Dining Together (in the Ephemeral section of Open Video Project. Also, film #439 on Prelinger Archive). [Category: Educational]

Extremely stiff and cheaply made manners film from the 40s that teaches kids proper table manners for Thanksgiving. They couldn’t afford synchronized sound, so all you hear is cheesy piano music and slow stiff narration, using the collective “we” a lot, such as “We like having good table manners.” Fortunately, this kind of obvious mind-control strategy is a complete washout with kids––otherwise, we’d all resemble the living dead in such films as A Date with Your Family. Brain-deadening.

Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ****. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ****.