the sad fate of mossby pomegranete

Though surfing the Web can be a time-and-soul-draining experience, www.archive.org is a sure thrill for online curiosity seekers, video clip collectors and fans of cultural ephemera. The site compiles a bunch of articles, software, recordings and multimedia for anyone to look through. The most extensive and fascinating collection of videos can be found in the Prelinger Archives, founded by Rick Prelinger in 1982. Dave Coates told me about this site while showing me a bunch of strange, strange clips therein.

Among the videos Dave played for me were instructional videos for police on how to deal with belligerent or mentally handicapped citizens, some kind of filmstrip from the '50s for kids about removing living organs from pets, and the crown jewel of the Internet Archives, "One Got Fat."

"One Got Fat" is ostensibly a 14-minute filmstrip about bicycle safety (Interlude Films, 1963, Dale Jennings, writer/director). It features 10 bike riders facing various safety obstacles on their way to a park nine blocks away. Which sounds tame enough. Except that the cyclists are monkeys, and all but one are led by their own carelessness head-on into steamrollers, manholes and other dangers. The death masks of the monkey cyclists are pretty severe, and it's hard to believe they showed this to kids (a dozen or so comments on the archive.org site are from people who remember being freaked out by the film in grade school). As Dave put it, it's interesting to see something from an era before irony, when the accepted way to try and get kids to behave was to scare the hell out of them.

Don't be mistaken, though. "One Got Fat" is great fun. The monkeys each meet their grisly fates in ridiculous ways and their names are as colorful as their costumes. Names include: Rooty Toot Jasperson, Slim Jim McGutney, Filbert Bagel, Stanislaw Higginbottum, Tinkerbelle McDillingfitty and my personal favorite, Mossby Pomegranete (e-mail mossby@gmail.com). I think it would be great if they each had their own trading cards, complete with photos, stats and safety information. The film also boasts a delightful fanfare, stirring narration from Edward Everett Horton and some bizarro cinematography.

You can find "One Got Fat" by going to archive.org, finding the "moving pictures" menu and locating the Prelinger Archives, where several viewing options and more information are available. Or, you can see it here on google video. Ride safe and love it.