The Battery (film #4 on Campy Classroom Classics, Vol. 4 (Something Weird, 2000)). [Category: Industrial]

This may be the stupidest sales training film ever made. It's as if Union 76 gathered together a bunch of drunk salesmen at a convention, divided them into small groups, and asked each group to make up a skit about a particular historical period and loosely connect it to the sale of Union 76 car batteries. Of course, the salesmen threw in lots of objectification of the female body––gotta please those crowds, after all. So let's hand out some awards to these drunk salesmen, shall we? The Silliest Skit award goes to the caveman sequence, hands down. The Most Appalling Sexism award goes to the Ancient Rome sequence, in which we're supposed to assume female slaves are car batteries, and all that that implies. The Weirdest Imagery award goes to the scene of Merlin's assistants working in the Union 76 R & D lab. And the Least Informative Sequence award goes to the film as a whole––it makes you constantly scratch your head and say, "And what does this have to do with car batteries?" Appalling, but, of course, great ephemera.

Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ****. Weirdness: *****. Historical Interest: *** (this gets docked for its overall lack of historical relevance). Overall Rating: ****.