Oddball Films presents Learn your Lesson from the 1940s: An Antique Shockucation, the 34th 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 taking the way back machine to 70ish years ago to learn about hygiene from naked sailors, menstruation from Di$ney, making new friends with Dick York, not being a slut, and even giving an enema! We're declassifying two homoerotic rarities from the US Navy: dozens of naked sailors go full frontal for their medical exam and a hands on posture lesson in Bluejackets Personal Hygiene (1943) and get down and dirty in the infirmary with an uncomfortable excerpt of Giving an Enema (1944). Watch out for hucksters slinging their nose shapers, spine straighteners, eye mallets, and pendiculators in the bizarre consumer scare film Fraud By Mail (1944). Are You Popular? (1947) one of the best examples of post-World War II moral hygiene films, features examples of "good" and "bad" girls, proper and improper dating etiquette and courtesy to parents. The animated brushes with sad faces want you to learn proper Care of Art Materials (1948). Dick York takes dad's advice on how to go from geek to BMOC in the classic social engineering short Shy Guy (1947). Plus, Oddball's favorite puberty cartoon: Di$ney's The Story of Menstruation (1945), war bond guilt trip Who Died?, excerpts of Men in Danger (1941), and more surprises! Everything screened on 16mm film from the archive.
Giving an Enema (B+W, 1944 excerpt)
Bluejackets Personal Hygiene (B+W, 1943)
Get unclassified with this naval training film featuring dozens of naked sailors! That's right, these brave boys in blue reveal much more than their courage, we get to see all their artillery. Learn about proper care of feet, posture, teeth, wardrobe and an all important lesson in group showering! All the homoerotic tension you could dream of and vintage beefcakes galore!
The Story of Menstruation (Color, 1945)
A Walt D*sney Production, The Story of Menstruation is an animated short film produced for American schools detailing the menstrual cycle. Rumored to be the first film with the word “vagina” in it’s screenplay, this vintage gem is both matter of fact and dreamily flowery. A large-headed girl takes you through the dos and don’ts of menses while helpful diagrams guide us all to better understanding.
Care of Art Materials (1948, B+W)
Shy Guy (1947, B+W)
Phil, new in his high school, follows his father's suggestion and observes the most popular students to determine what makes them popular. By offering to help others he becomes popular himself and sheds his shyness. If the "shy guy" were living now, he would be a hero. But hackers, geeks, and bad girls were not popular in 1947 and this movie is all about "fitting in." Phil (played by Dick York, later to star as Darin in the tv series “Bewitched”) is the son of an apparently single father has a problem "fitting in." Everything from the nature of the kids in the new town ("different") to what they wear ("not jackets like me, but a regular sweater") sets Phil apart. Armed only with confusing advice from his father, Phil has to reorganize his behavior and make a new home for himself. Shy Guy marks a kind of turning point in postwar history. When Mr. Norton advises Phil to "look around him" and see what the other kids are wearing and how they behave, he's conceding parental authority to the "gang" and, ultimately, helping to legitimize the formation of a distinct youth culture that rests on group identity and validation rather than the authority of elders. Such a youth culture probably has its roots in the wartime autonomy that teens experienced, but here the adults are okaying it. This change, of course, is one of the key social currents in postwar America. This is Dick York at his dorkiest. Dick's father is especially strange in this classic. Shy Guy is the film that established Coronet as THE social guidance filmmaker. Required viewing!
Curator’s Biography
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.