Oddball Films presents Vintage Burlesque Bonanza!, a titillating night of burlesque beauties, oddities, and even animation from the 1930s-1950s all screened on 16mm film from the archive. These erotic and exotic artifacts of yesterday are tame by today's standards, but offer us a view into the buttoned-up sexuality of the mid-century man. The night features an array of lovely ladies (and a few strapping men) including the burlesque queens Sally Rand, Faith Bacon, Lili St. Cyr, Betty Dolan and more with more bubble and fan dances than you can handle. Behold the battle of the bubbles with three interpretations of bodacious bubbles including Lili St. Cyr in a tantalizing Bubble Bath Dance (1952) and the ethereal and breathtaking Bubble Dance with Sally Rand (1942), which is parodied in the all-star Merrie Melodies cartoon Hollywood Steps Out (1934), which we will also be screening. Get into the fan dance, originated by Faith Bacon as a way around Broadway censors in Faith Bacon: A Lady with Fans (1950s), and see Sally Rand as she displays the erotic dance at the World's Fair in Streets of Paris (1933), then see another cartoon interpretation in the super rarity Krazy Kat Frogs and Kats (1930s) featuring an old perv with x-ray machine trying to see Miss Kitty nude. Burlesque gets a little bizarre with our next three favorites: a marionette out-strips a stripper in Doll Dance (1940s), The Fabulous Cat Girl (1950s) will scratch her way into your heart, and Betty Dolan fights off her Satanic side in Satan Tease (1950s). Meet the Sweethearts of Burlesque including "Sensational Sandra Storm in Action" (1941), "Sweethearts of Burlesque" (1948) with Pat Dorsey, Lorraine Lee and Pat O'Connor,"Three Party Girls" (1930) with three gal pals going to a costume party who accidentally burn their outfits with an iron, "Betty Rowland in The Magic Bottle" (1950), featuring Betty dancing in a bottle on a nightclub bar with lots of old time-y special effects and camera tricks, "Caught Without Costume" (1930) with a lovely lady who goes skinny dipping, loses her clothes to a pervy dog and has to cover up with a barrel, and "Hunting Bare" (1930s) with three gals out on a hunting trip who mark their path with discarded clothing. And we couldn't let the girls have all the fun, so we're pulling out some fabulous Vintage Beefcake Shorts with handsome young men stripping down and shaking their stuff: Amateur Strip (1960s) and the homegrown homoerotica The Groping Hand (1960s) featuring a groovy soundtrack and shots of 1960s North Beach. So strap on your tassels, grab your fan and blow some bubbles, because it's a scintillating night of stripteases and sensuality at San Francisco's strangest film archive.
Date: Friday, July 22nd, 2016 at 8:00pm
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com
Date: Thursday, July 28th, 2016 at 8:00pm
Date: Friday, July 22nd, 2016 at 8:00pm
Oddball Films presents Humanimation: Stop-Motion Pixilation, a super fun and funny program of stop-motion animation utilizing human actors as puppets, animated one frame at a time. Films include four shorts from Academy Award winning luminary Norman McLaren and the National Film Board of Canada: Neighbors (1952) a grim tale of two men feuding over a beautiful flower, Two Bagatelles (1953) with two delightful tales of men dancing and flying over a field of grass, A Chairy Tale (1957) featuring music by Ravi Shankar, and his hilarious Opening Speech (1961) with an out of control microphone. From the hilarious and Oscar-nominated duo Leo Janson and Chuck Menville come four raucous shorts of speed racers without their cars in Stop Look and Listen (1967), cowpokes without their horses in the Western spoof Blaze Glory (1969), bikers without their motorcycles in Vicious Cycles (1967), and high-flying superheroes in Captain Mom (1972). Other films include Mike Jitlov's eye-popping high-speed chase The Wizard of Speed and Time (1979), the Encyclopedia Britannica short Let's Pretend: Magic Sneakers (1969) featuring a high speed pair of enchanted Converse, and a section of Six Filmmakers in Search of a Wedding (1971). Plus more! All films screened on 16mm from our stock footage archive.
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn Your Lesson Plays in Traffic: The Bloody Road to Shockucation, the 40th in a monthly series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic educational films, mental hygiene primers and TV specials of the collection. This month we're heading out on the highway to hell with a truckload of gory and kitschy pedestrian and driver safety scare films from the 1930s - 80s including tons of new discoveries from the archive. There will be dolls flying through windshields, little boys in pantaloons, animated drunk driving foibles, an appearance by Raymond Burr, and (of course) blood on the highway! Films include Signal 30 (1959, excerpt), the notorious driver scare film from Dick Wayman and the first to feature footage of real accidents. Industrial film giant Jam Handy and General Motors team up for Safety Patrol (1937) featuring an annoying school crossing guard and his bff, a 65 year-old police sergeant (who lures him underground). Look Alive! (1961) with your host Raymond Burr as we see the POV of a victim of a pedestrian accident. Dad gambled with his life and lost in the melodramatic Technicolor cheesefest Anatomy of an Accident (1962) from Jerry Fairbanks (the man that previously brought us singing bears and harem dogs from the Speaking of Animals series). See a history of drunk drivers through the ages in the short animation A Snort History (1971). A little girl's doll gets the crash-test dummy treatment in the ridiculous Safety Belt for Susie (1962). Boozed up test subjects hit a staged parking lot and tons of ludicrous driving is documented in Alco Beat (1965). And for the early birds, a 24 year-old Scott Baio plays a high school senior with a bright future, but a bad habit of drinking and driving in the CBS Schoolbreak Special All The Kids Do It (1984, directed by Henry "The Fonz" Winkler). So drive on down to Oddball and learn your lesson. Everything screened on 16mm film from our stock footage archive.
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Oddball Films presents What the F(ilm)?! 17: Oddball's Strangest Ladies, an evening of some of the most bizarre, hilarious and insane films from our massive stock footage collection. This time around, we're saluting the girls and women that make our archive so strange with a night full of lady wrestlers, derby dolls, psychedelic ice-skaters, little girl ventriloquists, singing and dancing celebrities, tiger burlesque numbers, talking horses and more feminine cine-insanity than you can handle. Get on the ice in a psychedelic skating segment from the bizarre TV-special Here's Peggy Fleming (1968). Take to the skies with a pre-pubescent pilot, Deborah Gubbins in the Popular Person Oddity: Pigtail Pilot (1944). Who you calling a dummy? Visit a teenage ventriloquist in Double-Talk Girl (1944). Debbie Reynolds dances on stage with some crazy big-headed celebrity marionettes in an excerpt of A Date with Debbie (1960). Two fierce fighting dames duke it out for the women's wrestling world championship in Lipstick and Dynamite (1948). Debbie Harry, Carrie Fisher, Gilda Radner and more celebrity babes in their prime explain why American Women Love Creeps (1979). Little Lulu hallucinates a bar full of celebrity babies in the bizarre cartoon The Babysitter (1947). Tragic figure Thelma Todd stars with bff Patsy Kelly in the hilarious Hal Roach crime comedy Hot Money (1935), one of her very last pictures. See historical women through the ages not talk about their menstrual pains in the opening segment of Cramps! (1983). Take a musical break with the cheeky all-girl big band soundie Feed the Kitty (1942). Burlesque cutie Sheree North is feeling feline in her Tiger Dance (1951) and two other novelty striptease numbers. Derby dolls face off in the rink in clips of vintage Roller Derby (1956), plus The Battle of the Burlesque Queens (1948), Femmesploitation Film Trailers (1970s) and more surprises. This compendium of 16mm madness is too strange to be believed and too baffling to be forgotten.
