Learn your Lesson from Clowns - A Creepy Shockucation - Fri. June 24th - 8PM

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Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn Your Lesson from Clowns: A Creepy Shockucation, the 39th in a monthly series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic educational films, mental hygiene primers and TV specials of the collection. This month we're tapping into the most disturbing of subject matter yet: creepy creepy clowns! From evangelical clown shorts, to hallucinating clowns, to clown puppets, and even a little pantomime, it's sure to be the celluloid stuff of nightmares! Oddball favorite, Toothache of the Clown (1971) is one bad acid-trip to the dentist when children pull yarn and candy of a clown's rotten molars. In the evangelical Charlie Chaplin rip-off Charlie Churchman and the Clowns (1960s), a proselytizing pastor goes to the carnival in search of new souls and encounters the most terrifying clown in cinema history. And yet, the creepiest puppet award goes to the clown puppet that will turn you invisible to see all your long-suffering parents do for you in the comically-dubbed Parents: Who Needs Them? (1971). In If Mirrors Could Speak (1976), a straight-talking looking glass gets real with a variety of young scofflaws shamed with clown-makeup. Plus, miming segments from the skin-crawling/heartwarming afterschool special Clown White (1981) in which a little deaf boy learns to speak up through the magic of mime and an under-appreciated mime finally finds someone who can stand to be around her! Schoolhouse bullying always goes better with rhyming mimes, as we find in People: Different But Alike (1970).  With more surprises and everything screened on 16mm film from our stock footage archive, it's going to be a night to send in the shockucation!

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Date: Friday, June 24th, 2016 at 8:00pm

Featuring:

Charlie Churchman and the Clowns (B+W, 1960, Mel White)
A pathetic attempt to make evangelism funny and hip for the kids; Charlie Churchman was a proselytizing ripoff of Charlie Chaplin.  The star of several films, in this installment the circus is in town and Charlie has been tasked with getting a bunch of clowns and carnies to come to church.  Co-starring the most disturbing clown you have ever seen (pictured above and soon to appear in your nightmares). 

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Terrific Trips: A Trip In a Hot Air Balloon (Color, 1987)

Yoyo the clown, using only the magic of pantomine to communicate, whisks young viewers aloft in a gigantic hot air balloon. Yoyo and a female balloonist show children how to ready the balloon for flight, explaining each step in the process. Then off they go, floating over houses, streets and tiny people. Accompanied by the music of a lovely original song, this trip gives children a unique bird’s eye view of our everyday world; truly a different way of looking at things. 

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Toothache of The Clown (Color, 1971)

Made to assuage children’s fears of the dentist, this film manages to combine nothing but the creepiest elements into one terrifying mind-scratcher. Hallucinating from pain, or laughing gas, this clown has surreal nightmares of children dressed as dental technicians pulling arts and crafts out of the insides of other children dressed as decaying teeth. This is one “trip” to the dentist you won’t want to miss.

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Parents: Who Needs Them? (Color, 1971)
One for the schlock history books, this bizarro educational primer features one of the most disturbing and creepy puppets we've ever found within these walls.  Little Jimmy is a careless, sloppy and ungrateful boy who can't see all that his long-suffering parents do for him.  That is, until his disgusting clown puppet comes to life, waves his magic wand over the young boy's face as he sleeps (not creepy at all), and turns little Jimmy invisible until he learns a valuable lesson in gratitude.

The Self-Image Film: If Mirrors Could Speak (Color, 1976)

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Don't be a jerk or this magic mirror will turn you into a clown!  A trio of obnoxious youngsters get a taste of the clown life when acting up in class leads to a face full of white makeup from a straight-talking looking glass.

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Clown White (Color, 1981, excerpt)

A Canadian made-for-TV movie about a rebellious deaf boy who runs away from a class field trip to explore the exciting world of mimes. After Jason sees a mime in a store window, he takes his first opportunity to stalk the woman, who eventually gives him a lesson in mime and a face full of makeup, and wouldn't you know it, this sad, withdrawn kid finally finds his smile and his voice- through mime!

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People: Different But Alike (Color, 1970s)  

Who better than mimes to reenact the pain of being teased? They gracefully highlight their differences while other mimes mock them, their silence broken by a delightfully reassuring soundtrack.

For the Early Birds:

Our Wonderful Senses (Color, 1980)

A woman in clown makeup pantomimes our five senses. A series of scenarios follow with children displaying how our senses work. 

  
      
  

    
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Curator’s Biography


Kat 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 Films

Oddball Films is a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like The Nice Guys and Milk, documentaries like The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Silicon Valley, Kurt Cobain: The Montage of Heck, television programs like Transparent and 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.