History, past a certain point, has only been chronicled to the extent at which we are willing to preserve it; our collective woes, joys, victories, losses, agreements, and wars have all been cataloged on account of how important they were believed to have been at the time of their remembrance. This doesn’t always mean that every recorded event of the bygone era was life-changing, but that it held significance enough to be remembered and proudly displayed - even if only by a single person.
As a result of the order of priority we’ve historically ascribed to our memories, a rose-tinted lens of nostalgia tends to be the way through which we view it. The sanitization of strife, confusion, and hopelessness allows us to feel better about the grim elements of our present. Inversely, we’re also allowed to assume that the worst parts of history have already been unearthed.
In some cases, however, justice was never delivered. Lives lost were never given acknowledgement, and the circumstances surrounding their deaths were overlooked by everyone who could have prevented or helped raise awareness of danger.
Sometimes, people even suffer at the behest of those more powerful than them for the bleakly shallow purpose of cheap thrills.
I discovered this myself following a recent auction; I bid on storage units and flip their treasures, making decent money and occasionally finding something I never thought I’d be able to have. Recently, I made a startling series of discoveries that the world must hear for dignity’s sake.
My eyes widened when I saw the haul I’d secured for my most recent successful bid, a storage unit seemingly filled with mostly antiques; stopwatches, antique jewelry, clothing, and various other personal affects that were somehow in need of nothing more than heavy dusting. The treasure was slightly gilded in nature, however, as I moved to the back to find that the bulk of the room was occupied by ten steamer trunks. They were all in states of disrepair, by far the most worn objects in the entire lot. Whatever they held, though… that’s what I was after.
It took me a few days to sell everything I could fit in my car and continue to store what I couldn’t. I hadn’t taken a great amount of interest in the trunks initially, and only opened them once the last of the antiques had left my house. To my chagrin, they all had combination locks, so I carefully pried each trunk open with a knife while taking care to not damage the contents within. I was excited to find perfectly preserved cylinders full of film reel, but felt deflated when I found out that they were intensely spliced and not prototypes of any major studio films.
Had I not shifted a hidden panel in one of the trunks, I would’ve been much happier then and in the time since. What I found inspired a dangerous curiosity the likes of which I wish I’d never satisfied.
Lifting the velvety hidden panel from the trunk, I found a letter and some photos. They, as everything else I had found within the unit, were perfectly intact. They pictured a small, older white man who appeared to be somewhere in his 60’s. He had a thick, gruff salt and pepper mustache and wore a bowler hat that concealed his hairstyle. Shuffling the pictures, I saw him standing alone, then with his wife, then with a family of four. They were pictured both indoors and outdoors, providing the appearance of a life well-lived. I found a knife and carefully opened the envelope, which contained the following message messily scrawled in black ink:
Nov. 15th, 1938
Have done vile things, my soul is black. Guilt is too much. My family will never forgive me when they find out… I will not make myself present to suffer their scorn. Those who hired me are more to blame. No effects, everything was real. May God have mercy on me; all my love to LeAnne, Vincent, and Connie. Everything was for you.
I set down the letter and sighed, cradling my face in my hands as I weighed the consequences of each possibility. My only choices were to destroy the legacy of a man who took his own life to hide his crimes, or discover exactly what made him do it and shoulder any consequence that followed.
I was no historian; I should’ve turned those over to someone who was mentally equipped enough to handle the possibility of depravity lost to the waves of time, but decided to take it upon myself as an exercise of historical discovery.
Using a portion of the proceeds I made from flipping what I bought, I tracked down and purchased a projector that would play the 16mm film that these movies were shot in. Each short was only a few minutes long.
They didn’t need to be any longer, and they shouldn’t have been filmed at all.
None of the actors’ names were included for reasons that will soon be obvious. I haven’t mustered the stomach to watch them all yet, but these are the reels I’ve seen through to the end so far. Enclosed in each cylinder was a piece of sheet music, which I entered into a program that played the melodies before I added the instruments the pieces were composed for. This was because most of the pieces’ titles were so obscure that I couldn’t find them anywhere, with the exception of one which had the artist and song enclosed.
Title: Just Desserts
Score: “Swank No. 3,” an upbeat swing piece with trumpet and clarinet.
Description: A lean, attractive white man with formally styled jet black hair sits at a table inside of what appears to be a lavish mansion with an equally attractive brunette with chin-length hair. They are shown to be drunkenly laughing, eating, and drinking as they enjoy each other’s company, and are dressed in a black suit and light colored dress, respectively. A thin, balding butler sporting a three piece suit, white gloves, and a pencil mustache approaches the table to collect their dirty plates and glasses. The man dumps his cigarette ashes on the butler’s back, prompting the woman to giggle and cover her mouth; the butler, pursing his lips, turns around and appears to ask them if they need anything. In response, the man throws the rest of his champagne in the butler’s face before setting it on his tray.
In a kitchen, the butler is seen opening a new bottle of champagne before producing a vial from his pocket. Removing its top, he pours two glasses before adding a few drops of an unknown, clear substance and setting them on the tray.
Back at the dining table, the couple are served their champagne and the bottle is left on the table near the leftmost half of the shot. Behind them, the butler stands with a devious grin as the champagne is heartily consumed by each character. A series of cuts show them scratching their necks, gesturing to the camera to cut, and clutching their throats. Their faces contort in agony as foam seeps from their lips and they slump over the table, at which point the butler removes a thick money clip from the man’s pocket. He thumbs through it, the closing shot zooming in on his satisfied expression.
Title: Hide and Seek with the Burlap Man
Score: Henry Hall & His Orchestra: Hush, Hush, Hush, Here Comes the Boogeyman
Description: A white, two story house is shown under an overcast sky. Its boards are chipped and cracked in some places, and the flowerbed in front of its raised porch is overgrown with tangled weeds. Six children, varying in age with the youngest appearing four and the oldest appearing eight or nine, are shown in a subsequent shot within the house standing in a line from shortest to tallest. They all wave to the camera, laughing and talking amongst each other.
A tall, unknown figure enters the room in a black, tattered suit that covers him from head to toe. It appears to be made of black dyed burlap, with stitched white x’s for eyes and a mouth crudely sewn into a wide smile. Two stuffed, long ears stiffly jut from the top of the costume’s head, flopping as he moves to approach the kids. They’re afraid of him at first, but he then squats down to their level and appears to speak to them while pointing with his finger at the other rooms above and beside them. They all nod with excitement when he finishes, and the shot cuts to the same room with only him remaining.
He’s given a bowie knife by the cameraman, and then lifts the blade up to inspect how the natural outdoor lighting catches its shiny surface. Various shots show the cameraman following the burlap man from behind, catching each one of the children and gruesomely slaughtering them on tape. His methods differ with each kill; he cuts the tongue and hands off of one girl before watching her fearfully writhe from the floor as she bleeds out, while he disembowels a young boy before wrapping his intestines around his neck while covering his mouth.
Each child’s body is dragged to the center of the room from the first indoor scene and thrown into a pile one by one, eliminating each “player” until the eldest girl is seen desperately tugging at a locked doorknob which seems to lead out of the house. As the camera zooms in on her, she shakes her head and appears to scream with tears running down her face before the covered hand, now coming from behind the camera, clutches her throat and drags her to the mound of corpses that was built up over the course of the short.
Rapid shots cycle of her sitting on top of the pile, then slowly pouring a large pitcher of lemonade given to her onto her head while crying and making what appear to be pleas for mercy. Concealing the knife behind his back, the burlap man crawls behind her and gently runs his fingers through her hair before suddenly rising to his feet, holding her head still, and cutting her face open from the corners of her lips to her earlobes. He grasps her by the chin, her desperate attempts to get away rendered futile whilst he edges out her eyes from their sockets with the tip of his knife. She curls up and lies down, and a close-up shot cuts to her lacerated, bleeding face which precedes the final shot of her body lying atop those of her friends.
Title: Suckers at Sea
Score: “Frolicking Folly,” A rhythmic, cheery violin and flute piece.
Description: Two men dressed like sailors bumble from the covered helm of a beat-up tugboat at sea. One is short and round-bellied, while the other is the butler from Just Desserts. The sun shines down upon them, and the water is calm as a tall, slender diver follows behind them and checks his gear. He points to an oxygen tank, which the two men argue with each other over while reacting to their exchanges with cartoonishly exaggerated expressions and scripted, over the top physical jabs. The diver, appearing frustrated, knocks their heads together.
After he leads them to the edge of the boat, the fat man secures the tank on his back before pushing him into the water. As he falls, he desperately tries to grab onto the boat before splashing into the water. He quickly sinks while the sailors wave at him, attempting to cling onto the tether keeping him attached to the boat. This causes them to shake the tether, laughing as they appear to make a game out of ensuring the diver loses his grip. He slips and falls after roughly a minute, ineffectually splashing near the surface before sinking below.
Turning to the other sailor with a frown, the fat man seems to ask a question; this elicits a sheepish, embarrassed shrug from the taller man, at which point the duo engage in an exaggeratedly choreographed fight. They then grab hold of the diver’s tether in the following scene, working to pull him to the surface before laboriously lifting him up by the legs and dragging his corpse onto the deck. His helmet is lifted off to unveil his lifeless expression and eyes rolled back.
The final scene focuses upon the fat sailor shaking the oxygen tank, then cutting it open to reveal that it was filled with rocks the entire time. He turns to his cohort with a scowl, who scratches his head and makes a puzzled face before they both performatively sigh in unison and shake their heads.
Title: Last Dance
Score: “Aches,” a distorted, dragging Swing instrumental rendition of “Heartaches” by John Klenner.
Description: A metal tub filled with a clear, unknown fluid sits on a wooden countertop. A white, lacy sundress is pulled out of it and wrung out by a man with chiseled features and straight, light hair neatly combed into a parted style. He washes his hands in a subsequent shot, and is then seen hanging it up to dry on a clothesline that’s situated in a massive, sprawling backyard.
Next shown wearing a dark colored suit, he arrives at the front door of a row home holding a box. A stunning young woman answers the door and beams at the sight of him, opening the box and gushing over the dress.
Back inside of the same mansion “Just Desserts” was shot in, the pair dine together by candlelight. As they eat, drink, and converse, she begins to wipe sheens of sweat from her forehead and upchucks the contents of her stomach onto the empty plate before her. A series of time elapsed shots follows, beginning with the two slow dancing until she gradually begins to slump onto the well-dressed man. He heaves her over his shoulder and lays her down on a bed, her fingertips shown to be black as he kisses the cheeks of her pale, lifeless body.
_
After having watched these in accompaniment with the respectively enclosed scores, I sat for an hour in motionless silence after turning off the projector. There are still multiple unopened tapes, but I’m not sure how many more I can stomach.
I’ve lost enough sleep as it is, and nothing I do will bring those people back.
Everyone who produced, filmed, and murdered within these movies has died, and I’m unsure whether watching more scenes of perpetual torment will yield anything worthwhile.
To those who made this, wherever you may have gone, I hope you got what you deserved.