Believe It or Not (Second Series) #5

Believe It or Not (Second Series) #5 (1932)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Pretty weak entry in the series has Robert L. Ripley talking to a female reporter who wants to hear some of those "believe it or not" stories. We get to see the shrunken head of an Indian as well as an iron execution chamber, which was invented by the man who ended up being the first one killed in it. In North Carolina we find a hermit who has lived outside for over forty-years without ever getting a cold. Overseas we meet a sidewalk doctor who sucks the headache out of a person's head. We get more bizarre stories like these but none of them are overly interesting and for the most part this seven-minute short goes by very slowly. I'm not sure how much thought went into the "story build-up" of having the reporter actually interesting in what's going on but it adds nothing but then again, the actual stories here aren't too good either. There's a weird animated sequence with tombstones that say strange things on them but none of them are that funny.

A woman shows up in Robert L. Ripley's office, and he has nothing better to do than shows her around his collection of oddities and motion pictures of the same.

Ripley speaks like he is reading his words off a card in a plodding and nasal voice that might make the modern viewer wonder why anyone would wish to hear him go through a list of things that includes rocks that float in water and a man who lives in the wild in Pennsylvania. If so they would reckon without the enormous power of sheer celebrity. Ripley's syndicated newspaper feature had been running since 1918, and was seen by easily a hundred million people daily. Indeed, it is still running. Sheer curiosity would make this a novel way of seeing the hand-drawn feature with a sense of confidence in its claims.