About Conception and Contraception (available for viewing on A/V Geeks. Also available for download on Veoh).

This 70s sex-ed film, made by the National Film Board of Canada, shows us a male silhouette and a female silhouette, both of which look like they escaped from an optical illusion. They get it on, resulting in the female silhouette getting knocked up. Bummer, eh? Then we are shown various forms of birth control that this couple can use to prevent this from happening again, and the couple helpfully demonstrates all of them in a slow, turgid fashion that makes sex look about as much fun as adding peripherals to your computer. All of this is shown without narration, and to the accompaniment, inexplicably, of calliope music, which ups the weird factor considerably. But who am I to judge the turn-ons of 2-dimensional Canadian silhouettes, eh?

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

Discovery (available in the 1960s section of the ITV section of the Schools TV section of TVArk). [Category: Educational]

Now this is sex education! This clip from an early 60s British educational TV show features a clipped British narrator and a huge electronic model of a sperm cell that the guy on the program spent a lot of time and effort to make. It’s really cool, actually, and I disagree with the writer on the website who says it was fortunate that computer graphics replaced this sort of thing. Of course, this is definitely an item for the Film Ephemera Museum of Quirky Devices.

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

As Boys Grow.

This 50s sex-ed film is very straightforward and informative about puberty and sex. It even covers––are you ready for this––how the sperm gets into the uterus! Thus, it was probably never shown in the vast majority of American classrooms. A friendly high school track coach answers any and all questions about sex and stuff that members of his team fire at him, even bringing along helpful, though not inappropriate, visual aids to some practices. He never even hints that sex is evil, does not mention any horrible diseases the guys could get from it, and tells them that masturbation is "normal at your age" and will not lead to blindness or sterility. Therefore, it is pretty safe to assume that he was fired at some point by some of the boys' parents. Such healthy and informative sex education has never been tolerated in the schools, not even today, making this film a real curiosity.

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

The ABC of Sex Ed for Trainables (film #12 on The Educational Archive, Volume One: Sex and Drugs DVD (Fantoma 2001)). [Category: Educational]

This 70s film would have been impossible only a few years earlier. It's about the touchy subject of sex education for mentally retarded adolescents (called "trainables" throughout the film). It starts with a really creepy scene of a sexual predator luring a mentally retarded girl into his car. The rest of the film isn't quite that bad, but it will make you squirm at several points. Memorable scenes include a training session for special-ed teachers in which they are asked to list all the slang terms they can think of for "penis" and then say them out loud, over and over; a menstruating teacher showing a retarded girl one of her own soiled sanitary napkins and saying very stiltedly "This is what happens to me. It's normal. It's part of being a woman," (this scene is repeated three times in order to stress the importance of repetition); and a teacher explaining intercourse to two retarded girls, who react like most little kids react when they first hear about it (i.e. "Ewwwwwww!!!!!!"). I actually don't want to make too much fun of this film, though, because its subject matter is necessary and probably impossible to present without making you squirm a little bit. In other words, they deserve credit for trying.

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