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.
Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn your Lesson about Stranger Danger: A Predatory Shockucation, the 41st 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 are looking out for strangers with candy and delving into the creepy world of stranger danger. Shockmeister Sid Davis want little boys to be on the look-out for the ever-present threat of pedophiles and he wants all Boys Aware (1973). Watch out for the "red light" people in the half- pedestrian safety/ half predator scare film Meeting Strangers: Red Light, Green Light (1969). Girls Beware (1969) teaches us you don't need Dateline to catch a predator, you just need to keep your guard up and your eyes peeled and the knee-slapping Self-Defense for Girls (1969) gives us the moves to turn the tables on an attacker (after your attacker becomes your instructor all of a sudden). Sometimes you go looking for trouble by thumbing a ride with the wrong guy in Hitchhiking: The Road to Rape (1982) and Thumbs Down (1974), a cautionary educational film featuring real-life Los Angeles hitchers. And sometimes, a giant man in a dog suit is there to teach you about personal space in McGruff's Guide to Personal Safety (1987). Early birds will be treated to Di$ney Educational's live-action creepy dramatization Now I Can Tell You My Secret (1984). With animated strangers and even more surprises, it's a great night to learn your lesson.
Web: http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com
Featuring:
Hitchhiking: The Road to Rape (Color, 1982) Tracy never thought it could happen to her. She’d hitched dozens of times and never had any problems. Until she picked the wrong car to get into, and things started to get ugly. Will Tracy ever learn from her devastating mistake? Will you?
Meeting Strangers: Red Light, Green Light (Color, 1969)
McGruff the crime dog helps children understand that they have personal space and that they have a right to refuse to allow someone to be physically close. He illustrates the difference between the actions of people whose closeness is natural and those who may put a child's safety at risk.
Sid Davis, the father of the pedophilia scare film presents four case histories portraying homosexual advances toward young boys. We start off when Ralph shows Billie some pornographic pictures. “What Billie didn’t know was that Ralph was sick”, our narrator says, “a sickness that was not visible like smallpox but no less dangerous and contagious, a sickness of the mind. You see Ralph was a homosexual, a person who demands an intimate relationship with members their own sex.” This over-the-top film, produced in conjunction with the Inglewood, CA Unified School District and Police Department pulls out every homosexual stereotype and scare tactic in the book including the jolting line “That evening Mike traded his life for a newspaper headline”.
Adapted from a Sid Davis-shocker, this treat will teach you to keep your eyes out for predators. Awareness that sexual attacks exist is seen as a responsibility of growing up. Helps girls develop that awareness by showing typical situations that lead to danger and shows how to avoid them. From misplaced trust in a stranger to failure to follow safety precautions in a baby-sitting job to problems with someone already well known and trusted, four dramatized stories alert girls / young women to early danger signals in situations that go beyond the more common dangers of hitchhiking or walking alone at night. Concludes with the importance of reporting incidents to responsible adults.
