Little Ones

One of the things I've been doing to more rapidly work down my pile of unwatched VHS tapes is to make a point on some occasions of watching the shorter ones. Long movies (exceeding two hours by a wide margin) tend to linger on the pile for obvious reasons, but so have short ones, oddly enough. Perhaps I have seen them as not a real achievement, but a half-hour or hour-long take takes up one spot in my inventory just like the rest, and I can knock off several of them in the space of one feature-length movie.

Yesterday I watched several short tapes. One- "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" - I found to my chagrin I had already marked as watched, which I suppose is true in that I had watched it in my youth. I did not recall it well, and so I should not have done so. It's a good one anyway, feature some enjoyable animation and a legitimately compelling as well as dramatic story. Rikki Tikki is a mongoose living on the grounds of a British family's bungalow in colonial India. He befriends the family (and most of the animals), then battles a series of snakes that menace them. It's very good, and Orson Welles' presence is a plus.

I also watched a more obscure movie called "Psalty's Salvation Celebration". This was as enjoyable, nearly, but not as well done. The story concerns a children's Christian singing choir (led by an anthropomorphic mouse lady and bible man) who embark on a tour by train from Santa Ana, California to Saint Louis, Missouri. They are impeded by a villainous rat man who, puzzlingly enough, has no connection to Satan. Maybe they thought that was too much for kids. This one must be seen to be believed.

The final short tape I watched was a collection of rodeo bloopers. While I imagine the rodeo to be a good time if one attends live, watching a tape even of what are supposed to be highlights is not much of a pleasure. There is really very little that can happen in them except that a man falls off a bull. When falling off is the outcome even of the most successful bull riding experiences, it's hard to say why that ever should be a highlight or a blooper. Anyway, the songs were fun sometimes.

I am sadly running low on these short tapes. There are one or two left that are an hour long, but as the pile approaches just thirty tapes, there are fewer and fewer easy choices. Some tapes are broken, others are ones I was given by a friend, still others are too long, and then there are the ones that look so good I prefer to save them for movie watching nights. I just will have to buckle down and power through, and when I am done with them, I can start buying and watching tapes anew, in quality and measured quantity.