1945 - STRANGE HOLIDAY, financed and suppressed by General Motors

Arch Obler is either the poor man's Rod Serling or Rod Serling is the poor man's Arch Obler. Obler was a noted radio writer and producer who moved into film with varying degrees of success. During the 1940's Obler was as highly regarded as Orson Welles when it came to radio dramas. He wrote, produced and directed his own films and he also produced and directed one of the first 3D films.

Obler was not unlike Rod Serling in that he had a lot of half assed liberal ideas rolling around in his brain that he wanted to share with the world. The format of his radio dramas allowed him to spew out all his deep thoughts to the American public. Hired by General Motors during World War II to make a morale boosting film for it's employees, Obler presented GM with a Twilight Zone type of story about an every day American who returns from a fishing vacation to find that the United States has been taken over by the Nazis.

Obler delivered his film to GM and was told that General Motors would be withdrawing their support for his film. An angry Obler purchased the film back and along with the actor Claude Rains released it independently. The reasons for General Motors withdrawal from the film are still unclear. Obler claimed that General Motors was continuing to do business with the Nazi's during the war.

Obler may not have been that far from the truth. Apparently into mid 1941, General Motor's Opel division did design and build transport vehicles for the Nazi's.

STRANGE HOLIDAY is mostly a heavy handed propaganda piece of some historical interest. It's not unlike one of the more lame episodes of the TWILIGHT ZONE.

61 minutes.

1953 - THE TWONKY, Sci-Fi Comedy about an evil television set

After setting the bar fairly high with his science fiction film Five , auteur filmmaker Arch Obler set it pretty low with The Twonky. The Twonky is a television set possessed by a robot from the future. A college football coach becomes a victim of the robot/television's hypnotic ray. How does the coach know this? He holds up a plate and says it's because of Einstein's theory of relativity and "I've read a lot of science fiction."  

This film is apparently about the evil influence of television on early 1950's American society or a warning about the dangers of communism overtaking the United States. The television hypnotizes a college football team, a university professor and a delivery man to become mindless conforming members of society in one of the film's most unsubtle moments of satire. The Twonky has other incredible powers like lighting your cigarettes and playing solitaire. This TV robot from the future truly is a threat to our American way of life.

The star is Hans Conreid a character actor in probably his only starring role ever. Conreid did a lot of work for Disney. He was the voice and model for Captain Hook in Disney's version of Peter Pan. Conreid supposedly told Obler while they were filming The Twonky that the film would be a flop. Obler answered that he needed the tax write off .

 84 minutes.

1951 - FIVE-nuclear war end of the world story

 The Writer/Producer/Director of Five was a radio writer named Arch Oboler. He was frequently thought of as Orson Welles light. There is nothing light weight about his 1951 film, Five. It's an interesting little film about the after effects of nuclear war on five survivors. This film was made entirely on location for about $75,000 with a crew of college students. 

 

The actors are not well known Hollywood personalities and the whole look of the film almost has a European feel to it with it's stark filming style, and some creative use of sound particularly towards the end, when two of the survivors explore the empty city.

 

 

Today's film people run around from city to city attending independent film festivals where young filmmakers force their low budget junk on audiences in a shot for artistic relevance. A film like Five shows that creative people had been working in this medium long before fancy digital film making software was available working with very low budgets.

 

 

 

 Arch Oboler sounds like an interesting character, he was a pioneer in 3D movie making with films like Bwana Devil and The Twonky. Today Hollywood is convinced that 3D will save their accelerating extinct business. If it's new it's old.

The screenplay was by Arch Obler, the running time is 91 minutes.