{"id":2253,"date":"2012-04-04T13:24:43","date_gmt":"2012-04-04T19:24:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=2253"},"modified":"2012-04-04T13:24:43","modified_gmt":"2012-04-04T19:24:43","slug":"super-8-skeletons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bmovienation.com\/?p=2253","title":{"rendered":"Super-8 Skeletons"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Home movies were a fixture when she was growing up. Her father had a 16mm movie camera (with sound!), and many was the night when he would set up the projector in the basement and unspool family vacations, graduations, holidays and other happy events.<\/p>\n

But there were some movies her parents wouldn\u2019t let her watch, and that, in a roundabout way, is why she got in touch with me.<\/p>\n

I wrote recently about having some of my old 8mm and Super 8 films transferred to DVD. Several readers were interested in doing the same thing and contacted me for advice. A call from an Alexandria reader \u2014 she asked that I not use her name, so let\u2019s call her \u201cAlex\u201d \u2014 was the most .\u2009.\u2009. interesting. You see, her father got tired of having multiple reels of film \u2014 too messy, too much to keep track of \u2014 so he spliced it all together into one massive reel, about 15 inches in diameter.<\/p>\n

This is now in Alex\u2019s possession, and she\u2019d like to get it transferred to DVD.<\/p>\n

Said Alex: \u201cThe problem with it is that I\u2019m pretty sure that spliced into the middle of all the family movies were blue movies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blue movies, stag films, pornography \u2014 although given that it\u2019s from the 1940s, it\u2019s pornography of a different character from the explicit, high-definition images that are just a mouse click away today. Think \u201cThe Andy Griffith Show\u201d vs. \u201cAre You There, Chelsea?\u201d<\/p>\n

Alex remembers her parents being pretty liberal about that kind of thing. They weren\u2019t prudes. They subscribed to a magazine called Sexology \u2014 and kept it on a lower shelf. Dad had a full bar in the basement, and on Saturday nights, he\u2019d screen what Alex had always assumed were blue movies. A few years ago, she talked with an older cousin who confirmed that such films were shown. That cousin has since died. So has everyone else who might have seen the movies. Alex\u2019s mother has been dead for 30 years, her father for 20.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe blue movies may not be in there,\u201d said Alex, who is now in her 60s, \u201cbut whoever is looking at it needs to know there\u2019s the possibility that it is in there.\u201d<\/p>\n

I called the company that transferred my (porn-free) films, Got Memories. \u201cIt happens quite a lot,\u201d said Phil Thomas, who founded the Phoenix company nine years ago. He said they\u2019re used to finding risque material among the jumbled reels customers send in.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t expect people to know what\u2019s on their film, especially if they didn\u2019t shoot it,\u201d Phil said.<\/p>\n

Phil\u2019s staff watches as movies are converted to a digital format, and they let the customer know if they come across any adult material. The customers, he said, \u201cusually get more than a few laughs out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such material is not copied alongside the family-friendly stuff. \u201cWe definitely won\u2019t put it in with Christmas 1968,\u201d Phil said.<\/p>\n

Phil says people shouldn\u2019t be embarrassed about sending off film to be transferred just because they\u2019re worried about what might be on it. The chances of finding a 50-year-old sex tape \u2014 Aunt Thelma, Uncle Bob or some other recognizable person \u2014 are slim, given the time. Any blue movies that show up are usually commercially produced stag films. Videotapes are another story. The relative ease of shooting video compared with film means that it\u2019s not uncommon to find some homemade boudoir action stuck in the middle of more benign footage.<\/p>\n

(In case you\u2019re wondering, Phil said they\u2019ve never come across child pornography. \u201cI always tell every staff member, if ever we see anything like that, it\u2019s literally, \u2018get the cops on the phone.\u2019\u200a\u201d)<\/p>\n

The folks at Got Memories see a lot of movies. Phil was so moved by a customer who brought in film a friend had shot from a B-29 in World War II that he\u2019s planning a trip to Tinian Island in the Pacific, site of a battle in 1944.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve also seen enough to recognize professional blue movies. \u201cTypically, stag films come on a red reel,\u201d Phil said. Even if it\u2019s spliced to another reel, the film itself has a distinctive pattern when seen from the side: a sort of grayish moir\u00e9 look, compared with the black sheen of regular film.<\/p>\n

And what if Alex should decide she wants the blue movies? Not a problem. Phil said about half the customers who are informed that their order includes old porn want it transferred \u2014 on a separate DVD, of course.<\/p>\n

To read previous columns by John Kelly, go to washingtonpost.com\/johnkelly.