In 1955, Disneyland opened. In early 1956, Sherman W. Carter, Jr. took his family to the park and shot this home movie. The video was just uploaded to YouTube on July 1 by a family friend.
Disney Parks Blog:
The first part takes place in Frontierland, one of areas of Disneyland that has changed the most over the years. And yet there are many familiar sights as well. The park looks almost unrecognizable with so many of the trees and foliage still essentially saplings. Today it’s a veritable forest in the middle of Anaheim.
Be sure to pause the video at 0:21 where you can see three Jungle Cruise boats docked in Fowler’s Harbor, currently home to the Harbour Galley restaurant. I knew the water systems for the Rivers of America and Jungle Cruise were connected, but were you ever able to sail from one to the other in the past? We later see The Jungle Cruise with no water in the moat, so this likely just temporary storage.
Some other fun highlights to keep an eye out for; watch at 1:05 for a glimpse of the old gun fight skit atop the Golden Horseshoe Saloon. Then right after that, the Jungle Cruise with no water in the moat. Just a few wonderful shots of Tomorrowland right at the end too.
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On The Late Late Show with James Corden, Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda said that, while on a recent vacation, he digitized all the VHS home movies he made in his childhood. Read the rest
Stoned special effects fun from the 1970s.
"I created these films in the 70's using Super 8mm film and a bunch of my creative friends," writes uploader WooferHound Town. "This is a collection of clips, there is no story here. This stuff was mostly filled in Huntsville Alabama.
(via /r/ObscureMedia, thanks UPSO!)
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Rick Prelinger writes, "Today I've released my 2013 feature film NO MORE ROAD TRIPS? to the world for viewing, public screening and remixing." Read the rest
Pea Hicks writes, "Here's a nice circa 1971 Super 8 home movie I picked up at a garage sale recently. I scanned it with a Moviestuff Retroscan Universal film scanner, and added some of my own original music to it." Read the rest
The Bowman family shot this excellent home movie of the odometer on their family van reaching 100,000 miles. Can anyone who isn't car-blind like me figure out exact year this was made?
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Archivist Rick Prelinger sez, "I'm sure Beany's Hamburgers weren't the healthiest food, but this eight-minute home movie from Prelinger Archives takes us inside a fast-food joint from the Korean War era. Filmed in Long Beach, California right across from the Circle Drive-In, this film shows cooks, customers and classic cars in loving detail." Read the rest
Rogue archivist Rick Prelinger writes, "Last year I finished my archival road movie, No More Road Trips? It's a composite road trip made from my archives of over 10,000 home movies, hoping to ask the question: have we come to the end of the open road? You can read about all that online, but I wanted to point to my 'trailer,' which is 798 high-definition images from the film shown at 12 frames per second. I hope it expresses some of my fascination with the American roadscape, especially as it looked during the down-at-the-heels 1930s and optimistic 1950s-1960s."
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