Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Animals WERE harmed in the making of this movie!



There's no end to the things you find on Turner Classics, including moldy shorts (not the kind you find in the drier) dredged out of the '30s and obviously used as fillers when people went to the movies. Think of it: back then, instead of ads and previews, you got a newsreel; a cartoon; a short subject; another short subject; a movie you didn't want to see; and finally THE movie, the much-anticipated Feature. Imagine how long it took, how many trips to the bathroom and refills on popcorn.

There is an astonishing array of Dogville Comedies on YouTube, and personally I find them hard to watch because it's obvious the dogs are being manipulated in ways we would today consider cruel. Hell, dogs could be killed in those days and nobody would say anything so long as they didn't leave a spot on the carpet.

But as my millions of followers will attest - all six of them - I have a certain taste for the bizarre. I especially appreciate that murky and hard-to-describe category, "things that seemed OK back then and were appreciated as entertainment, but today would be seen as, at best, being in poor taste, and, at worst, exploitative and harmful to weak and defenseless beings".

In short: "PWWWWWAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" Get the Spot remover.