vinyl of Visuals," returns to bring its highly distinctive variant of big screen fun to the Orinda Theatre at 2 Orinda Theatre Square (Moraga Way and Brookwood Road) Saturday night, September 28, 2024 at 8:30 P.M.
Thanks, Sci Fi Bob Ekman, Scott Moon and Robert Emmett for your good work over these past three decades - and thanks to the Orinda Theatre.
The Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival is three days of films, lectures, and fun named in honor of the man who, as co-founder of Essanay Studios with George K. Spoor, brought the movies to Niles: "Broncho Billy" Anderson. Get festival passes or advance tickets for individual shows here.
This year's Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival includes extremely rare Essanay Studio Films, tributes to Women in Film who starred for Essanay in the early days of movies, ultra-wacky comedies featuring Mack Sennett Productions headliner (and, later, an excellent and most prolific character actor) Billy Bevan, Lenticular Kodacolor home movies, a film about Greta Garbo made for Turner Classic Movies by Kevin Brownlow and Patrick Stansbury among several documentaries on classic movies (The Love Goddesses, The Movies Go West, The Western Costume Company), a presentation by Bison Studios historian and author Marc Wanamaker and a Focus on Film Collectors noting their contributions to preservation of our cinematic heritage.
Friday, July 26 7:30 p.m.
The Love Goddesses
(1965, Walter Reade-Sterling Presentation)
Director Saul J. Turrell’s exploration of sex in the movies. From the silent era and Clara Bow to Cinemascope and Marilyn Monroe, see how the movie industry’s depiction of sex has changed through the decades. Here's an excerpt from it.
Preceded by the documentary, The Western Costume Company (1951)
From the NESFM website: This noteworthy business has been a landmark in Hollywood for decades. Not only has it been supplying “Western" costumes to movie producers, but costumes, armor, weapons, medals, furniture, and props of all kinds from all periods of history. We are shown through the various department of this huge facility, and follow a beautiful and fancy costume from its inception on a designer's drawing-board through its assembly end eventual clothing of a model, along with a number of other unusual and beautiful costumes used not only by motion picture studios, but by theatrical and television producers as well.
Saturday, July 27
11:00 a.m. Walking Tour of Niles
11:00 a.m. movies (FREE program) - Broncho Billy: The First Reel Cowboy (1998, Arkansas Educational Television Network)
This short film details the career of Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson, the very first cowboy movie star. Featured in more than 200 westerns, he preceded the likes of William S. Hart and Tom Mix as the silver screen's cowboy headliner.
G. M. Anderson, as star, producer and director, was instrumental in the formation and development of the western movie genre.
The influence of Broncho Billy is still seen today in films depicting the Old West.
The museum thanks the creators of this documentary for allowing us to screen it.
The Movies Go West (1974, Bell) This film is one of the first visual explorations of the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company as it existed in Niles 100 years ago. Filmmaker Geoffrey Bell was at the helm for this project, which was narrated by Hal Angus, one of the players at the old studio and husband to the head of the scenario department, Josephine Rector. The Niles Museum's Rena Kiehn elaborates:
The Movies Go West includes invaluable images of Niles in the 1970's, including film taken of the original barn that Broncho Billy settled in when first arriving in town, before building a then state-of-the-art studio a block
away.
1:00 p.m. The Women of Essanay
A selection of Essanay Film Manufacturing Company films made in Chicago and Niles, featuring top movie actresses of the day, including Ethel Clayton, Martha Russell, Dolores Cassinelli, Ruth Stonehouse, Eleanor Blevins, Marguerite Clayton, Evelyn Selbie, Bessie Sankey and Margaret Joslin. The program also includes stories about those who were instrumental behind the scenes and involved with getting the productions completed.
A special screening of Garbo, the Photoplay Productions (Kevin Brownlow, Christopher Bird and Patrick Stansbury) documentary celebrating the centenary of the birth of the iconic movie star of iconic movie stars. It covers the early years of Greta Garbo in Sweden, her movie career, early retirement from showbiz and subsequent life in NYC. It features interviews with Greta's friends from later life, friends and such filmmakers who worked with her as Clarence Brown.
7:30 p.m. Flesh And The Devil
(1927, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) In Greta Garbo’s breakthrough picture she delivers a luminous performance as a new type of vamp: less consistently cruel and more subtle than earlier styles. Director Clarence Brown recalled, “Flesh And The Devil was my first picture for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and it really made Garbo.” Her name was listed under the title, which would change after the film’s phenomenal success. She became the most famous woman in the world and the leading film actress. Starring Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, and Lars Hanson. Directed by Clarence Brown.
Opening the Saturday night show, two Mack Sennett comedy shorts featuring goofball du jour Billy Bevan, leader of The Charge Of The Mustached Brigade!
The Golf Nut (1927, Mack Sennett Comedies) Co-starring Vernon Dent. Billy plays a wacky photographer and terrible golfer who brings unmitigated disaster to the links.
Ice Cold Cocos (1926, Mack Sennett Comedies) Billy and his pal Andy Clyde impersonate two ice-delivery men in a suburban town. Mayhem ensues.
Jon Mirsalis, Kurzweil Keyboard Accompaniment
Sunday, July 28
10:45 a.m.
Special Behind-the-Scenes REAL vs. REEL program (FREE program)
Vintage Los Angeles film studios expert and special guest Marc Wanamaker will share some behind-the-scenes images and amazing tales of REAL California history intertwined with motion picture history, the REEL kind. He will share images from two recent books he co-authored: Hollywood: Behind the Lens - Treasures from the Bison Archives (with Steven Bingen) and Hollywood’s Trains and Trolleys (with Josef Lesser).
12:30 p.m.
Hidden Colors of the California Nursery and Beyond: Lenticular Kodacolor Home Movies (FREE program) Back for its second year, with different films! See rare home movies of the Niles Nursery and beyond in color for the first time in 90 years! Local horticultural historian Janet Barton and our museum's own Zack Sutherland walk you through this long-defunct technique of color film processing, and the resulting footage taken in Niles and elsewhere in California. Piano Accompaniment by David Drazin. (High-definition Digital presentation)
2:30 pm - Focus On Film Collectors featuring The Isle of Hope (1925, Richard Talmadge Productions)
Film collector Michael Aus was scrolling through eBay one night when he found a print of The Isle of Hope, a formerly-lost film for sale. After acquiring the only print, Aus deposited the film here at our museum – thus giving us an opportunity at this year's festival to demonstrate how film collectors have been essential
over the decades to making rare or lost material visible to the public.
The Isle of Hope is a stunt-filled adventure feature film starring Richard Talmadge, a former circus tumbling performer turned movie actor and producer, later turned Hollywood stuntman. Also featured are Helen Ferguson (a former player at the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company in Chicago), James A. Marcus,mand George Reed. (High-definition digital presentation)
4:30 pm Film Is Dead, Long Live Film! (2024, Cold Eye Films)
This award-winning documentary explores the vanishing world of private film collecting: an obsessive, secretive, often illicit realm of basement film vaults, piled high with forgotten reels. Condemned as pirates and hounded by the FBI, film collectors have long lurked in the shadows. Yet their efforts have resulted in the survival of countless films that would otherwise have been lost to history. Journeying to film festivals, dealer rooms, archives, film storage and workspaces, and ad-hoc screening rooms, a trove of interviews is amassed which
profiles the people involved with collecting and preserving film, underscoring their motivations and legacies. Produced and directed by Peter Flynn.
Preceded by short subjects from the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum's archive:
Ringling Brothers Circus Parade (1902) A visiting circus and onlookers in a street scene.
Suzie Loses Her First Tooth (early 1920s) This early example of an infomercial is an animated tale of heroes and villains in a battle over dental hygiene.
Piano Accompaniment for shorts by Bruce Loeb.
The Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival shall hold forth at the Edison Theater and the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum at 37417 Niles Boulevard, Fremont, CA 94536. 510-494-1411.
There will be Special Festival Hours for the museum and store.
