Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn Your Lesson...from the 1980s - A Radical Shockucation, the nineteenth in a series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic educational films, mental hygiene primers and TV specials of the collection. This month, we are diving straight into the decade of decadence with an entire program of Oddball Premieres including Rapping Nutritional Primers, Christian Sex-Ed, Talking Fire Alarms, Cartoon Drug-Trips and so much more from the totally terrible 80s! Get rappin' about fast food and vegetables in the gut-busting craptacular Fast Food: What's in it for You? (1988). Confused about your teenage hormones? The Sexual Puzzle: Putting the Pieces Together (1982) will give you a healthy dose of some Christian morality and schmaltzy expository theme songs to help you keep those hormones in check and save it for marriage. Sick of rude cashiers? Learn all about customer service, Aussie style and find out Doesn't Anybody Care? (1985). One latchkey kid is all alone, until every appliance in the house starts talking and trying to teach her one harrowing lesson after another in Home Alone: You're in Charge (1985). Go down the face-melting rabbit hole with a teenage junky in the cartoon nightmare Wasted: A True Story (1983) and get sociable with some nose candy, but watch out for that rock in Gina's Story: Cocaine to Crack (1984). And come early for a special lesson or two from the original Degrassi Junior High (1987). It's a totally radical night to learn your lesson!
Date: Friday, September 12th, 2014 at 8:00pm
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street San Francisco
Featuring:
Fast Food: What's in it for You? (Color, 1988)
"Hey Derek, I gotta talk to you about vegetables!"
File under Raptastic! This over-the-top nutritional primer has it all: terrible computer graphics, acid-wash denim, hairspray for days and — you guessed it — A Fast Food Rap!! Alex is a confused 12 year-old that loves computers, but hates vegetables. His older sister, Karen is dieting for the stellar party she's throwing when their folks go out of town. His buddy Derek works at a fast food restaurant, but has all the answers to their burning nutritional questions. Will Karen throw the party of her dreams with tasty and healthy snacks? Will Derek agree to be her date? Will they rap about hamburgers?!?
The Sexual Puzzle: Putting the Pieces Together (Color, 1982)
If you ever wanted expository songs to better illustrate the confusing and ever-changing sexual attitudes of adolescence, look no further than this camptastic sex-ed film brought to you by Gospel Films and Josh McDowell Ministry. A 40-something "youth counselor" (who is in fact minister Josh McDowell himself) in a polyester leisure suit talks to teens about their sex lives while his points are illustrated by musical melodramatizations with a variety of issues facing Christian teens "today". Each teen presented gets their very own theme song to underscore their insecurities and changing bodies.
Home Alone: You're in Charge (Color, 1985)
As women flooded out of the home and into the workforce in the late 70s and early 80s, a generation of latch-key kids was left to fend for themselves after school. This film seeks to point out all the potential dangers facing a little girl all alone. Luckily, she's got a talking phone to help with the creeps, a talking fire alarm to tell her not to pour water on that electrical fire, and a talking off brand band-aid box (Bando to be exact) to help her through the construction of what we can only hope is a talking first-aid kit. If it weren't for all these chatty inanimate objects, this little girl would have been dead long ago... Directed by William Crain; possibly the William Crain that directed Blacula and Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde, but we'll never know for sure.
Wasted: A True Story (Color, 1983, excerpt)
A trippy cartoon nightmare depiction of one teen boy's struggle with drugs and alcohol. After he's peer-pressured into stealing and eventually crashing his "old lady's car", he sees into his future in a barrage of melting faces, homeless future-hims and demons that scare the shaggy-haired teen straight.
Gina's Story: From Cocaine to Crack (Color, 1984)
Are you uncomfortable at parties? Feel like you don't fit in? Try cocaine; it will help you dance all night and feel like part of the gang...until you are strung out on crack, dealing to get by and eventually overdosing and dying, just like Gina.
For The Early Birds (Starting at 7:45pm)
Degrassi Junior High: It's Late (Color, 1987)A very special episode of the envelope-pushing Canadian adolescent soap. Spike and Shane lock themselves in a room at Lucy's party, and the consequences could be devastating! Meanwhile, in the B-plot, Melanie is 12 1/2 and is ready for a boyfriend. She likes Snake, Yik likes her; who will she choose? From the closed-captioned collection with an always interesting interpretation of the dialogue.
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.
About Oddball Films
Oddball films is the film component of Oddball Film+Video, a stock footage company providing offbeat and unusual film footage for feature films like Milk, documentaries like The Summer of Love, television programs like Mythbusters, clips for Boing Boing and web projects around the world.
Our films 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.
