Oddball Films Media
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Aug 6, 2016
Kindergarteners hand-draw the story of John and his search for an escape from his pain through drugs and alcohol in A Story About Feelings (1981).
Marihuana
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Featuring:
Degrassi Jr. High - The Experiment (Color, 1987)
The Degrassi empire began in 1983 and continues to this day (with a few breaks and reimaginations along the way). With age-appropriate casting and a bent towards taboo subject matter (abortion, AIDS, vibrators, penis pumps, incontinence on top of a cheerleading pyramid) Degrassi has been pushing the envelope for 30 years. In this episode from the first season of Degrassi Jr. High, Melanie and Kathleen are so anxious to try drugs, they buy aspirin off of Joey and have the trip of a lifetime!
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Sal Mineo narrates this trip-adelic anti-acid scare film. We begin with a bunch of groovy teenagers, doing whatever hairstyle or game of chicken they need to do to be cool. When that includes the kick of LSD, you better get ready for "the end of your life kick; a kick in the head." Swingin' chicks, hot hot-rodders and tons of psychedelia make this one hell of a trip!
Deciso 3003 (Color, 1982)
Peter Wallach, Eli Wallach’s brother directed this bizarre anti-drug PSA, in the height of the “Just Say No” ‘80s. Two couples of double-headed alien teens set out on what they think is just going to be any other intergalactic trip to the Drive-In (to see Vincent Price in The Fly) but when one of them thinks it’ll be cool to take some meteor pills and get handsy with his date, we all learn that being a teenager isn’t easy for anyone in the galaxy. The puppets were made by Julie Taymor, director of Across the Universe and Titus, and Eli Wallach narrates, though neither is credited on the internet movie database. Perhaps, like the teen alien flying home alone, they too feel the shame.
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This should really be called "A Story about Chemical Dependence as Drawn by 5-year-olds". A handful of tots illustrate the tale of John, a guy that's after feeling good. When living straight isn't enough for John, he turns first to alcohol and then to drugs to feel good.
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"If a junkie is lucky, he dies early."
Produced for police orientation and training, police officers, and "restricted from the general public and from all youth groups” this early drug education film presents drug addiction not simply as a crime but as a deep-seated social problem. With dramatized sequences of addicts in shooting galleries and excellent footage of pre-renewal downtown Los Angeles, a neighborhood now lost. Produced and directed by renowned filmmakers Denis and Terry Sanders, who wrote this film with Jay Sandrich.
The Two-Legged Spaceship (Color, 1972)
Another cheap-o Sid Davis anti-drug film (he famously boasted that each of his films cost $1000 to make), this one squarely aimed (pun intended) at the elementary school set. Curious Mark gets a lesson about “Personal Pollution” from a friendly police officer.
The Perfect Drug Film (Color, 1971)
Hosted by obvious stoner Beau Bridges, this film has a very educational history of drug use (starting with, and illustrated by cavemen!) and covers all the basic territory: freak outs, wrestling with lions, running into traffic and jumping off cliffs. Hilarious!
Keep Off The Grass (Color, 1970)
Tom's mother discovers a marijuana joint in his room. When his parents confront him, Tom denies being a "dope fiend." He goes down to where the local "weedheads" hang out (a hilarious headshop), is mugged by a desperate band of marijuana addicts, and finally realizes how right his parents were: "keep off the grass!"
Addictive Sopers (Color, 1974)
Watch a tweaked out Ohio teen talk about Quaaludes and other relaxants as men in suits warn about the dangers of “Sopers”. The drug companies remain mum while a ski masked user comes clean on camera. Only in Ohio!
Sex, Booze, and Blues, and Those Pills You Use (1982, Color)
Sex tutorials in fine animated fair come to life in this warning against abuse of alcohol and drugs, and how they can lead to sexual dysfunction.
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Stoned (Color, 1980)
ABC After School Special (ASS) starring that loveable rascal Scott Baio. Here he is lured into stonersville by a skateboard-riding dope dealer. The munchies and problems at school ensue, climaxing with the near death of his older brother when the stoned Biao clobbers him with a boat paddle.
McGruff's Drug Alert (Color, 1987)
Everybody's favorite dog detective, McGruff the Crime Dog teaches children that pills and medicines can be poisonous if they are taken by the wrong people or in the wrong amounts. He teaches also about “illegal” drugs and how to narc on your friends!
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)
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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.
Naughty But Mice (Color, 1939)
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"Pill Poppers" Classic early 70s Sid Davis social guidance film about
3 boys and their barbiturate habits. A laugh riot!"The Banana Splits and Friends" features that wild bunch of fluffy
costume clad creatures who stormed their way through Saturday morning
TV. When they weren't flipping like pancakes and popping like corks
they were a playing music, just like The Beatles or The Monkees!
Weird American at it's Saturday morning finest.
"Stoned" This ABC TV "After School Special", directed by veteran
Hollywood producer John Herzfeld ("Tales From the Crypt" and "Two
Days in the Valley") stars ex-"Happy Days" Star Scott Biao. Jack is a
motivated high school student who smokes cannabis for the first time,
and falls in with a fast (!) crowd. Will he wake up and realize what
he's doing with his future before it's too late? You know the rest!
What Do Drugs Do? Color, 1971 400
Informs students about the good and bad action of drugs and chemicals on the body, focusing on the risks associated with drugs and the dangers of drug abuse.
Banana Splits
Shots of various drugs including marijuana leaves, rolling a join, a needle preparing a dose of nembutal sodium and several shots of pills. Hands take cigarettes and open bottles of alcohol. A spoonful of white powder. Doctors give injections. A drug dealer in a trench coat makes a deal. Shots of medicine cabinets, pharmacies, a peyote cactus and different chemicals. A sick child takes cough syrup. Kids play basketball and play in a fun house. Many shots of drugs and alcohol being used and prepared. A man shoots heroin. Shots of street scenes. Some men are arrested.
Drugs and Beyond
VO and visual definition of the word “consciousness” followed by several sketches of human anatomy, specifically the head and brain; there are also sketches of alchemist. WS of man in white in crowd with hands outstretched, followed by a CU of a woman wearing a grass like crown smoking a pipe with a man in hat. The VO talks about how drugs are and could be effecting the human brain. This is followed up with photographs of scientist working in laboratories and goes in to the title card of the film.
The film then starts with a MS of three men sitting a circle in room discussing the use of drugs and the behavior of people and the brain under the influence. The camera hopes around in CU on each of the men as they giver their part of the interview.
MS exterior of a white male drug dealer talking about his role in the drug community and also the role of a pusher, interview then goes into a CU to as the dealer discusses what he likes about making deals to finish up interview.
WS of an artist working, using a nail gun on a wall, he is wearing a green shirt and has a beard. Once the interview begins with the artist is filmed in CU and he too talks about the consciousness while under the influence of drugs, fade to black.
Fade up to WS interior of two Buddhist monks doing a ceremony; ringing bells and chanting. Cut to photo of Buddhist monk on fire followed by a staue of Buddha. CU of one of the monks head hooked up to a machine with wires connecting his head to the machine.
Drug Abuse: The Chemical Tomb 1969 800
Starts with an overhead shot of hands rolling a joint from a huge bag of weed. Great cheesy bongo raga music is playing. Then the joint gets passed around the party to a bunch of hippies. There’s a baby at the party too! One of the hippie chicks starts to spray paint the floor in a spiral.
Then, an exterior long shot of the University of Texas at Austin campus. The voice over talks about who students are, and who are in the counterculture. We see a slick suave drug dealer selling a bag of grass to some kids. Various shots of kids selling and sharing drugs. Then we see an expert at a table telling us how dangerous drugs are. He has a bulletin board covered in samples of different kinds of drugs. He goes over the effects of different drugs. As he talks about tolerance, the camera cuts to a desperate overdose scene. He explains intravenous drugs and huffing. We see kids huffing paint. The we see close ups of marijuana leaves and examples of joints. Then some hip looking kids in nice sunglasses smoke a joint in front of their mom’s suburban house. We see a Nerdy kid at his bedroom chemistry lab mixing together some... drugs. He takes the drugs to a square party and convinces a girl to take his pill instead of her coca cola bottle. She freaks out and we see her bad trip. More square kids doing drugs and some being arrested. At court, one of the squares has to face his entire family and looks sheepish. Finally we see a kid in the hospital. As a solution, we see kids in church groups talking about drugs together.
”LSD-25” (Color, 1967) 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 of your mind
You think you’re seeing things I know your blind
A million bright colors explode in your head
Today you’re high, tomorrow your dead.
“Drop a cap of me, man and drop out!”, the LSD molecule crows as a teenager in a button down shirt rolls on the floor screaming “Help me! Oh god help me!”.
A trip to the morgue was never this easy!
“Dragnet: Little Pusher” (Color, 1969)
Howlingly funny episode of the squarer-than-square TV show starring Jack Webb and Henry Morgan. Sgt. Friday and Officer Gannon investigate a juvenile pusher that leads them to a filthy hippie house. The scene is priceless as Friday surveys the fetid kitchen, discovers the dirty, neglected kids eating cold spaghetti out of a can and arrests the clueless groovy and utterly ridiculous looking pusher parents. Sample dialogue: Filthy Hippie: “It’s the maid’s day off.” Officer Gannon: “How long you been blowin’ pot, son?” ER Doc: “From diapers to drugs. What’s next, pre-natal goofballs?”
Dead Is Dead (Color, 1973)
This one’s the real deal- produced and hosted by comedian/actor Godfrey Cambridge, Dead Is Dead has some of the most harrowing footage of heroin withdrawal ever filmed and the cold, hard facts of the exceedingly unglamorous world of heroin addiction. A scare film that really scares!
“Drug Dialogue: Involvement” (Color, 1970)
Refreshingly frank dialogue with two undercover narcotic officers. As they cruise around Los Angeles, the two agents discuss the scourge on the streets with a surprising amount of empathy and even a hint of respect. This one was definitely not aimed at the kids!
About Rubber (Color, 1971)
Engaging documentary about rubber harvesting and production with a unique moog soundtrack. From humble, hands-on harvesting to the Folsom Street Fair: who knew?
Patient Porky (B+W, 1940) After eating too much birthday cake, Porky Pig visits the hospital. Instead of seeing a doctor, a conniving cat poses as physician, and conducts a fake surgery to filet poor Porky.
Narcotics: The Inside Story 1967
white rats on drugs (animal research) does not perform well on physical tests, then falling over, camera shows us things from the perspective of the rat (interesting!)
Subject: explains how certain drugs or narcotics affect the central nervous system as depressants or stimulants. Discusses how some narcotics and drugs may be used for those who are ill or in pain stressing the importance of their use under the supervision or qualified doctor. Illustrates some of the effects and dangers ascribed to the use of LSD and marijuana.
Shots: on the beach with teenagers in the surf, listening to transistor radios, roasting marshmallows and hot DOGs (good period bathing suits and hairdos on the girls). animation shows human sense organs, parts of the body, anatomy, then shots of high school football, man and jackhammer, airplane, man wearing respirator (mask) while working with spray paint, youngsters backpacking, nurse examining medications, young girl in bathroom goes into medicine cabinet where bottle labeled “poison” lives - no kidding - , footage from inside hospital where nurse extracts liquid from bottle using syringe, patient in bid with IV, doctor looks through microscope, doctor weighing marijuana on scale, psychedelic images (colorful), white rats on drugs (animal research) does not perform well on physical tests, then falling over, camera shows us things from the perspective of the rat (interesting!), CU footage of doctors writing prescriptions, cop frisking a man he has pulled over and puts handcuffs on him, construction worker, then back to the beach and the teens having fun.
What Do Drugs Do 1971
Informs students about the good and bad action of drugs and chemicals on the body, focusing on the risks associated with drugs and the dangers of drug abuse.
Shots of various drugs including marijuana leaves, rolling a join, a needle preparing a dose of nembutal sodium and several shots of pills. Hands take cigarettes and open bottles of alcohol. A spoonful of white powder. Doctors give injections. A drug dealer in a trench coat makes a deal. Shots of medicine cabinets, pharmacies, a peyote cactus and different chemicals. A sick child takes cough syrup. Kids play basketball and play in a fun house. Many shots of drugs and alcohol being used and prepared. A man shoots heroin. Shots of street scenes. Some men are arrested.
Drug and Alchohol Public Service Announcements and More PSAs
Tobacco, Alchohol, Drug Abuse, Dope, Drunken Driver, Alchohol, IRS: Tax Guides, IRS: Gymnast, Diego Perez, Welcome Home, OIC, OIC: (B +W), OIC (B+W)
Drugs "National Institution on Drug Abuse" Henry Winkler
Have Another Drink Ese 1978
Focuses on the problem of alcoholism within the Chicano community, explaining that traditional cultural values are a causal factor in Chicano alcoholism. Examines some innovative treatment and recovery programs which are tailored to fit the special needs of this minority group.
Footage of testimonies of various Latino Americans who had or have problems with alcoholism. Also shots of Latino weddings, home life, people drinking and partying.
Drink, Drank, Drunk
Carol Burnett, Larry Blyden, Joe Bologna, Reneé Taylor, Ron Carey, Morgan Freeman, Linda Hopkins, E.G. Marshall.