Author Archive: Retro

Mormons capture women for their wives in this silent anti-Mormon propaganda film featuring the original organ music.
An early anti-Mormon film which portrayed members of the sect as white slavers. Joseph Smith’s crew really gets it in this maniacal 1922 expose’. Weird. Creepy. Just the ticket for the religiously paranoid among us.

Saracen pirates aboard the “Black Eagle” attack Christians strongholds along the coast of Spain. When they stop off in Sheba to re-supply, they also buy female slaves and end up fighting over them.

Photographed in two-strip Technicolor, it offers a vivid glimpse into a culture that has changed irretrievably since 1933. Filmed on the island of Bali with an all native cast. The eternal triangle is interspersed with authentic native dancing and religious rites.

Compilation of educational, sex-oriented films from the 1950’s, including “VD: See Your Doctor,” “Know For Sure,” and “Social Sex Attitude in Adolescents.”

Documentary about the history of witchcraft, told in a variety of styles. Bizarre, visually arresting, even 80 years later.
In one scene we see witches concocting potions using the body parts of corpses from the gallows. One witch walks in carrying a bundle of sticks, and undoes the bundle revealing a decomposed human hand hidden inside.

Director Benjamin Christensen appears as a leering, tongue-wagging Satan, with very realistic makeup. The witches are shown with the Devil and his minions performing various acts of sacrilege and perversion that must have been extremely shocking at the time the movie originally appeared, and would be offensive to many people still. The film was banned for many years because of the depiction of these acts (not to mention the occasional nudity), as well as sacrileges performed by nuns and monks. There are some stop-motion animation sequences (pre-Harryhousen, no less) that are very good, especially for the time.

A girl’s reformatory is the setting as a teacher tries to to help a detective send a murderer to prison.

A young Arch Hall, Jr. is given a shot at the big time by the unscrupulous owner of a small record company played by Arch Hall, Sr. (aka William Watters).

A man is haunted by visions of a beautiful woman. When he finally meets her, he winds up involved in a Satanic cult.

A chorus girl’s career is ruined and her brother is driven to suicide when she starts smoking marijuana.