BoYutz

This 1931 'documentary', acclaimed in its day, is nothing more than a ham-fisted, banal, and unremarkably filmed piece of propaganda. The editing is jerky; the shots frequently undisciplined and poorly composed; the pace glacial; the script naive and stilted in its crass deification of Lenin. Oh yeah, it's dour and humorless, too.

It might hold some interest as an early example of the 'tractors and dams' approach to agitprop, but it holds little interest on its own merits. It is worthwhile, however, to see Lenin threatening to defeat 'the landowners and capitalists' around the world!

Keep an eye out for this in your film history class, and be ready for your indoctrination.

Caught The Kiddie Revue on TMC, which plays it as a One Reel Wonder. This is a really fun short. The tuxedoed tyke who introduces the acts looks like a tiny adult and has real style. The highlight is a group of four girls who sing the 'Poop-a-Doop' song, which is amazingly cute, adorable and hilarious, and let me say, those gals really sing it well. There's dance acts and various weirdness, like a tap-dancing contortionist, and some of it's kinda dull, but it all ends in a rousing finale where almost all the little kiddies dance and belt out the catchy 'Poop-a-Doop.'

The film is sepia tone and seems to have been reconstructed, since there are several frame drop-outs which may indicate a re-splicing. I'm glad this one was saved. It's well worth the ten or fifteen minute investment of your time.

What an inane effort, one of the worst movies ever made. Horrible acting. Dumb story with Lili Taylor as some kind of psychic sleuth. The interior of Hill House looks like some carnival funhouse. An insult to the original Robert Wise masterpiece and to Shirley Jackson's fine novel.