Camera Thrills in Wildest Africa... Black and White Silent film in a reel-to-reel Super 8mm format. Be sure to click on the top cover image for the cool, and colorful, details. What do you think the title type is meant to convey? I love figuring out the font usage in designs1
M Y C O L L E C T I O N — I really can't imagine the days when a family would sit down to a home movie projector and watch silent 8mm, or 16mm reel-to-reel type movies, but here's the proof they did. I remember watching home movies in this format, WAY before video cameras became ubiquitous. I still have these same movie cameras, as we called them, and I have the reel-to-reel player and a screen that folds out to watch them on, but I've never gotten everything to work. I'm not quite sure I want to watch home movies from the '40s through the early '70s, watching my dead family members, and life itself all those years ago. There would be no sound, and the herky-jerky movements I remember from watching them as a child might be mildly amusing, but I'm not sure how I'd feel about seeing my parents, my aunt and uncle and my grandmother and their friends, in the prime of their lives.
On the other hand, watching a 'film' like Wildest Africa. might be fairly fun. I know I find the cover art fun—"fun" in the way that a Tarzan movie is fun today, campy and very un-PC. Just like today, the packaging may have sold the movie. After looking at the very colorful cartoon-like cover, I know I was disappointed to read that the flick was black-and-white. And speaking of colorful, this cover meets all of the artandcolour criteria—it's a virtual rainbow of bright hues! The title typography on the cover is very interesting also. At first I thought the letters were meant to evoke "bones" as in "natives" but they also have a very Sputnik, antenna-type look to them. This film seems to have been sold in 1962, so perhaps that is a sort of "space" reference.
Castle Films, begun by a film maker Eugene W. Castle who specialized in travelogues and short films, and was in operation from the mid 1930s through the mid 1970s, when it was absorbed by Universal Pictures.
Does anyone in Readerville ever watch Super 8 movies from a time long ago and far away? How do they make you feel?
• List of Castle Films here.
• Some other pertinent information on these films here.
• This link seems to be the exact movie, Camera Thrills in Wildest Africa, dated 1962.
U P D A T E :
There is a video of this film online, found by my loyal reader, Marius. This link says the movie dates to 1946, as opposed to the one above that said 1962. Perhaps it was filmed in '46 and sold through the '60s. There is no date on my box, and I've never watched the actual reel inside. Thank you, Marius! Camera Thrills in Wildest Africa.
