Popular Science J-5-2: A weird, dusty time capsule

Is this thing even a movie?

Honestly, you should probably skip this unless you’re really into the aesthetics of old-school industrial propaganda. It’s for the folks who love digging through digital archives at 3 AM. If you need a narrative or, you know, a point, you will absolutely hate it.

The whole thing feels like a bizarre mixtape. We start with someone messing around with black widow spider venom, which is intense, and then—bam—we’re suddenly learning about the invention of canned beer. The shift in tone is jarring enough to give you whiplash. 🍺

There’s a segment on a thermal-powered clock that is weirdly mesmerizing. It just sits there, ticking away, while the narrator sounds like he’s explaining the secrets of the universe. I stared at it for way too long. Maybe I’m just tired.

Then we get to the San Francisco Bay Bridge. It’s mostly just grainy shots of steel beams and people looking very serious about rivets. It lacks the human stakes you might find in something like The Fall Guy, which at least tries to keep you tethered to a character.

Oddly specific details that stuck with me:

• The artificial flowers look terrifyingly fake, even for 1940s film stock.
• The test pilot segment is mostly just a guy standing near a plane looking contemplative. I kept waiting for him to do something, but he just stood there.
• The transition between 'deadly spiders' and 'refreshing beverages' is the funniest jump cut I’ve seen all month.

The pacing is non-existent. It’s just one thing after another. It reminded me a bit of the random structural choices in Warning! The S.O.S. Call of Humanity, where things just sort of happen because the film exists. It doesn’t try to convince you that these things are connected, and honestly, I appreciate the lack of effort there.

You can tell the narrator, Gayne Whitman, is really trying to sell the wonder of these inventions. Sometimes he succeeds. Other times he sounds like he’s reading a grocery list. It’s charming in a dusty, forgotten kind of way. It’s not deep, it’s not clever, but it’s definitely something.

I don’t think anyone actually sat down to make this a 'film' in the traditional sense. It’s a collection of clips that somebody decided to glue together. I’m not even sure who the target audience was back then—people who like beer and venomous spiders, I guess? 🕷️