Oddball Films presents Film Under the Influence - Vintage Drug and Alcohol Scare Films, a program of mind-expanding, terror-intending and hilarity-inducing short 16mm educational films about the dangers of drugs. It's a night of drunk embarrassing moms, rats on drugs, LSD freak-outs, bongo-beating beatniks, piles of pills, afterschool specials, and tons of hilarious new finds from the archive. These classroom classics from the 1960s through the 1980s were meant to scare the pants off the junior-high set but probably encouraged as many to experiment with drugs and alcohol as it discouraged. Join the "now generation" with their wacky tobacky, hallucinogens and goofballs in the mega-hip and stylish Drug Abuse: The Chemical Tomb (1969). One shaggy-haired pre-teen boy has a lot of questions but doesn't get a whole lot of answers in the oddly graphic What Do Drugs Do? (1971). Amanda Wyss from Nightmare on Elm Street has a nightmare of a drunk mother who passes out, ruins parents' day and stumbles into the school play in the ABC Afterschool Special She Drinks a Little (1981). Drop a tab of acid and sing along with the LSD song in the mind-bending hallucinogenic scare film LSD 25 (1967). Everyone's favorite pot-smoking and crime-fighting dog is back in the insane Canadian cartoon Caninabis (1979) and a bunch of drugged-up rats nod off, fall over and run into walls in a clip from Narcotics: The Inside Story (1967). Plus! The acid-soaked trailer for Easy Rider (1969), a barrel full of drug and alcohol PSAs including one from the "Fonz" himself Henry Winkler, an all-star alcoholic spectacular Drink, Drank, Drunk (1974) with Carol Burnett, Morgan Freeman and more for the early birds and more sobering surprises!
"This is the now generation... The age of bobby socks is gone"A super groovy all around drug scare film for the teens and college kids, specifically the "now generation". This howler includes pot parties, kids huffing glue, groovy psychedelic shindigs, LSD freakouts, bongo music and more!
LSD-25 (Color, 1967)
A trip to the morgue was never this easy! This psychedelic scare film imitates cinema verite and television news techniques to propagandize its moralizing message of misinformation, fear and tragedy. Narrated by an LSD “molecule” “LSD-25” begins with teens gyrating in an underlit nightclub while a fake psychedelic band sings the “LSD-25” theme!
Drown, drown out your mind
You think you're seeing things I know you're blind
A million bright colors explode in your head
Today you're high, tomorrow you're dead
She Drinks a Little (Color, 1981)
A sobering ABC Afterschool Special starring Amanda Wyss (Nightmare on Elm Street) as a pretty teen girl suffering from her mother's embarrassing drinking problem. After her mother (played by veteran actress Bonnie Bartlett) lushes it up for parents' day, passes out on the living room floor in front of company and gets up on stage after her big debut in the school play, Cindy has had enough and decides to join Ala-teen. The scene-by-scene inspiration for yet another episode of Strangers with Candy.
What Do Drugs Do? (Color, 1971)
A pretty shocking short for the elementary school set with a whole smorgasbord of tantalizing-looking drugs displayed and used on screen (including a heroin scene straight out of Trainspotting). There aren't many facts used to bolster their argument and few warnings except "you never know".
Narcotics: The Inside Story (1967, excerpt)
Watch as lab rats take drugs and get crazy running into walls, dozing off, and falling over. These rats look like they're having one hell of a time!Caninabis - The Junky Dog (Color, 1979) Image
Yes, you read that right: CANINABIS! This head-scratcher from the National Film Board of Canada chronicles the animated exploits of a scruffy street dog, who develops a taste (and smell) for that sticky icky icky, but uses his powers to help the police, where he is rewarded with huge joints for every drug bust. But when the weed starts playing tricks on his mind, the scruffy mutt drops the ball and ends up on the street again, chasing tailpipes for one more high!
For the Early Birds:Drink, Drank, Drunk (Color, 1974) Image
An all-star WQED production on alcoholism hosted by Carol Burnett with cameos by Morgan Freeman, Joe Bologna, Renee Taylor and more with alcoholic-themed game shows, melodramas, news briefs, and more.Curator’s BiographyKat 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 FilmsOddball 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.
