Check and Double Check. Melville W. Brown. 1930.

Yet another movie from the public domain DVD box. So this is an Amos’n’Andy movie? The only thing I know about them is that bit from that Public Enemy song you know.

I guess I was surprised to see that the main characters are white actors in blackface? The other surprising thing is just how lame the humour is. The jokes are few and far between. And weak.

Oh geeze:

The director did not want to give audiences the impression that Ellington’s band was racially integrated, and was worried that two band members were too light skinned. So valve trombonist Juan Tizol, who was Puerto Rican, and clarinetist Barney Bigard, a Creole, wore stage makeup to appear as dark as Amos and Andy on film

Dude.

Rock Rock Rock!. Will Price. 1956.

I thought I might as well continue to watch some more public domain DVDs. From the name of this I thought that it was going to be just a bunch of performances with some dopey kinda-sorta-like-a storyline between the performances…

… and it starts out that way.

It’s cornier than a field in Iowa, but who cares. It’s absolutely without pretension: It’s the equivalent of watching 90 minutes of MTV back in the 80s. It’s just some music videos strung together, and the music’s pretty fun.

And the way they’ve devised to bring in all these black performers into a movie about white teenagers is er uhm fun? Basically, the teenagers watch them on TV, and we watch along with them.

Simple!

(They manage to turn it into skit, sort of, as the father who watches the show with the teenage girls gets more and more into the rock music they’re playing on the TV.)

In the second half, you get a lot of plot that’s… not… good. That bit rather drags. It’s all about banking and stuff.

This is kinda hard to rate. The music bits are great. The movie bits are really bad. It’s like two movies badly spliced together, and the people who made the bad bits probably thought they were saving the movie.

Royal Wedding. Stanley Donen. 1951.

How odd! This is a Stanley Donen movie starring:

How… have I not seen this before?

Oh:

Royal Wedding is one of several MGM musicals that entered public domain because the studio failed to renew the copyright registration in the 28th year after its publication.

So MGM hasn’t found it worth it to push this movie because basically anybody can release it? My copy came from a box set of public domain movies and is by far the most lavish one there, I think.

But it looks horrible! I think it was probably mastered off of … Actually. I don’t know. It doesn’t really look NTSC. Perhaps it is from a film copy, bit… badly… uncorrected? At least the audio is good. But I really want to watch this in a restored 2K version.

But that doesn’t exist. *sigh* The Tragedy Of Not Being Able To Make Sufficient Amount Of Money Off Of Something strikes again. The US should really have some kind of institute that restores significant movies that are commercially iffy. The Brits and the Frenchies have.

This movie is like totes so delightful. Nothing that matters happens, and everything is just fun. Even the dance routines are more frothy than useful: The bit with Astaire dancing with a coat rack is pure gleeful genius.

Pure perfect escapism.

I should make a more concerted effort to see if there’s any more of these movies I’ve missed.

One thing that’s weird about this movie is how relentlessly white it is (for a musical of its time). I mean, there’s even a bit from Haiti that basically all other movies would have used as “the chance” to drop in some fabulous black dancers, but nope.