Our kids get out of school on June 16, and have been lame duck students for a couple of weeks now. They had to take some kind of intense standardized test, and then it was kick-back time. From what I gather, they’ve just been hanging around, sucking on Ring Pops, and watching movies since late May.
A few days ago the older boy was telling me about an anti-drug movie they watched, that was really old and over the top. He said everybody was laughing, and not taking it very seriously. Go figure.
And it got me to thinking… about the many “shock,” and hilariously portrayed informational films I was subjected to during my school career. And I thought, yeah, that would be a good topic for an update.
So, here we are. Below I’m going to tell you about the films that stick out vividly in my mind, all these years later, then turn it over to you guys to do the same. How’s that sound? Good, let’s go.
During grade school we saw a film that featured a woman suffering from elephantiasis. We pronounced it “elephantitis,” and couldn’t stop talking about it, for weeks on end.
The woman was normal-sized above the waist, but had legs the size of a washer/dryer combination. She was moving, ever so slowly, and it was like something out of Ripley’s Believe It or Not. We just sat there, wide-eyed and blown clean away.
News of this “elephantitis” movie spread throughout the elementary school within minutes, and kids who hadn’t seen it were completely out of the social loop for weeks.
It was one of the most amazing things any of us had ever seen. And, even taking into account the internet, it remains near the top of my list. Shit!
Also during grade school, we watched an anti-smoking propaganda piece that featured an endless parade of poor bastards with neck holes.
A few had electronic voice boxes, which made them sound like the robot on Lost in Space. It was mildly disturbing. But it prepared me for a guy on my paper route, years later, who spoke through one of those contraptions. He was really nice, and would vibrate, “Good afternoon, Jeff!” every day.
But it wasn’t the voice boxes that made the movie so memorable. Oh no.
One guy, you see, was so hopelessly addicted he continued smoking — through his hole! It showed him holding a cigarette up to the opening, there was a sound like a vacuum cleaner, and the tip turned red. Then, a few seconds later, a jet of smoke came blasting out of the dude’s neck.
It also showed a woman who’d just recently undergone a neckholectomy, or whatever, and was trying to learn to talk again. She kept going, “Bah… bah bah…… bah.” And we walked around doing that for a full month or more.
During junior high, all the boys in our grade were herded together into the gym, and they showed us a film about our “changing bodies.” It was from the 1960s, I think, and featured a lot of clean-cut doucheketeers in hard shoes.
The scene that sticks out in my mind was a kid sitting beside a small table with a telephone on it. He sat there agonizing about something, then picked up the receiver. He proceeded to ask some girl to the town picnic, or whatever, and put the phone back down.
Then he leaned back in relief, with his hands behind his head. And he had gigantic sweat stains, the size of trash can lids, under both arms. And the whole gym erupted in laughter/revulsion. Just a spontaneous, communal reaction.
And in high school we saw plenty of driver’s ed films featuring death and gore on the highways. Usually the Ohio highways, for some reason. One of these epics was called Mechanized Death, I remember.
All featured a lot of blood, and were fairly disturbing. But for some reason I clearly remember a scene in which a mangled car, now upside down, was shown in silhouette. It was dusk, and you couldn’t see much detail, but there was a corpse lying across one of the tires of the car.
I can’t explain why I remember that so vividly, especially since there were plenty more gruesome things shown. But there you go.
And finally, during a high school biology class, they showed us a film of a baby being born. A human baby… being born. And it was one of the most horrific things I’ve ever witnessed.
There was a lot of screaming, stuff ripping apart, a large tuft of Jimi Hendrix hair, something that looked like an entree at an Italian restaurant… It just kept going on and on. I wanted it to stop, but it seemed like it never would.
And now it’s your turn. Use the comments link to tell us about the movies you were shown during school, that left some kind of mark.
And I’ll see you guys again tomorrow.
Have a great day!
Now playing in the bunker
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Good Afternoon Surf Reporters…
Weeeeeeeeeeee!
Signal 30…amazingly graphic.
I think there is a dude out there somewhere who collects all of those films. I recall reading about it at some point.
I can tell school is near the end here, as I passed a gang of kids hanging downtown this morning. I think were trying to get someone to buy them beer.
Hiya
I only remember a movie, probably in Drivers Ed, about some kids throwing rocks from an overpass and killing the driver. You saw the kids, the boulder they somehow had with them, and then the bloody driver with his head to the side.
Awesome.
The part of the driver’s ed gore film that made me turn away was someone had all their teeth knocked out and their bloody maw was howling into the camera. nightmare material.
Both of mine are Driver’s Ed films also. As Chuck said Signal 30, but also Highways of Agony which evidently followed ambulances around taking real footage.
The only emotionally scarring film I remember was in 8th or 9th grade biology. The subject was about spaying or neutering pets, and we had to watch a film put out by the Humane Society.
It should countless adorable puppies and kittens being euthanized. I cried and was made fun of for weeks, nay months.
On an unrelated topic, according to today’s Further Evidence link, I could take 27 Justin Biebers in a fight.
oh yea, I was in this band out of HS that collected weird “educational” films, then made strange soundtracks to them in front of a live audience. Probably the mother of all “educational” videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S75i7fWlwfI
Eleventh!
I remember those Ohio drivers ed films I still vividly recall some of the mangled wrecks/bodies.
Another we saw in biology were the slices of a womans brain that had tapeworm capsules laced throu-out, I remember the teacher asking “What the hell was she eating from the pig pen?”
Red Asphalt
One scene showed a guy’s face hanging and swinging like a mudflap.
I can remember getting to go outside for an hour at the end of 5th grade while the girls had to stay in to watch a movie. We kept bugging our male teacher to tell us what they were watching. He got so tired of it he sent a few of us to the window to see. We snuck up and herd them talking about menstrual cycles. We turned right back around and got back into the kick ball game. Eww gross! The teacher was laughing out loud when he saw us turn on our heels and get the hell out of dodge.
I could take on 29 Biebers…
BTW-
32 Justin Biebers, bitches.
11th?
aww 16th.
All of our drivers ed films were lame. Staged accident scenes and fake injuries with poorly done makeup on horrible actors. I remember one of the instructors was a paramedic and he would comment over the films with what he’s seen. Got more of a scare from him than the films.
The only movie I remember watching was the ‘birthing’ movie in Health class in 6th grade. I don’t remember it very well, as my bff, Sarah and I were too busy tormenting some kid about how he found a porno under his bed named ‘Dipthong’. The name ‘Dipthong’ followed this poor kid around until we graduated highschool. About a month ago my boyfriend and I were eating at a local pizza place and low and behold, there he was…Dipthong…I said to Ben, “That kid eating in the corner by himself over there…we called him Dipthong for years…” and explained the story. Turned out, when Dipthong was leaving it was actually a woman who looked astonishingly like him. I laughed until I cried.
You guys wanna hear an even more disturbing story that is probably more disturbing than any movie you saw in school? (Except I’m not really sure I can top the-hole-in-the-neck-parade, but I digress). In 7th grade, we had a very strange history teacher named Mr. Lewsader, who was freakishly obbessed with triathlons. He had pictures of himself all over the room competing in in his past triathlons, which just set him up for a good ripping-on at all given times. One day he took it to a whole new level and decided to do a whole class on triathalons. So he had us all sit on the floor while he went over his obsession. Before we knew what was happening, he started STRIPPING in front of us, telling us that he was doing it to change into his wet suit for the swimming portion of the competition. He stripped down to his boxers while all of us sat wide-eyed in horror and I will never forget what he said next…he saw all of our faces and smiled and said, “It’s ok, do not be ashamed of the human body”. So he changed into his wet suit, carried on with the presentation, and finally after what felt like hours, it was over and we all scrambled outta there quicker then a crack head in Gary Indiana.
My guess is that A LOT of parents were quickly informed the next day his little molester presentation was quickly stopped.
And just for the record ladies, he was NOT an attractive man. He resembled a balding mouse with a set of protruding front teeth and the biggest adams apple I’ve ever seen.
Oh, and we also had a teacher who had some kind of condition with his eyes so that they were always bright red. We called him Laser Eye. And I am actually sorry about that one, because he was a nice guy.
30 Biebers…JFTR.
30 Biebers. I must be slipping.
Geez, I’ve so throroughly blocked out my school day memories that the only films I remember were when they showed “My Name Is Nobody” and “The 12 Chairs” in high school.
Still haven’t been able to block out the part where I met the ex-wife.
38 Biebers! I’m a Bieber killing machine BOOYA!
I don’t remember any movies that scarred me from elemntary school, except for Johnny Tremaine, oh the humanity!!!
In HS the only movie we watched was The Exorcist, as my religion teacher (yes Catlick Skool) was the technical advisor on it.
37 Justin Biebers muthafuckas!!
Citizen Cane was one of the movies I remember seeing in school.
Incident (or sometimes referred to as Ocurrence at Owl Creek Bridge – I think written by Ambrose Bierce about a Confederate soldier who gets caught and is going to hang for treason but he manages to excape.
At least, that’s what the audience thinks until then end when you find out it’s a dream he has with the noose around his neck.
Fucking awesome.
Yep, I remember Mechanized Death too. They always showed it around prom time to discourage drinking and driving. And just for the record…it didn’t slow anyone down. I had an astronomy teacher that looked like Beaker from the Muppets with black horn rim glasses. He had films and slides out the ying yang about planets, stars and whathaveyou. He’d always leave the room when the film started. Most took the time to snooze while the lights were out.
Wow – School movies – we didn’t get any that I can remember. I must’ve been on a home study course cause the only one I remember seeing is Reefer Madness. I love it – the guy takes a couple of puffs and then starts laughing maniacally and jumps in his car and goes off carening down the road. Weird. All I ever did was stop at green lights. Or wait for the stop sign to change. Oh and not remember school movies.
Madz1962,
I think that was an episode of the old Twilight Zone.
I had two favorite films: one was anti-smoking, and for some reason the one thing that sticks out is the smoking robot with the two jars full of cotton for lungs. For years I imagined lungs looked like mayo jars.
The other one was a movie that showed a volcano erupting, and it was totally KEWL! If the teacher was bored and we slipped him our milk money, he’d play it in reverse for us, and it caused mass hilarity in the classroom, to the point where the principal would come in to shut us up. Aside from the educational films, grade school was a blur. You could say this week’s film was “How to Crochet a Tea Cozy,” and I’d be on board. There was always something so creepily Stepfordian about the actors in these films that I felt refreshingly normal, except for the strange urge to smoke a cigarette on the edge of a volcano.
I seem to recall a STD movie in gym class where this old guy (well, 30-something is old to high school kids) was fore-shadowed by a set of huge stainless steel rods that were to be shoved up his gonorrhea-plagued dong. Of course we had the Ohio state drivers ed films – the ones that were real footage of accidents. The most gruesome scene I recall from that was the trucker who was hauling steel piping. Apparently he ran head-on into something that caused him and the truck to stop, but the piping continued on through the cab, impailing and mashing him to a nasty end.
Yeah, I had the usual driver’s ed films too. They were just shown as matter of fact…”this is what will happen to you if you screw up while driving!” But I clearly recall, not a movie, but a pamphlet they gave to all of us kids (in my elementary school years) about bicycle safety. One illustration showed a kid on a bike getting hit by a car, then being thrown from the bike and smacking his head on the car’s windshield! What made that worse was that in either 2nd or 3rd grade, our school principle, as a pedestrian, was hit by a car and was killed! He was a really nice guy and we were all stunned when they announced it in school.
20 Biebers! But I feel stronger than that! little faggot
31 Justin Biebers, while I’m at work. I bet I could take out a dozen more on a Saturday with free flowing Golden Elixir!
I don’t remember any forced propaganda films from school, but I quit the filthy habit (school) about 3 months into 10th grade. There was just too much money to be made out in the real world.
I do however remember one of my favorite movie lines of all times from a propaganda film, “BRING ME SOME REEFERS!!!”.
Johnny Dangerously – Your Testicles and You
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9alvLdf5eWw
Chuck in Belpre, yes, it dos sound like a Twilite Zone episode, LOL! but we saw this in maybe 9th grade and the entire class was riveted. I can still recall the whole “dream” sequence and the soldier running to the waiting arms of a woman when ZAP – there goes the noose.
When I was in the fifth grade they showed an anti-drug propaganda file with junkies laying in doorways, frothing and seizing.
Then, they took live rats and shot them up with different drugs, the last one being Heroin which caused the rat to die a frothing, seizing, horrible death; which in turn caused young Karla to blubber until they had to call my mother. Did they only do this in Illinois in 1973?
Anyone else remember a social studies film about an autistic kid named Ronald, who his parents called “Raunchy”??? The film showed him sitting cross-legged on the floor, spinning a plate on edge, then flapping his hands in the air.
The Name Of The Movie Is Son-Rise: A Miracle of Love. I Only Watched It One Time And It Has Stuck In My Mind.
And I can apparently take 25 Biebers, but that’s because they didn’t allow for weapons.
Jeff – these types of edu/info/scare films have been a small obsession of mine for some time now. You’d be suprised at how many are available on DVD. Synapse Films has released an incredible 2-disc set of bloody highway safety films called “Hell’s Highway.” It features some of the aforementioned classics like “Mechanized Death,” “Red Asphalt” and “The Last Prom” in their entirety, but only clips from my personal favorite “Wheels of Tragedy.” The reason why so many of those films took place in Ohio is that many of them were produced by the Ohio State Highway Patrol, who allotted a rather large production budget for them throughout the 60s. Disc two of this set recounts the entire history. I remember that I couldn’t wait for the annual showing of these films in Jr. High – most of them were 16mm prints rented from the classic Bell Labs film archives. Theres also a great series of old educational/instructional films on DVD titled “Educational Archives” that includes many classic drug, hygeine and driver’s ed shorts. I’ve got their two volumes of sex & drugs films that are a total hoot! Jack Stevenson, a film collector and old friend of mine, who now lives in Copenhagen, used to travel around with a carload of old films that he’d amassed over the years, and would program shows across the country that featured classic old films of this type, including many of the unintentionally hilarious/intentionally gory industrial safety films that would depict careless workers losing limbs on table saws and drilling holes through their arms on drillpresses, etc! Great stuff! There’s also a series of films that were available for some time on VHS from Ephemera Films, but I don’t know whether they’re available on DVD format.
You know, now that I think about it, one of the movies we saw in grade school that had an enormous impact on me was a story of a woman who pricked her finger on an old rusty nail while working in her garden that resulted in a horrible, painfully prolonged episode of lockjaw! I remember being horrified of stepping on rusty nails for years after that…
28 biebers, bitch!
Wow. There was some serious stuff I missed out there.
I went to the same schoold from Pre-k through Senior in high school. It wasn’t until I was a Junior that the school had communal VCR’s to show us that stuff, and even then it was too much trouble to sign it out. The teachers just gave us mismatched dictionaries and encyclopedias from the library and told us to turn to the page about “Sex” or “Death” or “Cancer”.
Nothing really incredible.
Oh, and I was a junior in high school in 1999. That is how poor the istrict was. If your weren’t going to school at the parish seat, no body gave a shit about your education.
i cheated my ass off and I’m still only 31 Beeburs (again, don’t really give a crap how he/she spells it).
30 Miles S…hope things have improved since your last post a few months back!!!
I took film history one semester. All we did was watch movies. It was my favorite class.
@ hot fuzz – Hey, Thanks! I don’t even remember what my last post was back then! My situation still hasn’t changed though. After giving up looking for a job, due to no success, I think I’d better start looking some more. My rent is over due, like $5,000+ and although my landlord has been really patient, I know it can’t last much longer. No job, no where else to move. It’s on my mind constantly, but I’m hoping for a miracle…or something!
No traumatizing school films that I can remember – I think the only time one was even shown was when I was in 7th or 8th grade, way too young for driver’s ed, but it was about safe (or in this case not so safe) driving. We were allowed to put our heads down if we didn’t want to watch it, and put my head down I did. I’ve never been good with the real gore, as opposed to the Karo syrup kind.
But when I was a senior in HS, all the girls in the junior and senior classes got to gather in the cafeteria and watch a video about doing self-breast exams. It was both creepy and hilarious because the “star” was this overly made-up chick in her twenties, who examined herself upon this frilly pink bed, in a room that looked like it belonged to a five-year-old princess. Her flying saucer-sized nipples were the source of much amusement to us all.
Oh! And everyone got a small breast made out of some kind of sheer, squishy plastic or gel, with a tiny “tumor” inside that you were supposed to practice on before feeling your own boobs. I still think everyone should have been given a pair of breasts, but I guess it wasn’t in the budget.
Only 21 Biebers? I’m embarrassed 🙁
I remember two videos very vividly.
#1 – “My mom’s having a bayyyyyy beeeee” And that was how the music went for this “documentary”. It reminds me of what you speak of, but I swear to Jesus himself, it was a damn camcorder strapped to this womans knee zoomed in on her crotch. Thankfully I saw this first period while my friend saw it just before lunch. To this day, if you bring that film up while he is eating, he staggers and takes a few minutes to recover before he can eat again.
#2 – “Honking, not always a bad thing”. This gem of an educational film was shown in my drivers ed class. And basically it was some old Q-tip headed dude with a captains hat on, driving around in a convertible honking and waving at people. He would come to a cross walk, stop, honk his horn and wave the people across. The polite wave to the walkers wasn’t enough for this Sea Capt. he needed to honk. And every damn time he would honk, a little caption would jump on the screen like the old Bat Man TV shows saying “Honking, not always a bad thing” or “Honk to say Hello”.
We got a gore movie or three in high school, but I don’t recall there being a huge quantity. The one that sticks out in my mind even now, decades later, is a documentary from history class called ‘Night and Fog’.
I am going to offer this Bieber kid some money to kick my ass. Its kind of a fetish of mine. Don’t judge me.
Movies? Puhleeze.
Our Health teacher demonstrated proper condom use
WITH A BANANA!
8th grade, I think.
“Pinch the tip and roll it down!”
The entire class was in stitches.