Review: Going Places with Lowell Thomas #15 is delightfully chaotic

If you have nine minutes to spare and want to see how people in the 1930s got their quick fix of the outside world, this is worth a look. History nerds and fans of weird vintage media will probably find it charming, but anyone expecting an actual movie with a plot will absolutely hate it.

It is basically the 1935 version of scrolling through a very random social media feed. 🧭

We start in Central America with some local Christian celebrations. But these are not your usual quiet church services; instead, we see guys doing what Lowell Thomas calls "pious acrobatics" from a terrifyingly tall wooden tower.

Honestly, watching them spin around in the air on ropes made my stomach drop a little bit. One guy looks like he is about to slip, and the camera just... stays on him for a second too long.

Then, without any warning at all, we are suddenly in Philadelphia. We are watching an artist work with iron, which feels like a completely different film got spliced in by mistake.

The transition is so jarring it actually made me laugh out loud. It is like the editors just gave up trying to find a theme and decided, "Yeah, iron gates, that fits right after death-defying religious stunts."

It reminded me a bit of the random, disjointed feeling you get watching old silent dramas like The Country That God Forgot, where the setting just changes because the script says so.

After the iron shop, we get dragged over to Bivalve, New Jersey to look at the oyster fleet. I could practically smell the muddy water and fish through the screen during this part.

Lowell Thomas narrates the whole thing with this incredibly fast, overly cheerful voice that never pauses for air. He sounds like a guy trying to sell you a used car while also teaching you geography.

There is a weird charm to how cheap and fast it all feels. It has that same breezy, slightly pointless energy of much later travel docs, almost like a primitive version of Up in the Air but with way more mud and vintage hats.

The film prints they used for this digital transfer are pretty scratchy, too. You can see big pieces of dust dancing on the frame during the oyster segment, which I actually kind of liked.

It makes the whole experience feel like finding an old dusty reel in your grandpa's attic. It is not great art, but it is a weird little window into what used to pass for entertainment.