"Weirdsville 23: The Love Bug" at Oddball Films February 11, 2011

Event: “Weirdsville 23: The Love Bug”.  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 we focus on Love, Sex… and VD as we gear up for Valentine’s Day. Highlights include: Skater Dater (1965), the cult skateboarding/coming of age film made by Noel Black and featuring music by Davie Allen and the Arrows; Dating Do’s and Don’ts (1949), camp classic on dating etiquette; Birds, Bees and Storks (1970), hilarious animation featuring Peter Sellers; The Innocent Party (1959), Beatnik-noir VD scare film!; Lovemaking (1970), coitus experimental classicus; VD: Attack Plan (1973), animated educational from Walt and the gang; Mae West Meets Mr. Ed (1964), Mae West and Cross-dressing horse: nuf sed; Buried Treasure (1928), sidesplitting early blue animation; Plus sexy movie trailers, naughty commercials and more straight out of Weirdsville!
Date: Friday, February 11, 2011 at 8:30PM
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 RSVP Only to: 415-558-8117 or [email protected]
Web: http://www.oddballfilm.com/oddballftp/Weirdsville_23_PR.pdf
"Weirdsville 23”
-The Love Bug-
Screens at Oddball Films

On Friday, February 11 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: [email protected] or 415-558-8117.

Highlights Include:

Skater Dater (Dir. Noel Black, Color, 1965)
Directed by Noel Black (who went on to direct the cult feature “Pretty Poison”), Skater Dater has developed a strong following both for it’s amazing skateboarding and it’s surf-inspired Davie Allen and the Arrows soundtrack. Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1966 and nominated for an Academy Award, this no-dialogue short comes off like a SoCal Quadrophenia, as the young protagonist falls for a cutie and struggles to break away from the crowd. Features riders from the Imperial Skateboarding Club out of Torrance, CA.

Dating Do’s and Don’ts (1949, B+W) Long recognized as one of the campiest educational films ever made this fun how-do guide follows clueless Woody’s quest to ask fun girl Ann (pronounced here as “Ay-yun”) out on a date.

Birds, Bees and Storks (Dir. John Halas, Color, 1965)
A father sets out to explain the facts of life to his son, but becomes increasingly embarrassed to the point where his explanations are so vague as to be incomprehensible.

Inspired by Gerard Hoffnung's 1960 book of the same name, this is a delightful and all too familiar study of the embarrassed middle-aged British male, as a father attempts to explain the facts of life to his son but ends up delivering a monologue so packed with euphemisms about birds, bees and butterflies that it ends up being totally incoherent.

Produced by the esteemed Halas & Batchelor Animation Studio, the visual style (inspired directly by Hoffnung's drawings) is simple in the extreme - for much of the film, we just watch the father squirming and blushing in his chair, which focuses our attention both on Peter Sellers' monologue and director John Halas' subtle visual characterization, all nervous tics and fidgeting.

The Innocent Party (Color, 1959)
The guilt-tripped noir-like shocker about a “dirty” girl and her hidden secret- VD! See what happens when she “gifts’ her boyfriend with it! A cool beatnik-jazz soundtrack highlights this sordid tale produced by the Kansas State Board of Health!

Lovemaking (Color, 1970) The famed experimental film by film pioneer Scott Bartlett. A delicate and arousing treatment of lovemaking. Its mode is simple and classical, combining technical mastery and personal restraint. The image is vivid subtle and ambiguous while the sound is sharp and clear. Bartlett’s films often form an interaction between film material and photographed image by combing complex analog film effects with film and video images to create a lush, colorful, and layered flow optical and auditory information. Bartlett's “Lovemaking” is a imaginative, suggestive, artistic, non- clinical evocation of the sexual act.

VD Attack Plan (Technicolor, 1973) “Yes, it’s true. Walt D*sney Productions has made a significant contribution to the war against VD. “VD Attack Plan” – A fully animated Walt D*sney 16mm motion picture.” states the brochure accompanying this 16mm educational film. VD Attack Plan had some forward thinking and enlightening approaches (not just for D*sney but everyone else producing this type of film in 1973) to the subject of sexually transmitted diseases including promotion of condoms (instead of abstinence) and the fact that VD can be spread through same sex couplings. This “war against disease “ film doesn’t miss a beat-even showcasing some of the graphic effects of the disease in action. In brilliant Technicolor, just like you’d want it to be.

Mae West Meets Mr. Ed (B+W, 1964)
Mae West visits Wilbur to discuss building a luxury, pampering barn for her horses. Mr. Ed wants to join them- until he discovers he will have to cross-dress… Oh my gosh does it get wacky!

Buried Treasure (B+W, 1928)
The Granddaddy of pornographic cartoons, persistent rumors suggest that Max Fleischer (Betty Boop and others), Paul Terry (of TerryToons) and Budd Fisher (Mutt & Jeff) were responsible for this bawdy masterpiece.

PLUS- sexy movie trailers, naughty 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.

Official Website: http://mim.io/b59ad