DbcultAccessing Vault...
6/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 6/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Believe It or Not (Second Series) #3 remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
Honestly, only if you have ten minutes to kill and a soft spot for the strange. It's not a narrative film, so don't go looking for character arcs or The Fall Guy level excitement. It's a curiosity cabinet on screen.
If you prefer your documentaries to be about actual history or high-stakes drama, you'll probably hate this. It’s just a list of things that someone thought were neat in the 1930s.
There’s something hypnotic about the segment with the Nebraska church made entirely out of hay. It’s incredibly dry, visually speaking, but you can’t look away. I kept wondering if it smelled like a barn or just old dust. Nobody mentions the smell.
Then they jump to a four-legged duck in Flint. It’s a very weird, specific image that sticks with you way longer than it should. The way the owner handles it is so casual, like having an extra pair of legs on your pet is just a normal Tuesday.
The segment in the Kentucky cemetery is actually kind of spooky. Life-sized statues of people and their pets? It feels like the start of a horror movie, but the film just keeps moving. No deeper meaning, no heavy narration.
And that 128-year-old woman in Mississippi. I spent the whole time trying to do the math on her and her 100-year-old daughter. It’s dizzying. It makes the rest of the film feel like a dream you had on a long bus ride.
It’s not as polished as Blackmail, obviously. It’s a bit messy, and the transitions are non-existent. But there’s a charm to it that modern stuff lacks. It doesn't try to explain the world. It just shows you the weird bits and lets you figure it out. 🦆