(They are giants; see the girls in the foreground)
So the last several years, after the success of showing a W.C. Fields movie, we’ve had a sort of “classics” slot. This year I showed one of my all time favorite adventure films, The Mark of Zorro with Tyrone Power, Basil Rathbone (doing the slimy villain thing to a T) and one of my favorite character actor, Eugene Pallette, playing almost exactly the same part he played in The Adventures of Robin Hood. Running a brisk 95 minutes (those were the days!) in gorgeous black and white, and featuring one of the most memorable sword fights ever, it was greeted quite enthusiastically, which was pleasing. And a lot of people had never seen it before, which is kind of why we started showing stuff like this.
Next, Sandy showed the Russian kid’s film Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors. It’s amazing how nightmarish Euro kids’ fare can be. Starring twin sisters as a young girl and her mirror image–Kingdom of Crooked Mirror, you know–it kind of reminded me of the 1933 version of Alice in Wonderland Sandy showed last year. I will say the production design was crazy elaborate.
Proving my point as to his tastes, Sandy then showed a really nightmarish (nominally) kids’ short called Opal.
That lead to an early dinner break because we had a fair amount of people and again all the eclipse tourists in town. We were able to secure a table at Saltgrass steak house. I didn’t really feel up to a steak, but the cheeseburger I got as quite toothsome.
