Knife-Thrower and Children (available for download on Prelinger Archive).
Can you spell “child endangerment”? I thought you could. In this newsreel featurette, a mom who’s a circus performer throws knives at her two daughters, ages 5 and 2 1/2. Now I know she’s a skilled performer and the point is that she misses, but don’t scare me like that!Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: ****. Weirdness: ****. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ****.
Florida (available for download on Universal Newsreels).
Brief newsreel story about the launching of a communications satellite. A blip from the early space program.Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: *. Weirdness: *. Historical Interest: ***. Overall Rating: **.
The Dropout (available for download from Open Video Project. Also, film #4 on Our Secret Century, Vol. 5: Teenage Transgression CD-ROM (Voyager). Also available for download from Prelinger Archive).
Robert drops out of high school, finds that he can't get a job, and generally crashes and burns. This film epitomizes the concept of "downward spiral", accompanied by an unsympathetic narrator. The film's one purpose was obviously to scare teens into staying in school, so Robert's future is shown to be essentially hopeless. This would make a good short for a film noir double feature, say Double Indemnity as "A" and Detour as "B". Its abrupt, unresolved ending is a good lead-in to a couple of dark, feature-length noir films.Ratings: Camp/Humor Value: **. Weirdness: ***. Historical Interest: ****. Overall Rating: ***.
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Better Reading
Better Reading . Teenager Harold Wilson has a problem—he can’t read for (expletive deleted). So he has to spend all his free time studying ...
