Home Movies (1944)

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Y. = ★ = MTS IRE ★ B y M ..IJ..CHAEL Horowitz has gone back to his original trade until times get better, or until ants learn to act like they should act, which means the world will have to wait a while for the premiere of his motion picture spectacle, "The Death of Kultur." The original trade of Mr. Horowitz is that of cleaner and presser, but he deserts it occasionally when the yen for showmanship gets too strong. Last time the yen got too strong, he started a flea circus on New York's Broadway and was doing all right as trainer and exhibitor until a competitor opened up next door. The competitor hired a former prize-fighter with a big name to "shill" for him, or lure the customers into his place. That hurt some, Mr. Horowitz said, but what actually ruined his business was when the former prizefighter dropped into the Horowitz theater for a visit, hovered around the flea stage for a while and walked out. All of the Horowitz fleas went with him, apparently. For some months after that, Michael Horowitz had plenty of time to think and he came up with an idea of making a picture about the animal kingdom, based on the life of the ant. He gathered ants, microscopes, books about ants, and a 16 millimeter camera, and went to work in a little house up on Cheremoya Street in Hollywood. From the books, he learned that red ants now and then set out by the thousands to invade the colonies of the black ants. They don't kill the black ants, Mr. Horowitz said. That is, they don't kill all of them. The big idea is to pillage the nests of the black ants and carry off the larvae and pupae, which will turn into little black ants after a while. The red ants take the larvae and pupae back to their colonies and, when the little black ants are born, they make slaves out of them; make them scurry around for food and take care of the housework and do all sorts of chores. That seems a terrible fate, but there's a catch to it, and a touch of poetic justice. "You know what happens?" Mr. Horowitz inquired, and didn't wait for an answer. "Well, the red ants don't do any work, see. They eat and sit around and they get out of shape. And alia time the black ants are workin' because they have to, and pretty soon they get strong and get organized and walk off the job. LIKE THAT GENE COUCHLIN Reprinted from Los Angeles Daily News "So what happens? So the red ants can't take care of themselves and they starve to death or the black ants kill 'em. Honest, I'm not makin' it up. It's all in the books. Look." That's the way things turn out all right, in the books. It was the Horowitz idea to have the red ants play the part of the Nazis and the black ants, the slaves, be the peoples of conquered countries like Poland and Norway and Holland that finally turn on "Kultur" and kill it. Mr. Horowitz managed to dig up some red ants and black ants, and made a little ant world for them and got a magnifying lens to put on his camera and was set to make the epic. But the red ants seemed content to stay on their side of the pen, and didn't make a pass at the black ants even when director Horowitz laid down a trail of sugar from the red camp to the black camp. "You know what them suckers did? The red ones ate the sugar to the middle of the pen, and the black ones did the same thing and when they met, by golly, it looked like they just bowed and asked how're things, and turned around and went home." He tried scrambling them together, but when the heap untangled, the red ants went home without any black slaves. He kept shooting film until he ran out of it, before he found out the red ants might go for weeks without deciding to invade the camp of the black ants. By then it was too late; the camera was empty. They threw Mr. Horowitz down in another department, too. The books said that when a boy ant courts a girl ant all the older ants help the courtship by doing the couple's work and getting food for them. And then, when the couple fly away on their marriage flight, all the other ants see them off at the airport. The books said the ants always fly away on their honeymoon and then, when they get back and settle down to housekeeping they bite off their wings. "What a shot!" Mr. Horowitz sighed. "Just imagine 'em flying away, mandible in mandible, you might say, and wavin' goodby with their antennae, which is what they call their arms. But do you think I could get 'em to do it? Not them ants. I couldn't even get 'em off the ground and I gave 'em the hotfoot so much I thought I might get in trouble with the SPCA. That stands for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelto to Ants."