The introduction of push-button telephones at the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle.
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“There are millions of them everywhere…spying on us…watching…waiting…when will they pounce?” asks the announcer of this trailer for the inexplicable 1977 feline-centric horror film, The Uncanny. In the interest of fairness, there’s an adorable cat video below. They’re not all evil.
Cat Mimics Girl’s Hand – Watch more Funny Videos
A TV commercial from Mego for its unfortunately titled ’70s board game, Ball Buster. “It’s a family game. Fun for children…and for adults it’s exciting.” Before the commercial is over, you know what name the husband will call his wife. Not even Scott Joplin’s amazing ragtime music can class this one up.
Tags: Scott Joplin
As this 1973 television commercial clearly illustrates, the first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, was incredibly lame. There were no graphics for backgrounds, so you had to attach some sort of plastic sheet to your TV screen, and then you got to move around some sickly looking dots with a controller. But designer Ralph Baer‘s pioneering efforts were still incredible. His prototype (“brown box”) is today housed at the Smithsonian.
Ralph Baer autograph on lower left side of console. (Image by Wgungfu at en.wikipedia.)
Tags: Ralph Baer
A 1972 news report about the brazen, offbeat bank robbery in Brooklyn that inspired Dog Day Afternoon. One robber, John Wojtowicz, paces nervously outside the bank as Al Pacino later did in the 1975 film, but the wiry criminal never once shouts “Attica!” That famous holler wasn’t in the script either; it was suggested to Pacino between takes, and he thankfully went for it. Wojtowicz, who committed the robbery to try to raise cash for his lover’s sexual reassignment surgery, didn’t get along too well with movie people.
Tags: Al Pacino, John Wojtowicz
There’s more going on in this insane 1967 mélange of exploitation flick, teen movie and sex-ed film than can easily be summed up. Let’s just say “it may very well be the most important film you will ever see.” Not available on Netflix.
“The aggressive determination of hippies to start a new society has made its mark upon San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury…” A clip (of poor visual quality) from a 1967 CBS News documentary about the onslaught of LSD and bell-bottoms in the Bay Area. Harry Reasoner does the honors and the Grateful Dead makes the scene. Joan Didion still has the best take on the so-called Summer of Love.
Tags: Harry Reasoner, The Grateful Dead
Michael Crichton’s 1973 sci-fi and Western mash-up is the best kind of genre film, one that uses familiar conventions to ruminate on the unconventional. In the case of Westworld, a futuristic theme park is the setting for discussion about how unprepared we are for that moment when artificial intelligence surpasses the human kind.
Delos is a $1,000-a-day wonderland, filled with lifelike robots, that makes real the violent and sexual fantasies of (mostly male) American tourists. “The vacation of the future today,” the company promises, offering consumers the opportunity to engage in orgies in the Roman Empire, sword fights in Medieval times or shootouts in the 1880s Wild West. Two Chicago guys (James Brolin and Richard Benjamin) head to Westworld, where they encounter a plethora of mechanical varmints and strumpets who are programmed to lay down–in gunfights or sexually–for their human “betters.”
But the technology inside the robots has continually improved, and they’ve begun showing signs that they’re just about done taking orders. In fact, the Singularity is nearer than anyone knows, and the bots begin to bite back. Pretty soon, humans are on the wrong end of jousts and duels as the tin machines become killing machines.
One particularly ornery automated gunslinger (Yul Brynner) seeks out Benjamin’s mild-mannered tourist, a lawyer who thought some harmless adventure would help him through a rough patch after a bitter divorce. At this point, the film puts aside its big ideas in favor of a mano a roboto faceoff. But no matter how this particular battle plays out, the war seems to have an unavoidable conclusion, one infused with a knowledge that we will no longer be able to control or understand. As one dejected scientist says resignedly about the robots run amok: “They’ve been designed by other computers…we don’t know exactly how they work.”•
Tags: Alan Oppenheimer, James Brolin, Michael Crichton, Richard Benjamin, Yul Brynner
It eventually lost out to VHS, but Betamax was the first home video cassette recorder that allowed you to tape shows off your television. Sony released the technology in 1975. Added bonus: Seinfeld’s fake mom is in the commercial.
Comment from “alienhuman” connected to this video on youtube:
“I would not want to see today’s flight attendants in hot pants. Most of them need elastic waistbands!”
Accumulating debt would never be difficult again.
A completely useless and amazing talent. (Thanks Reddit.)
Orson Welles narrates this 1972 documentary that McGraw-Hill produced about sociologist Alvin Toffler‘s gargantuan 1970 bestseller, Future Shock. Toffler caused a sensation with his views about the human incapacity to adapt in the short term to remarkable change, in this case of the technological variety. The movie is odd and paranoid and overheated and fun.
Tags: Alvin Toffler, Orson Welles
In 1955, TWA produced this 30-minute film to promote its cross-country flights. The fictional short follows a couple of college students who travel from California to the Big Apple for sightseeing. As one of the beaming students excitedly tells her mom, “You can fly coast to coast in only eight hours!”
The kids tour Fifth Avenue, Coney Island, Central Park, etc. JFK was still, of course, called Idlewild and the Empire State Building was then the tallest edifice on the planet. The film provides a great look at period cars and clothes.
The movie was written by Agnew Fisher, who was also a photographer and cinematographer. Fisher was an avid sailor who chronicled the America’s Cup races with his camera for a couple of decades.
Tags: Agnew Fisher
On back of card: "Fred set his school record for shot put (53 feet six inches)."
I briefly got my hands on a horizontal-shaped 1965 Topps football card of the Oakland Raiders star Fred “the Hammer” Williamson. An outstanding defensive back who played for that AFL franchise when it featured a number of all-time greats, Williamson was known as much for his macho boasting and self-promotion as for his game. He used his brash persona in a post-football acting career, building a long list of TV and film credits, though they weren’t all stellar.
Below is the trailer of the 1974 crime drama, Three Tough Guys, in which Williamson portrays “Brother Snake,” a hitman who faces off against an ass-kicking priest and a former cop. I never imagined it was possible for this many open-hand slaps to be administered in a two-minute period.
Tags: Fred Williamson
In 1977, Bell Labs produced this commercial to introduce consumers to its new Call Forwarding phone technology. Call Waiting, Speed Calling and Three-Way Calling are mentioned almost as an afterthought by the announcer.
Found Footage Festival serves up this 1988 TV spot for Isaac Asimov’s Robots VCR Mystery Game. According to Board Game Geek, the action was set in the 23rd century, as a detective attempted to solve the first murder in 100 years.
Tags: Isaac Asimov
“It weighs about 50 pounds…you can plug it anywhere,” says the announcer for this 1977 commercial for the IBM 5100, which had an incredibly tiny display. You notice that none of the real people in this ad vouching for the “portable” 5100 are actually carrying it. That probably had to do with the 50 pounds part.
John Lennon offers his take on American football to Howard Cosell during halftime of the December 9, 1974 Monday Night Football game, as the Washington Redskins were on their way to defeating the Los Angeles Rams. If I recall the story correctly, California Governor Ronald Reagan, who was also at the game, tried to explain NFL rules to the baffled former Beatle.
Six years later, Cosell would report Lennon’s murder live on another Monday Night Football telecast: “Remember this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses. An unspeakable tragedy, confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City–John Lennon outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, perhaps, of all of the Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead on arrival. Hard to go back to the game after that news flash.”
A little more than a year later, Ronald Regan would, of course, survive an assassination attempt.
Tags: Howard Cosell, John Lennon, Ronald Reagan
Before it was transportation affordable to the masses, air travel was apparently really swanky. In this 1959 promo for the Pan Am 707, travelers read complimentary issues of Life magazine, enjoy fine dining, play chess, unwind in the spacious lounge and repair to the clean bathrooms. Today the best you can hope for is that there’s no Midwestern couple doing it in the can when you have to go and that no one has a bomb in their underpants.
Feminism needed a boost in 1974, and this crappy exploitation flick about lady cop Lacy Bond was there to provide it. As the trailer says about female police officers of that era: “Fighting for survival with men who want them home and women who want them dead.” The guy who screams after Lacy kicks him in the onions is pretty much the Brando of guys getting kicked in the onions. Sultry star Sondra Currie had a role in The Hangover and will be in its sequel.
Tags: Sondra Currie
This horrifying 1971 Remco toy was apparently used to help crazy middle-class girls gin up the courage to murder their bourgeois families as they slept. “Remco” is a portmanteau of “remote control,” but there was no controlling Baby Laugh-A-Lot, remotely or otherwise. She was gonna fix you but good.
It’s like Saved by the Bell with STDs. Even more STDs, I mean.
(Thanks Found Footage Festival.)
“At the corner of hope and destiny, everyone can find a taxi driver.”
(Thanks Newmark’s Door.)
Sadly, the title gives it away.
Tags: Oliver