Killer Diller. Josh Binney. 1948.

Oh, right, this is a public domain B movie from that box set I bought a couple of years ago. Most of these movies aren’t much to write home about, but some have real charm. This looks like it’s basically a variety show that’s been made into a movie (with the normal unpretentious framing story).

This one is different than most I’ve seen, because all (?) the actors are black. And it’s got tons of trick photography and kinda interesting cinematography and editing: It’s mostly filmed with a stationary camera, but some of the scenes are edited together with some verve and originality.

That said, this is not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, even if some of the songs in the variety show are very good, especially the two by this woman:

I don’t know who she is, but she was funny and had great pipes. And these two did a great tap routine:

And is this Nat King Cole?

I think it is.

Once the framing sequence is over, the main portion of this movie is very enjoyable to watch indeed. It’s just a bunch of brilliant performers performing. Lot’s a great music, some great dancing and some fun skits.

Ghosts on the Loose. William Beaudine. 1943.

Some movies you see for kinda pedantic reasons? This is the final unseen DVD of a seven DVD box set, so if I see this I can pack the box set away. See, eh? S See? You mug!

This is a B-movie starring The East Side Kids. These movies were churned out on an assembly line and whatever enjoyment you get from these depend of how amusing you find it to watch a bunch of mooks running around causing catastrophes.

So I had very low expectations going in, and this one put all my expectations to shame. I mean, the opposite of shame. Pride? Anyway, this movie is weak weak stuff. It’s not completely charmless, though, but eminently missable.

I bailed after half an hour.

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Bob Persichetti. 2018.

Wowzers. I did not expect this movie to be this good. It’s an animated movie, but aren’t all super-hero movies, really?

It’s fascinating how they were able to dial up the “cartoon” level on the animation here and make it possible to do all kinds of comic-book effects without things turning cheesy. (Viz. the Batman TV series from the 60s.) But these cartoons are real expressive, so you get the best of both worlds, and I’ve never seen that before. It’s a triumph of animation.

And it’s pretty funny and moves along at an insane pace. Is this how all super-hero movies should have been done?

There’s a lot to like here. I love how they’ve used Bill Sienkiewicz’ design for Kingpin, for instance. It’s not something that could work in a live-action movie, but it makes perfect sense here.

It’s just about a perfect super-hero movie. Like all of them, it’s a bit too long, but less than most.