Production began on 12 October 1959 at Shepperton Studios with a budget of $45,000. Milton Subotsky was an uncredited producer of the film, leading some to consider this the first unofficial Amicus Productions film. Officially, it was produced by Vulcan Productions.

On the recommendation of her professor, a young female student travels to a small Massachusetts town to do some research into witchcraft. She finds the town occupied by the reincarnation of an infamous witch burned at the stake in the 17th century.

Joe Morton stars in this dramatic comedy, set in New York City in the early 1980s, as “The Brother,” an alien and escaped slave who, while fleeing “Another Planet,” has crash-landed in Upper New York Harbor.

Picked up as homeless, he is deposited in Harlem. The sweet-natured and honest Brother looks like any other black man, except that he is mute and – although other characters in the film never see them – his feet each have three large toes. The Brother has telekinetic powers but, unable to speak, he struggles to express himself and adjust to his new surroundings, including a stint in the Job Corps at a video arcade in Manhattan.

“I made that film in 1976 with Richard Basehard as narrator and a classical music score recorded in the Soviet Union… this was the film that turned my career toward visual effects. We shot it in a large rented space in the back of a West Los Angeles dress factory. We hung large black curtains to keep out light out from the factory but we could still hear the sewing machine whirring away behind the curtain. They were making bathrobes at the time, out of luffy material. It took months of preparation before we could shoot our first frame of film. We laid down a forty foot stretch of track of parallel plumbing ipes and put down a camera support whose movements were on a geared guide so every increment of movement could be controlled with the turn of a wheel. Nearly all of the shots involved a moving camera. It was like animation with three dimensional model planets instead of cell images. We found the best material for the planets was hard wood. So we hired a Hollywood cabinet shop to make nine spheres for us, about 18 inches in diameter. These were sanded and painted to match images in astronomy books and observatory photos. Shooting one frame at a time meant we never got more than a few seconds of film shot in a day. One long shot involved the camera moving in on Mars. The first long day’s work was ruined. As the camera came in on the red planet, a large piece of fuzz came into frame, sitting on the planet. It had drifted down on the sphere from the dress factory.”

This movie is part of the collection: Academic Film Archive of North America

Director: Tomas G. Smith
Producer: Tom Smith
Production Company: Permission to display this film was granted by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Dragnet was perhaps the most famous and influential police procedural drama in American media history. The series gave millions of Americans a feel for the boredom and drudgery, as well as the danger and heroism, of real-life police work. Dragnet earned praise for improving the public opinion of police officers.

Actor and producer Jack Webb’s aims in Dragnet were for realism and unpretentious acting. He achieved both goals, and Dragnet remains a key influence on subsequent police dramas in many media.

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The film won an Academy Award in 1944 for Documentary Short Subject.

The film begins with a chronological breakdown of the events of December 7, starting with the town of Honolulu gradually waking up and coming to life in the morning. A young private is credited with intercepting some vital information which his superiors dismiss; other sailors play baseball or attend religious services.

Then, “like locusts”, the Japanese planes start humming over the air above Oahu, and begin the now infamous attack on American military installations on the island, including the sinking of the Arizona, and the bombing of Hickam Field. All the while, back in Washington, Japanese diplomats are still talking with Secretary of State Cordell Hull.

An animated sequence is shown, with a large radio tower over Japan, broadcasting a fictional speech by Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. The narrator contradicts most of the “facts” that the Japanese leader tells his listeners in Tokyo, Kobe, and Nagasaki.

After the attack Honolulu isn’t quite the same; the island is put under martial law, barbed wire and other protective barriers are set up in case of invasion and even children have to be evacuated and given gas masks. The film is notable for its sympathetic depiction of the Hawaii Japanese, and the difficulties they now had to go through.