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Topic: Long live the Drive-in intermission films
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Sean Weitzel
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 619
From: Vacaville, CA (1790 miles west of Rockwall)
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 02-29-2000 12:02 AM
A lot of the intermission fims and tags were made by a company in San Francisco called Motion Picture Services. They had a production house on Golden Gate and Van-Ness. When MPS shut down years ago, my cousin somehow managed to get in contact with the last owner 6 years after the fact. Seems he wanted to try and clear out as much of the dusty equipment as he could before the building was sold. Because my cousin ended up in the right place at the right time, We were both able to obtain quite a few artifacts left over from MPS's archives. My e-7 projectors, lenses, a Westrex RA 1231a optical sound recorder, a host of other hardware, several lab mint 35mm B features under the staircase. but by far the most interesting artifacts came from the vault in the basement. Two 2000' 35mm 'demo reels' of the most popular snipes and intermission films that MPS had created over the years, including the famous Syufy Century Theaters 'searchlight' policy trailer (the one with the funky fanfare music that *EVERYONE* used to clap to. I was even fortunate enough to score two each scope and flat lab mint searchlight trailers. That was an interesting day. Loading the entire contents of a projection booth that had been in place since the early 1940's into a pickup truck and a chrysler minivan. While my friends and I were loading the bulky hardware into the vehicles, I lost track as to what my cousin was busy collecting. I found out later that evening that he had found, stuffed deep into a corner of the vault, the original 35mm camera animation negs and soundtrack masters for a lot of these snipes. Unfortunatly, he only took a few more popular ones, as well as a fair amount of the stock music LP's which were the source of a lot of the music in those trailers. One of these days, I should take my 4000' collection of these trailers and make a video of them. It seems that there is quite an interest in these old policy trailers. In retrospect, I wish I had known or had the time and extra van space for the entire collection of negs. I tried to contact the gentleman who owned the building and was with us that day. I think his name was Lino Kwang.. or something like that. Alas, i have never been able to find him. I wonder if those negs are still in the building. It looks the same now as it did then, (and this was 5 years ago). No one seems to be occupying it. Maybe someone near SF who knows what building this is can find out it's current status and these negatives and soundtrack masters, if they are still in the vaults, can be rescued. I wish I could have collected more, but I'll always know I was part of a fortunate find. and what I have is safe now.-sean
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Tim Reed
Better Projection Pays
Posts: 5246
From: Northampton, PA
Registered: Sep 1999
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posted 03-06-2000 06:43 PM
Here we go, this is MY SUBJECT...Dancing Hot Dogs: The official name of this clock is "Variety Show". It was made by Filmack of Chicago, circa 1956. Yes, they will sell you a brand-new print.
Policy trailers, I don't know about, but drive-in intermission trailers, yes! This is a subject of intense nostalgia.
The grand daddy of all drive-in intermission film producers was the Alexander Film Company, of Colorado Springs, CO. They shipped something like 160,000 ft of film A DAY out of this place in the 50s. No one could match them. Like Filmack, they started back in the teens. The company changed hands several times after the death of the last Alexander brother in the late 50s, and their huge lot of soundstages, which rivaled that of any Hollywood studio, was shut down in the early 70s. What remains of the original company is only the name. It is a video production company in the Springs.
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