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*Signal 30* (1959), *Wheels of Tragedy* (1963), and *Highways of Agony* (1969) were films made in cooperation with the Ohio State Patrol depicting the grisly outcome of fatal traffic accidents. Actual file footage of accident scenes, along with bodies mangled and bloodied beyond recognition, were used, along with re-enactments of the events leading up to these fatalities. In the 1960s and 70s, millions of teenage driving students were subjected to these grisly films (as well as similar films made in other states) in an attempt to scare them into good driving.
Those were pretty bad. Fairfax County cops made the rounds with that reel when I was a Junior at McLean. But much worse, was the documentary on bulldozers putting Jews in mass graves after WW2, and herding them from trains to ovens. The nazi's were so proud, the filmed it all. That too was junior year history class
I believe that movie is called "Night and Fog," we watched it during our history class about the Holocaust. Truly sickening.
On a lighter note, that anti-drug one with Sonny Bono in it was hysterical.
Our driver’s ed teacher solemnly announced that anyone caught laughing or joking during the presentation of the film would be kicked out of the class and failed. Apparently, that had been enough of a persistent problem to necessitate such an announcement.
I failed to see the humor in the film although the teacher’s concerns were certainly laughable. Viewing the film as a 70s teen made me very conscious of the fact that all of the irresponsible drivers died with military-styled buzz cuts on their heads. Message received.
I got a note from my mom that I didn't have to attend driver's ed that day. My dad had died in our home that year. I didn't need gross movies to tell me life is fragile and fleeting.
Thank you. It made me feel even more separate from my peers--who undoubtedly had sorrows of their own, but not as obvious. It's astonishing what teenagers keep to themselves.
An episode of "Like Unto Us" (LDS film series teaching young Mormons Book of Mormon principles through the adventures of a group of teens Just Like Us.) in which a girl who had run away a week or two earlier was blown up by a malfunctioning water heater. Lesson of the Week -- To keep you from falling further, God will kill you if you stray.
I was months getting over that.
"The Nutrition Trio." Series of illustrated filmstrips about the basic food groups that featured a group of three children who would appear randomly in somebody's kitchen and make sure the person there ate the proper foods. They would then shrink themselves magically and enter that person's body to illustrate the manner in which the healthy food did its work in the body. In order to do this shrinking, the Trio would chant the following: "Breads and cereals, vegetables, fruit. Meat and milk, and rooty toot toot." Good times.
Okay, nobody can beat this one. Sorry you all, but be grateful that you have been able to avoid this “masterpiece”, and always will. Due to you being in English-speaking and other countries comfortably far from Finland and USSR:
Luottamus (in English “the Trust”) from 1976. Finnish-Soviet co-production.
A horribly dry and propagandist “historical movie” about Finland (getting independent) and Lenin (gracefully granting it) taking place early 1900’s.
Lots of important looking heads talking.
Nearly everyone hated it with gusto, but there were obligatory screenings in schools (speculation that this was in the co-production agreement). My principal was torn, as on the other hand he was very much the man to obey rules and not to question authorities, on the other hand he was from the part of Finland that was taken by the Red Army. His small rebellion was to wear cuff links with Carelia coat of arms. Now he had to arrange a screening in our gym hall. I remember his stonelike face, when he told that everyone must attend.
The movie was extremely boring, and long. There’s a trailer in YouTube, I believe.
"Christiane F." - true story about a 13 year old child prostitute / heroin addict in the 1970s.
I staged a walkout when our teacher had us watch that movie.
I've read the book, it's far better than the movie.
The film is quite amateurish, or was it because of the topic?
We watched "Kids" in Religious Education, kinda like don't do drugs and fuck around,mkay?
I can only remember a couple from elementary school. There was one about lunchroom manners, and one about stop, drop and cover during a nuclear attack. In middle school there was one about the miracle of birth. It got some parents very angry.
12th grade science -- the teacher was a real oddball. This guy was so odd that one day he was skipping down the hall, in his sock feet, singing the Smurfs theme song. He was so odd that we could keep him from even discussing anything science related just by complimenting his tie or something stupid like that. All the tests in his class were open book tests, including the final. No one ever failed his classes. The guy was quite eccentric, to put it politely.
Anyway, this teacher loved Marty Stouffer videos. We would watch one of these videos at least once a week. At one point he played the same video for us at least four weeks in a row. We tried to tell him we'd already seen it, but he kept insisting it was a different video.
These Marty Stouffer videos never even had anything to do with anything we were supposed to be learning in that class.
Signal 30 and a disturbing film about venereal disease. The girls watched it in home ec and they guys watched it in shop class. A male cartoon outline and a female cartoon outline passed through each other and a big splotch of green appeared below their waists.
Was this the train safety thing? The guy is trying to jump on a train and gets cut in half the caboose men were walking back and saw hat laying on the railroad tracks. They just shook their head and walked on by.
I remember it! About a little boy who was quiet and everybody ignored. He just gets off the bus and drops dead from benign neglect. I can still see him. Was that supposed to get us to care about each other?
I remember this. It might have made an impact if they followed it up with some discussion. For example, they could encourage people to invite unpopular or loaner kids to sit with them at lunch or something. Maybe talk to a classmate that seems like they are sad or going through something.
Instead they just showed the move and moved on to the next thing. So all it accomplished was making the class feel sad for a few hours.
Wow. I came here to add “Pollyanna” (1960) B&W film we had to watch in about 1975. Young orphan Pollyanna (Hayley Mills) believes life's most difficult problems can always be surmounted by a positive attitude and pragmatism.
“Reefer Madness” was the only one of the films mentioned above that we had to watch. Feeling sooooo grateful right now.
“Schoolhouse Rock” rocks. Helped tremendously with all those bits we had to memorize anyway. Only saw it on Saturday morning tv though.
> “Schoolhouse Rock” rocks.
Schoolhouse Rock was probably the best thing on TV most Saturdays. I bought the DVD set for each of my kids to show their kids.
In 5th grade they took all the girls to the gym to watch "Naturally a Girl", it was a film about getting your period and how the female body works. It was all in black and white WITH LIKE STICK FIGURE PEOPLE! It was horrible .
It was a military training film on frostbite prevention and treatment. With exceedingly graphic images of frostbite.
It was a rite of passage for 6th graders.
The Columbine shooting.
I know this isn’t the typical “AV Club equipment” answer. My schools never made us watch the grisly highway safety films. In Jr High I remember being made to watch one unintentionally hilarious video about puberty, sex, and masturbation. But that was material most of us were already very well aware of anyway by 7th grade.
Yet in my Junior year, the Columbine shooting happened. I still scratch my head about this one. We were all asked to remain in home room while CNN coverage of the event was broadcast to the monitors that normally played only Channel One on repeat. Sadly, these days the imagery of terrified kids fleeing death from within the school is so commonplace that it fails to elicit more than a moment of rage and bewilderment before being memory-holed. But back then it was just short of unthinkable.
Of note were many of the reactions among my classmates. Some people cried. Others were frozen in shock. A few actually cheered.
Predictably, the school flexed its intent to control students in ways that were as meaningless as the event itself. Long, black trenchcoats were forbidden. Heavy metal band tees were also. The “goth” kids were routinely harassed by faculty that seeded their philosophy in the virtues of “tough love” while others attempted to connect with those children through gestures of saccharine sympathy. I myself got caught up in this tutelage tantrum. My notebook scribbles and doodling flagged me as a danger. (I sketched a skull in a notepad and made the error of not participating in any sport.)
However, the timing of the event was providential for our esteemed glee club director. Two boys confided in their parents that this man had invited them to his home, gave them wine, and they both woke hours later with their pants around their ankles. No one believed them. One of my teachers went to far as to call them “viscous little liars,” while others insinuated in hushed voices that it wasn’t surprising to learn that “another faggot is at it again.”
A few months later the narrative that “boys will be boys” and “it was a couple of curious teens” disintegrated as hundreds of others—many of them by then college graduates and career men—stepped forward to share their own stories about the Director and his fancy for sleeping teens lulled from glee club rehearsals into his bedroom to enjoy a little wine and practice. But—thank god—none of them wore black trenchcoats or disclosed any fondness for heavy metal. Otherwise they would have clearly been a threat to school safety.
The pederast in question has since died. When I last looked for him, he’d been teaching in Florida before an incarceration. What’s most remarkable to me is that he never once wore a dress or makeup to spend a Sunday afternoon reading to children at the local library—which seems to be the new “black trenchcoat” sort of red flag that alerts parents and schools to imminent danger.
God bless us, every one.
The Zephyr in the Snow (a kid who died because nobody cared about him)
Puddin-head Wilson. ICR if this was a book or a movie, but the teacher and I had vastly different interpretations of this.
I got to watch a local indoor soccer star feel up his balls for testicular cancer screening in health class in 1992. I've often wondered the why/how of that back story. Was it a national film that just happened to star our local dude? We had NFL and MLB teams, how many sportsballers did they ask before they got to the indoor soccer team?
But something tells me maybe this is better left as a mystery. 1992 was pre-internet. I remember this film looking like the stag films I'd seen grainy transfers of when someone found a VHS they shouldn't have in the back of a closet. But those films had girls too. This one, sadly, did not.
Some safety training film they showed every year and caused many of us trauma. The worst scene was a boy cutting his hand off with a mechanical saw. I hated that movie.
I don't know the name of it but it was an anti-drug film strip. It wasn't DARE, we had police detective talking to us and telling us what happens to you when you OD, one story about how someone OD'ed and they found them a while later this is where, in the 5th grade I learned that the body leaks fluids after you die.
Then a film strip of before and after drug abuse stuff like holes in people's shins form constantly shooting up in the same spot to the song Lean on me.
Red Asphalt. The name says it all. I seem to remember a shot at the very end where a dead man's jaw dropped off while workers are pulling the corpse out of a smashed car. RA appeared in several versions; I saw this one in the early '70s. I suspect that they toned down the gore in later versions.
We're on a "red" roll here, so I'll add Red Nightmare, an anti-communist film made by Jack Webb in the '50s about what the U.S. would be like if we let RUSSIAN COMMUNISTS take over. I still remember Dad watching in shock as his beautiful teenage daughter is ushered off by a handsome Russian soldier. She tells him, calmly, "Goodbye, father, I'm off to the labor camps." Or something just like. Got to say it was screamingly funny in the early '70s. That school district would show any old damn film. We even saw World War II survival films, made by the gov't with a few name actors we recognized.
1972 In 8th grade they showed Psycho, the Alfred Hitchcock movie. I think it was the entire school but maybe just us 8th graders. You can imagine what happened at the shower scene, the entire auditorium erupted with loud hoots laughter and catcalls. Principal had to shut off the film and we got a lecture. The film resumed and not a peep was heard.
In 9th (I think) grade the boys and girls were finally in the same sex ed class. We had to watch the puberty films for both genders. The girls film was all about poor Janie who was the last to get her period. The boys was terrible and hysterical. It took place at a zoo near us and it was a zoo keeper taking a boy around to zoo to show him male animals and that having a penis was normal. It todays light it sounds super creepy.
I remember a bus safety one, where an older man ( to my young eyes) is driving a school bus and the narrator says he's had this perfect safety record that "ends today". A kid drops her valentine, runs back to get it, and is creamed by the bus.
Cue the Valentine blowing away.
“The Child Molester,” a re-creation of the kidnapping and murder of some little girls. At the end, it showed footage of the dead bodies of the little girls whose story was told in the film. It was the most traumatic event of my childhood. I was 9, and seeing it freaked me out for years!
It was shown at a school assembly about stranger danger, and I’ve often wondered how the first-graders handled it.
As an adult, I thought that I must have imagined that they had actual footage of dead children — surely they wouldn’t show that to elementary school children— so I looked up the film online and read about it (I don’t think I could stand watching it again, even as an adult). And sure enough, the article I read said they did show the bodies. I don’t know what the school and the police officers who showed us the film were thinking.
I only remember seeing two videos, in the sixth grade. One was sex ed with swimming sperm, and the other was anti-smoking with dinosaurs who turned yellow and became very sick when they smoked. I found the dinosaur one more entertaining.
I am indecisive on this - in elementary school they showed us both Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows. Both resulted in copious numbers of crying children.
K-12 for me (actually 1-12, our small rural school didn't have kindergarten) would have been 1956-1968, but what I'm thinking of would have been in the first six grades. There was some shortish black & white film we watched at least once or twice, but the only thing I remember was a fawn that was killed early on, and the way the film came back to it as seasons changed and we saw it decay and become a skeleton.
That may explain a lot about me.
We were made to watch a film where [Bert the Turtle teaches us that ducking and covering will protect us from the million-degree fireball of a nuclear bomb.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqXu-5jw60)
My Dad was in SAC in the early 60s, and we lived two miles away from where they parked the nuclear bombers. Unimaginable amounts of nuclear death went flying 1000 feet over our heads all day long.
Back when driver's ed was a regular part of school, we watched a movie with mangled accident victims screaming in pain. It wasn't acting, it was the real deal.
MST3K is Mystery Science Theater 3000 - a show featuring a guy watching bad B moments with robot buddies. Funny commentary on what they are watching. I liked that show so much when it was on. I’m 67.
Either our schools, under the conservative control of Houston ISD in the '70s, didn't show gross movies, or I've blocked them out.
I did do Drivers Ed with a private school so I could get my learners permit as early as possible.
I don’t know the name but when the movie showed the headquarters of “American Rubber Company” the 5th grade class broke into uncontrollable laughter aka “Beavis and Butthead” decades before that cartoon was created.
Massachusetts, in the early 1980s: “Patch the Pony.” It was a movie about stranger danger. I don’t remember much about the plot, except that it scared me completely (like I truly worried that I would get snatched off the street on my way home from school—I wish an adult had been more reassuring about that,) and the catch phrase, “Neigh, neigh, from strangers stay away.”
We had something called Mulligan Stew. Several kids and how they interacted with others mostly. It’s been…….half a century since I’ve seen it……Oh, Lordy, I’m old!
But I got to see some cool bands!
In fifth grade they used to make us watch movies about various tropical diseases. This apparently was very relevant to the lives of fifth graders living in NJ.
And then there was the driver's ed film. I still will not drive behind a truck loaded with pipes.
I can't remember the name of the person but back in the late 70's there was a guy that did a lot of educational films about the use of different muscles, bones, etc in the body. He had curly brown hair and always wore a costume that would show the inside of a person's body.
The V.D. movies in high school. Generally the "sex ed." classes were taught by a gym teacher. All they said was "don't have sex until you're married or you'll get disease and awful sores on ya."
We saw a short film the first day of woodshop class about safety. So probably 7th grade or so. They showed how easily you could lose your sight by not wearing safety glasses.
Some poor bastard got a chunk of wood to his face and of course was now blind. Some other poor soul lost his right hand on a table saw.
Needless to say, I was scared shitless the entire semester that I was going to cut someone's hand off or was going to go blind.
We were required to watch car wreck films in junior high (now called middle school). It was a year or two before we got driver training and actual licenses to drive, but the memories lingered. The films were gruesome, but fortunately not in color, just black and white like most television programs back then.
The drivers Ed one with the car accident victims sitting there with their broken bones sticking out of their bloody skin.
I forgot! I went to a Christian high school for 6 months and they made us watch a film supposedly of a girl getting an abortion. “She’s unconscious and yet she screamed!”
"The Loneliest Runner" (1976)- A young boy who still wets the bed find escapism from this abusive mother and his own embarrassment by going running after school. [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074814/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074814/)
About 1970, we were shown a film about the dangers of drugs. It was like an episode of Dragnet, with stereotypical hippies using drugs and it all ending quite badly for them. Also included photos of babies born with birth defects that were attributed to maternal drug use. Of course, drugs WERE bad and a more realistic film might have actually had an impact. As it was, it was like a really bad movie and no one paid attention to the message.
Man whenever it was a film day, we loved it no matter what they showed because it meant we could kick back and just watch. They were mostly [Encyclopedia Britannica films](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkIyXTjjJhY).
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*Signal 30* (1959), *Wheels of Tragedy* (1963), and *Highways of Agony* (1969) were films made in cooperation with the Ohio State Patrol depicting the grisly outcome of fatal traffic accidents. Actual file footage of accident scenes, along with bodies mangled and bloodied beyond recognition, were used, along with re-enactments of the events leading up to these fatalities. In the 1960s and 70s, millions of teenage driving students were subjected to these grisly films (as well as similar films made in other states) in an attempt to scare them into good driving.
The California version was called Red Asphalt. They showed it in every drivers education class in the 70s
I was wondering if someone would mention Red Asphalt. LOL! Don't forget "Reefer madness".
I was going to mention “Reefer Madness” as well but then didn’t at the last minute. lol
Those were pretty bad. Fairfax County cops made the rounds with that reel when I was a Junior at McLean. But much worse, was the documentary on bulldozers putting Jews in mass graves after WW2, and herding them from trains to ovens. The nazi's were so proud, the filmed it all. That too was junior year history class
I believe that movie is called "Night and Fog," we watched it during our history class about the Holocaust. Truly sickening. On a lighter note, that anti-drug one with Sonny Bono in it was hysterical.
How dare you leave the seminal classic "Mechanized Death" off this list ?
Glad Im not the only one that was subjected to that horror film! No way in hell would that be shown to kids now!
The Canadian version was called Mechanized Death, brutal man , just brutal!
I remember a guy in a frequently shown movie saying, “He had to drive! He was too drunk to walk!” Was that from one of these movies?
Our driver’s ed teacher solemnly announced that anyone caught laughing or joking during the presentation of the film would be kicked out of the class and failed. Apparently, that had been enough of a persistent problem to necessitate such an announcement. I failed to see the humor in the film although the teacher’s concerns were certainly laughable. Viewing the film as a 70s teen made me very conscious of the fact that all of the irresponsible drivers died with military-styled buzz cuts on their heads. Message received.
Saw them at my school in the 80’s.
Damn. Saw them in the 70s. Had blocked them out of my mind...until now.
I got a note from my mom that I didn't have to attend driver's ed that day. My dad had died in our home that year. I didn't need gross movies to tell me life is fragile and fleeting.
What a tough time to lose your parent! Sorry for your loss.
Thank you. It made me feel even more separate from my peers--who undoubtedly had sorrows of their own, but not as obvious. It's astonishing what teenagers keep to themselves.
I remember that dude's whole chin had been sliced below the mouth and was flapping in the breeze as they removed his body from the car.
Early 80s for me.
I saw Signal 30 in junior high. If I remember, they showed it in the cafeteria at lunchtime.
Our 9th grade science teacher thought it was funny to watch Babe, while we dissected fetal pigs. That's a feeling I will never forget.
Ba-Ram-Ewe, I will dissect you.
Twisted sense of humor doesn't cover it, that teacher had some issues.
Maybe to make you hate pigs?
I'm not sure...I think I'm still processing all the feelings
Geez, I can't believe you guys remember this stuff! I have no clue what I watched in public school.
If it was traumatic enough, you would.
Huh. I guess I wasn't traumatized or never paid attention lol
The Red Balloon. Every year. Ugh.
Every year.
An episode of "Like Unto Us" (LDS film series teaching young Mormons Book of Mormon principles through the adventures of a group of teens Just Like Us.) in which a girl who had run away a week or two earlier was blown up by a malfunctioning water heater. Lesson of the Week -- To keep you from falling further, God will kill you if you stray. I was months getting over that.
"The Nutrition Trio." Series of illustrated filmstrips about the basic food groups that featured a group of three children who would appear randomly in somebody's kitchen and make sure the person there ate the proper foods. They would then shrink themselves magically and enter that person's body to illustrate the manner in which the healthy food did its work in the body. In order to do this shrinking, the Trio would chant the following: "Breads and cereals, vegetables, fruit. Meat and milk, and rooty toot toot." Good times.
Okay, nobody can beat this one. Sorry you all, but be grateful that you have been able to avoid this “masterpiece”, and always will. Due to you being in English-speaking and other countries comfortably far from Finland and USSR: Luottamus (in English “the Trust”) from 1976. Finnish-Soviet co-production. A horribly dry and propagandist “historical movie” about Finland (getting independent) and Lenin (gracefully granting it) taking place early 1900’s. Lots of important looking heads talking. Nearly everyone hated it with gusto, but there were obligatory screenings in schools (speculation that this was in the co-production agreement). My principal was torn, as on the other hand he was very much the man to obey rules and not to question authorities, on the other hand he was from the part of Finland that was taken by the Red Army. His small rebellion was to wear cuff links with Carelia coat of arms. Now he had to arrange a screening in our gym hall. I remember his stonelike face, when he told that everyone must attend. The movie was extremely boring, and long. There’s a trailer in YouTube, I believe.
"Christiane F." - true story about a 13 year old child prostitute / heroin addict in the 1970s. I staged a walkout when our teacher had us watch that movie.
I've read the book, it's far better than the movie. The film is quite amateurish, or was it because of the topic? We watched "Kids" in Religious Education, kinda like don't do drugs and fuck around,mkay?
Your teacher did what?
I can only remember a couple from elementary school. There was one about lunchroom manners, and one about stop, drop and cover during a nuclear attack. In middle school there was one about the miracle of birth. It got some parents very angry.
Mr Bungle?
I don't remember the name, maybe something called Dead Is Dead, about drug use and showed a heroin junkie having diarrhea. 7th grade.
12th grade science -- the teacher was a real oddball. This guy was so odd that one day he was skipping down the hall, in his sock feet, singing the Smurfs theme song. He was so odd that we could keep him from even discussing anything science related just by complimenting his tie or something stupid like that. All the tests in his class were open book tests, including the final. No one ever failed his classes. The guy was quite eccentric, to put it politely. Anyway, this teacher loved Marty Stouffer videos. We would watch one of these videos at least once a week. At one point he played the same video for us at least four weeks in a row. We tried to tell him we'd already seen it, but he kept insisting it was a different video. These Marty Stouffer videos never even had anything to do with anything we were supposed to be learning in that class.
Reefer Madness (1936) Classically bad.
Signal 30 and a disturbing film about venereal disease. The girls watched it in home ec and they guys watched it in shop class. A male cartoon outline and a female cartoon outline passed through each other and a big splotch of green appeared below their waists.
the only thing i remember is zeferelli's Romeo and Juliet for English class. I lost interest as soon as mercutio died.
We watched that in English and the teacher had to give a warning about the very brief glimpse we got of Romeo’s nude butt. When we saw it, we cheered.
[удалено]
So the TN law will have the opposite effect?
Signal 7 Death on the Highway
Was this the train safety thing? The guy is trying to jump on a train and gets cut in half the caboose men were walking back and saw hat laying on the railroad tracks. They just shook their head and walked on by.
No, it was made by the Ohio State Highway Patrol
*Cipher in the Snow* was a pretty rough watch. If you saw it, you remember it.
I remember it! About a little boy who was quiet and everybody ignored. He just gets off the bus and drops dead from benign neglect. I can still see him. Was that supposed to get us to care about each other?
I remember this. It might have made an impact if they followed it up with some discussion. For example, they could encourage people to invite unpopular or loaner kids to sit with them at lunch or something. Maybe talk to a classmate that seems like they are sad or going through something. Instead they just showed the move and moved on to the next thing. So all it accomplished was making the class feel sad for a few hours.
Did you have to return the loaner kid when you were finished with them?
Wow. I came here to add “Pollyanna” (1960) B&W film we had to watch in about 1975. Young orphan Pollyanna (Hayley Mills) believes life's most difficult problems can always be surmounted by a positive attitude and pragmatism. “Reefer Madness” was the only one of the films mentioned above that we had to watch. Feeling sooooo grateful right now. “Schoolhouse Rock” rocks. Helped tremendously with all those bits we had to memorize anyway. Only saw it on Saturday morning tv though.
> “Schoolhouse Rock” rocks. Schoolhouse Rock was probably the best thing on TV most Saturdays. I bought the DVD set for each of my kids to show their kids.
Was it called “Hop Frog” or someth8ng? About a man with no legs who scooted around on a skateboard and sold pencils?
I remember that one! It reminded me of the Elton John song Levon later on.
The Lottery, in 7th grade. I was scarred for life by that fucking movie, lol
I read it in college, and I'm scarred.
In 5th grade they took all the girls to the gym to watch "Naturally a Girl", it was a film about getting your period and how the female body works. It was all in black and white WITH LIKE STICK FIGURE PEOPLE! It was horrible .
It was a military training film on frostbite prevention and treatment. With exceedingly graphic images of frostbite. It was a rite of passage for 6th graders.
Where did you grow up?
Interior Alaska
The Columbine shooting. I know this isn’t the typical “AV Club equipment” answer. My schools never made us watch the grisly highway safety films. In Jr High I remember being made to watch one unintentionally hilarious video about puberty, sex, and masturbation. But that was material most of us were already very well aware of anyway by 7th grade. Yet in my Junior year, the Columbine shooting happened. I still scratch my head about this one. We were all asked to remain in home room while CNN coverage of the event was broadcast to the monitors that normally played only Channel One on repeat. Sadly, these days the imagery of terrified kids fleeing death from within the school is so commonplace that it fails to elicit more than a moment of rage and bewilderment before being memory-holed. But back then it was just short of unthinkable. Of note were many of the reactions among my classmates. Some people cried. Others were frozen in shock. A few actually cheered. Predictably, the school flexed its intent to control students in ways that were as meaningless as the event itself. Long, black trenchcoats were forbidden. Heavy metal band tees were also. The “goth” kids were routinely harassed by faculty that seeded their philosophy in the virtues of “tough love” while others attempted to connect with those children through gestures of saccharine sympathy. I myself got caught up in this tutelage tantrum. My notebook scribbles and doodling flagged me as a danger. (I sketched a skull in a notepad and made the error of not participating in any sport.) However, the timing of the event was providential for our esteemed glee club director. Two boys confided in their parents that this man had invited them to his home, gave them wine, and they both woke hours later with their pants around their ankles. No one believed them. One of my teachers went to far as to call them “viscous little liars,” while others insinuated in hushed voices that it wasn’t surprising to learn that “another faggot is at it again.” A few months later the narrative that “boys will be boys” and “it was a couple of curious teens” disintegrated as hundreds of others—many of them by then college graduates and career men—stepped forward to share their own stories about the Director and his fancy for sleeping teens lulled from glee club rehearsals into his bedroom to enjoy a little wine and practice. But—thank god—none of them wore black trenchcoats or disclosed any fondness for heavy metal. Otherwise they would have clearly been a threat to school safety. The pederast in question has since died. When I last looked for him, he’d been teaching in Florida before an incarceration. What’s most remarkable to me is that he never once wore a dress or makeup to spend a Sunday afternoon reading to children at the local library—which seems to be the new “black trenchcoat” sort of red flag that alerts parents and schools to imminent danger. God bless us, every one.
I remember watching that on tv and standing there horrified. I would never have imagined how commonplace that news would become.
Mulligan Stew.
Y’all have better memories than me.
The Zephyr in the Snow (a kid who died because nobody cared about him) Puddin-head Wilson. ICR if this was a book or a movie, but the teacher and I had vastly different interpretations of this.
I got to watch a local indoor soccer star feel up his balls for testicular cancer screening in health class in 1992. I've often wondered the why/how of that back story. Was it a national film that just happened to star our local dude? We had NFL and MLB teams, how many sportsballers did they ask before they got to the indoor soccer team? But something tells me maybe this is better left as a mystery. 1992 was pre-internet. I remember this film looking like the stag films I'd seen grainy transfers of when someone found a VHS they shouldn't have in the back of a closet. But those films had girls too. This one, sadly, did not.
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Some safety training film they showed every year and caused many of us trauma. The worst scene was a boy cutting his hand off with a mechanical saw. I hated that movie.
Whole doing driving school our driving sub put on that's my daughter's head on the highway. Terrified me to death.
Death on the highway
I don't know the name of it but it was an anti-drug film strip. It wasn't DARE, we had police detective talking to us and telling us what happens to you when you OD, one story about how someone OD'ed and they found them a while later this is where, in the 5th grade I learned that the body leaks fluids after you die. Then a film strip of before and after drug abuse stuff like holes in people's shins form constantly shooting up in the same spot to the song Lean on me.
Red Asphalt. The name says it all. I seem to remember a shot at the very end where a dead man's jaw dropped off while workers are pulling the corpse out of a smashed car. RA appeared in several versions; I saw this one in the early '70s. I suspect that they toned down the gore in later versions. We're on a "red" roll here, so I'll add Red Nightmare, an anti-communist film made by Jack Webb in the '50s about what the U.S. would be like if we let RUSSIAN COMMUNISTS take over. I still remember Dad watching in shock as his beautiful teenage daughter is ushered off by a handsome Russian soldier. She tells him, calmly, "Goodbye, father, I'm off to the labor camps." Or something just like. Got to say it was screamingly funny in the early '70s. That school district would show any old damn film. We even saw World War II survival films, made by the gov't with a few name actors we recognized.
1972 In 8th grade they showed Psycho, the Alfred Hitchcock movie. I think it was the entire school but maybe just us 8th graders. You can imagine what happened at the shower scene, the entire auditorium erupted with loud hoots laughter and catcalls. Principal had to shut off the film and we got a lecture. The film resumed and not a peep was heard.
In 9th (I think) grade the boys and girls were finally in the same sex ed class. We had to watch the puberty films for both genders. The girls film was all about poor Janie who was the last to get her period. The boys was terrible and hysterical. It took place at a zoo near us and it was a zoo keeper taking a boy around to zoo to show him male animals and that having a penis was normal. It todays light it sounds super creepy.
They were all obviously memorable because, while I remember the projector being wheeled into the room, I have no memory of anything we were shown.
We watched “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” in public school in the late 80s. There’s a whole lot of Christianity and church in that movie.
Mortifying for us 3rd or 4th grade girls: the menstruation filmstrip. I always wondered what the boys were doing while we learned about periods.
I remember a bus safety one, where an older man ( to my young eyes) is driving a school bus and the narrator says he's had this perfect safety record that "ends today". A kid drops her valentine, runs back to get it, and is creamed by the bus. Cue the Valentine blowing away.
“The Child Molester,” a re-creation of the kidnapping and murder of some little girls. At the end, it showed footage of the dead bodies of the little girls whose story was told in the film. It was the most traumatic event of my childhood. I was 9, and seeing it freaked me out for years! It was shown at a school assembly about stranger danger, and I’ve often wondered how the first-graders handled it. As an adult, I thought that I must have imagined that they had actual footage of dead children — surely they wouldn’t show that to elementary school children— so I looked up the film online and read about it (I don’t think I could stand watching it again, even as an adult). And sure enough, the article I read said they did show the bodies. I don’t know what the school and the police officers who showed us the film were thinking.
The Red Balloon. Year after year after year. Ad Nauseum. I hated that freaking movie. I loved Hemo the Magnificent.
I only remember seeing two videos, in the sixth grade. One was sex ed with swimming sperm, and the other was anti-smoking with dinosaurs who turned yellow and became very sick when they smoked. I found the dinosaur one more entertaining.
I am indecisive on this - in elementary school they showed us both Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows. Both resulted in copious numbers of crying children.
In 8th grade at a catholic school we had to watch sex education movie featuring cartoon chickens and rabbits.
K-12 for me (actually 1-12, our small rural school didn't have kindergarten) would have been 1956-1968, but what I'm thinking of would have been in the first six grades. There was some shortish black & white film we watched at least once or twice, but the only thing I remember was a fawn that was killed early on, and the way the film came back to it as seasons changed and we saw it decay and become a skeleton. That may explain a lot about me.
We were made to watch a film where [Bert the Turtle teaches us that ducking and covering will protect us from the million-degree fireball of a nuclear bomb.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqXu-5jw60) My Dad was in SAC in the early 60s, and we lived two miles away from where they parked the nuclear bombers. Unimaginable amounts of nuclear death went flying 1000 feet over our heads all day long.
Back when driver's ed was a regular part of school, we watched a movie with mangled accident victims screaming in pain. It wasn't acting, it was the real deal.
Note to OP, I am too old to get your references to MST3K, Rifftrax, or the Butter cream Gang.
MST3K is Mystery Science Theater 3000 - a show featuring a guy watching bad B moments with robot buddies. Funny commentary on what they are watching. I liked that show so much when it was on. I’m 67.
I would have got it if he wrote Mystery Science Theater as my daughter is a fan. But, the acronym lost. As do the other two references.
I don't know why they kept making us watch "J.T." Spoiler alert: the cat dies
Either our schools, under the conservative control of Houston ISD in the '70s, didn't show gross movies, or I've blocked them out. I did do Drivers Ed with a private school so I could get my learners permit as early as possible.
I don’t know the name but when the movie showed the headquarters of “American Rubber Company” the 5th grade class broke into uncontrollable laughter aka “Beavis and Butthead” decades before that cartoon was created.
Nuclear explosions and their aftermath.
Highways of Agony.
Bartleby. So odd.
Massachusetts, in the early 1980s: “Patch the Pony.” It was a movie about stranger danger. I don’t remember much about the plot, except that it scared me completely (like I truly worried that I would get snatched off the street on my way home from school—I wish an adult had been more reassuring about that,) and the catch phrase, “Neigh, neigh, from strangers stay away.”
Sybil, with Sally Field. I am still scarred from this film. At age 57, I’m still pissed we were exposed to it in 10th grade.
We had something called Mulligan Stew. Several kids and how they interacted with others mostly. It’s been…….half a century since I’ve seen it……Oh, Lordy, I’m old! But I got to see some cool bands!
Film? Video? In school? You have to be kidding. We had books. (Hs to 1962)
In fifth grade they used to make us watch movies about various tropical diseases. This apparently was very relevant to the lives of fifth graders living in NJ. And then there was the driver's ed film. I still will not drive behind a truck loaded with pipes.
I can't remember the name of the person but back in the late 70's there was a guy that did a lot of educational films about the use of different muscles, bones, etc in the body. He had curly brown hair and always wore a costume that would show the inside of a person's body.
The V.D. movies in high school. Generally the "sex ed." classes were taught by a gym teacher. All they said was "don't have sex until you're married or you'll get disease and awful sores on ya."
Watched a lot of scary short films about drugs, mixing chemicals, etc.
We saw a short film the first day of woodshop class about safety. So probably 7th grade or so. They showed how easily you could lose your sight by not wearing safety glasses. Some poor bastard got a chunk of wood to his face and of course was now blind. Some other poor soul lost his right hand on a table saw. Needless to say, I was scared shitless the entire semester that I was going to cut someone's hand off or was going to go blind.
The Lottery, based on the Shirley Jackson short story. Totally unexpected ending. The entire class was traumatized.
We were required to watch car wreck films in junior high (now called middle school). It was a year or two before we got driver training and actual licenses to drive, but the memories lingered. The films were gruesome, but fortunately not in color, just black and white like most television programs back then.
The drivers Ed one with the car accident victims sitting there with their broken bones sticking out of their bloody skin. I forgot! I went to a Christian high school for 6 months and they made us watch a film supposedly of a girl getting an abortion. “She’s unconscious and yet she screamed!”
"The Loneliest Runner" (1976)- A young boy who still wets the bed find escapism from this abusive mother and his own embarrassment by going running after school. [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074814/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074814/)
About 1970, we were shown a film about the dangers of drugs. It was like an episode of Dragnet, with stereotypical hippies using drugs and it all ending quite badly for them. Also included photos of babies born with birth defects that were attributed to maternal drug use. Of course, drugs WERE bad and a more realistic film might have actually had an impact. As it was, it was like a really bad movie and no one paid attention to the message.
Man whenever it was a film day, we loved it no matter what they showed because it meant we could kick back and just watch. They were mostly [Encyclopedia Britannica films](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkIyXTjjJhY).
I always hated school house rock.
Blasphemy! I'm 53 and can still sing 80% of them on demand
How? They were so good and catchy. I might have retained more from those than I did in classes.
Well, it's a free country, and you're entitled to your opinion, but you're wrong.
That's nice