Learn your Lesson from the '60s - A Groovy Shockucation - Fri. Nov. 20th - 8PM


Oddball Films presents Learn your Lesson from the '60s - A Groovy Shockucation, the 32nd in a monthly series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic educational scare films, mental hygiene primers and TV specials of the collection. This month, we're heading back half a century to learn all about sex, drugs and talking cars from the decade of experimentation: the 1960s. "Blast off to Kicksville" in the howlingly-funny drug scare film Narcotics: Pit of Despair (1967). A rabbi, a priest and a psychologist talk about sexual development, masturbation, nocturnal emissions and more squeamish topics in Parent to Child About Sex (1965). Behold the wild go-go frenzy of the psychedelically animated anti-smoking film The Drag (1965). Mike Miller is a good Mormon Boy, but will he be lured by fast cars and wild women in the hilarious Measure of a Man (1962) from Mormon-mental hygiene pioneer Wetzel Whitaker. Little Jimmy nearly gets his by a car and then dreams of talking cars with creepy eyeballs that blast him on his safety knowledge in the mind-boggling The Talking Car (1969). Three groovy young girls and their dad get a lesson in over-shopping in Consumer Education: Budgeting (1968). Plus, nightmare musical cartoon Sniffy Escapes Poisoning (1965) and an excerpt of The Hippie Temptation (1969). Get here early to see when Sonny Bono gets high (pre-taping) and dons a gold lamé pajama set to tell you all about Marijuana (1968). Everything screened on 16mm film from the archive.




Date:
 Friday, November 20th, 2015 at 8:00pm

Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Admission: $10.00 Limited Seating RSVP to RSVP@oddballfilm.com or (415) 558-8117
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com






Narcotics: Pit of Despair (Color, 1967)
The all-time classic of the genre, a real howler!  Super-square kid is lured into the world of illicit drugs and other pleasures by the scheming drug dealer and his wanton woman. Sample voiceover: “Take a trip from Squaresville, get with the countdown, shake this square world and blast off to Kicksville!”  Sounds good to me!!


The Drag (Color, 1965)
Produced for the Canadian Department of Health and Welfare this jaw-dropping film montage depicts the difficulty of breaking the tobacco habit in a child-adulthood go-go frenzy of wild animation by Italian animator Carlos Marchiori. The story depicts the case history of a chain smoker-satirically told  on a psychiatrist's couch, with the patient's recollections--illustrating the psychology of the smoking habit and the part that cigarette advertising plays in the addiction. With hopping music and brilliant kaleidoscopic montages. 



Parent to Child about Sex (Color, 1965, excerpt)
A rabbi, a priest, and a psychologist want you to talk to your child about sex!  No, it's not a raunchy joke, it's the basis of this Mad Men-styled sex- education short.  Frank discussions amongst the panel on topics like wet dreams and menstruation give way to melodramatizations of the kind of sex-education every pubescent child needs.




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Measure of a Man (Color, 1962)
Nobody does a drinking and driving scare film quite like the Mormons!  Mike Miller is a good boy with a thoughtful and anxious mother who is none too pleased that he's going out driving with bad boys Hal and Blaine.  They love "wild" girls, fast cars and drinking beer; and everywhere they go, crazy New Orleans jazz underscores their every move.  Will Mike be able to hold his own with their wild ways, even turn them around to his square way of thinking or will he be pressured into drinking and necking the night away? The interior monologues will leave you speechless with gems like "I wonder how come mothers know so much" and "I don't know much about wild girls... might be educational, though."  Directed by Mormon-educational film pioneer Wetzel Whitaker, who worked as an animator for Di$ney for 20 years before becoming the director of the BYU Motion Picture Studio.

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Consumer Education: Budgeting (Color, 1968) 

Swinging sisters Ruth and Samantha recently graduated college and are settling into life on their own, with an apartment and shopping sprees. That also means they are going into debt. Fortunately, their worldly father stops by to offer advice before things get out of hand. Special guest star: their new roommate and proto-hipster, an Asian woman named ‘George’.

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The Talking Car (Color, 1969) 

Jimmy is supposed to go on a camping trip tomorrow, but while packing the station wagon he runs out into the street and almost gets hit by a car. Now his dad doesn’t think he’s responsible enough to go camping. Can the talking cars that visit Jimmy in his dreams teach him the ‘see and be seen traffic safety rules’ in time so he can go? Warning: do not do drugs before watching this film. These talking cars mean business.
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Sniffy Escapes Poisoning (Color, 1965) 
Absolutely twisted animation featuring a troll-like little boy with a massive head who drags his sick dog Sniffy to the medicine cabinet.  Once opened, the pills and syrups begin to sing and dance as they cheerfully tell the little boy to KEEP HIS GRUBBY LITTLE PAWS OFF or risk a painful overdose and death.



The Hippie Temptation 
(Color, 1967, excerpt) 
“These people are hippies. They occupy a piece of land in Golden Gate Park which has come to be called Hippie Hill.” So begins Harry Reasoner’s angry narration for this 1967 CBS TV documentary. Reasoner can barely contain his contempt while discussing their lifestyle and the use ofLSD, as he visits doctors and rehab centers to show the audience how destructive hippies are to society.

For the Early Birds

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Marijuana (Color, 1968)
Sonny Bono graces the silver screen in gold lamé to set the facts straight about grass; that he appears utterly stoned himself should not denigrate his message one bit. He systematically counters all the usual arguments in favor of the evil weed (hilariously rattled off one by one by a group of teenagers being arrested). 

Words of wisdom in stoner monotone: “Unlike alcohol, when you take too much at one time, you don’t pass out. You more than likely run the risk of an unpredictable – and unpleasant  – bummer”.


Curator’s Biography


Kat Shuchter is a graduate of UC Berkeley in Film Studies. She is a filmmaker, artist and esoteric film hoarder. She has helped program shows at the PFA, The Nuart and Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theater and was crowned “Found Footage Queen” of Los Angeles, 2009. She has programmed over 200 shows at Oddball on everything from puberty primers to experimental animation.

About Oddball Films
Oddball films is a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.

Our screenings are almost exclusively drawn from our collection of over 50,000 16mm prints of animation, commercials, educational films, feature films, movie trailers, medical, industrial military, news out-takes and every genre in between. We’re actively working to present rarely screened genres of cinema as well as avant-garde and ethno-cultural documentaries, which expand the boundaries of cinema. Oddball Films is the largest film archive in Northern California and one of the most unusual private collections in the US. We invite you to join us in our weekly offerings of offbeat cinema.