Customer Reviews

The Alphabet Conspiracy / Science Shorts

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I remember seeing this movie back in the 6th grade. I always enjoyed the Bell Science Series with Dr. Frank Baxter. Here he teaches a girl who imagines she's Alice in Wonderland about the science of language. It's a delightful mix of film and animation, with the nutty Hans Conreid as the Mad Hatter. This DVD also contains "The Gift of Green", an interesting short about photosynthesis, and "The Adventures of Junior Raindrop", an animated short about a wayward raindrop causing erosion. Fun and informative!

This product, along with its companion DVDs, is a welcome reminder of my childhood. I use to watch the Bell Labs everytime they came on. They make science accessible to everyone and were some of my first memories of getting "into" science. Although a tad outdated in visuals and dialoge, these Bell Lab videos hold up pretty well. We need more of this type of educational feature on TV and in the classrooms, especially since the US has fallen so far behind the rest of the world in science and math. The principles and basic information are the same. The only admonishment I have is the prevailent smoking of Richard Carlson. Get these for your children and watch them together. Far better than most of the childrens programming of today.

Gateways to the Mind / Thread of Life

This Bell Science special manages to entertain and inform. This time the topic is language with Dr. Frank C. Baxter who was an English professor at the University of Southern California. The theme is Alice in Wonderland, with Hans Conried (star of "The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T") as the mad hatter. The 2 science shorts included on this disk will make you feel like your back in junior high school dodging spitballs...terrific!

Dr. Frank Baxter was a professor at USC but was also on call to the local entertainment industry. Many of us of a certain age grew up on the "Bell Telephone" educational films that feature the avuncular and cerebral Dr. Baxter. Happily, they were so well done in their day that much of what they had to offer is still valuable.

The Alphabet Conspiracy was something of a departure from their usual fare with the inclusion of a "dream sequence" that allowed live actors instead of cartoon characters to be "foils" to Dr. Baxter's tutelage. One of the actors was Hans Conreid, a talented veteran actor and voice talent of the day, who is delightful as always.

The purpose of the Alphabet Conspiracy program is to describe the value and purpose of language and linguistics. It is fairly dense with information, but they do an excellent job balancing entertainment and pedagogy.

This is one of a small series of films that has only in the last couple of years come to DVD, and I am thrilled that they have. I use these films in my own classes, even though their pacing and density of information, as well as their "dated" look, often put off my students. Nevertheless, when quizzed, students do take away some significant insights, which is a testimony to the presentation.

I hope others will want to explore these and other titles with Dr. Frank Baxter, and to keep them alive to inspire not only future scientists but future educators.

Length:: 1:28 Mins

This is one of the Bell science series that I did not see in school. Still, it is just as entertaining and educational as some of the more popular of the series such as Hemo The Magnificent and Unchained Goddess.