Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Hemo the Magnificent (1957)

Image from VTTV


I really like classic edutainment movies and cartoons, especially from older eras. I watched stuff like this in elementary school in the 1990's, even though many of the videos were painfully out of date. And my grandmother made me watch shows like Mr. Wizard, Beekman's World, and Bill Nye the Science Guy, even though I would have rather watched stuff like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Inspector Gadget. But I grew to love these weird old educational shows.   

Hemo the Magnificient seems to be some sort of ancient and powerful blood god; angry and vain, who distrusts humans and chooses to live among the animals instead. I don't blame him really. 

I don't know if kids these days would appreciate a movie like this. In general it seems like everyone's attention span has gotten much, much shorter. It's a cartoon for sure, but it's still very much a lesson on the human body and I can see kids these days just glazing over the material and just watching something like Crash Course or SciShow on YouTube. But this interesting little documentary would have really gotten my attention if I had gotten to see it as a kid. 

I found out about Hemo and the other Bell documentaries while on Zoom during the weekly SubGenius Church Meeting. Apparently this is something the great Dr. Hal grew up watching. And this documentary is one of many in a series from Bell, so I look forward to watching the rest of them. I'm not sure what order they come in, I'm just jumping in by what title strikes a chord with me. 

The next one I plan on watching is called GODDESS UNCHAINED, in which the weather goddess, Meteora teaches us about the weather and apparently predicts climate change. 


No comments:

Post a Comment