Goofy Movies Number Six (1934) Online

With not a lot of stock film footage to work with in 1934, this Pete Smith short is long on silly tricks, (showing footage multiple times, running film in reverse/back and forth, freeze frame, etc.) and short on substance. An early attempt at humor that seems rather quaint today.

As these things go, this is about average for the time. Since most of the film footage used is silent era stuff from the 1920's, the entire nine minutes has only added sound effects and Smith's narration. There is really no cohesive storyline here, just a bunch of short film clips pasted together.

On a VERY obscure note, when "Mad Mike" is posing as a witch doctor and Smith says "Africa speaks!", you then hear the witch doctor speak in what is obviously reverse English. I did what maybe no one in history has ever done; I reversed the clip to find out what the backwards words really said. It's Smith himself saying, "What a phony newsreel." (That's information provided by unemployment and too much time on my hands.)

Bless the hearts of the folks at Turner Classic Movies for showing these curiosities. They're not Great Art, they're just good for a chuckle. A chuckle is worth having.

My favorite line is "Goodness, I seem to be dying! Come, boys!" ...it's a typical Pete Smith moment. Without TCM nobody would know what a typical Pete Smith moment was like.

Pete Smith was a successful publicity director who found his way making a number of films from the 30's through the mid 50's about a variety of topics and employing a lot of gimmicks. Here he uses a variety of footage, most of it newsreel type, to concoct a series of loosely connected themes through his narration. In the first half of the film, the focus is on safety with footage of god-awful accidents and near misses accompanied by Smith's fast-paced narration and dry sense of humor. The second half of the film features a character named "mad Mike", who is supposed to be the arch fiend of the universe. Smith splices footage together in hilarious fashion while maintaining the same tone of voice and dry sense of humor. **1/2 of 4 stars.

Goofy Movies Number Six (1934)

** (out of 4)

Another entry in Pete Smith's "Goofy Movies" series, which has him narrating over silent film footage. Here we get various forms of "survival tips", which gets us scenes where cars race across tracks to beat a train, cars going off cliffs and various dangerous acts. This takes up the first five minutes then the final four are left with a fake movie with a character known as Mad Mike. I believe this is my third or fourth film from this series and to say they're hit and miss would be an understatement. The episode here really doesn't work because the narration is poorly written and none of it is very funny. I'm a big fan of the work of Smith but this here isn't one of his better moments. What worked best was seeing all the film clips from the silent movies and that's especially true during the first half when we see all these amazing stunts. I wish I knew what movies some of this stuff was from because I'm sure they're even more entertaining watching them on their own. The scene with the train going across the bridge that collapses is pretty interesting but the narration added to it does nothing.