What movies do you remember watching in school, be they class related or just entertainment? I don’t really remember many educational shows: just this Bill Cosby hosted documentary on black stereotypes in films and the Disney classic “Donald Duck in Mathmagic Land” (seen at the end of every year in my high school math classes). The non-educational stuff I remember much better:
Some cheesy documentary on Nostradamus hosted by Orson Welles
Tons of classic musicals in music appreciation class, plus versions of “A Chorus Line” and “Bird” so heavily edited they were impossible to follow.
“Phar Lap”, about the famous Australian racehorse
“Parent Trap” (Hayley Mills version), seen seemingly every rainy day
I remember a movie about a boy and a red balloon that followed him around. A cartoon of Harold and a purple crayon. Once they sat the whole elementary school in the auditorium and made us watch a docuhorror about kids riding on the back of buses and the tire tracks across their bodies that killed them.
This was all before high school. I do not remember the names of any of these movies.
“Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land”, yes, and Disney’s “Alice in Wonderland”.
Lots of would-be-inspirational films from Western Electric that weren’t.
The first two are The Red Balloon and Harold and the Purple Crayon. Some movie titles are easy to remember.
Movie versions of many of the books we were reading, of course.
It was always a nice thing to come into class after recess and see either a 16mm projector or a Betamax (yes, they were around when I was a kid).
For the 16mm: among other things, we saw excerpts from Free To Be You And Me (the TV special), the aforementioned Donald in Mathmagic Land, one or two Schoolhouse Rocks that had been transferred to 16mm (I distinctly remember Lucky Seven Sampson being one of them). I also remember “A World Is Born”–the Rite of Spring section from Fantasia, excerpted and with narration added. It was a surprise to me, a couple years later, to see Fantasia in the theater and see that segment without the narration.
I also remember a couple episodes of some puppet show that was meant to promote good values. The puppets were simple hand puppets. One of the characters was a bear named Theodore–but he hated being called “Teddy Bear” so much that he called himself Butch. I remember one where he was imitating some criminal called The Masked Marauder or something and was going around playing nasty pranks–it took a taste of his own medicine to make him mend his ways.
As time went on, we saw more movies on the Betamax–either, as I said, movie versions of books we were reading (that’s how I first saw Rankin-Bass’ The Hobbit) or simply kid-friendly stuff during down time–especially as the school year drew to a close and they wanted to occupy us. During one of those times, I saw The Last Unicorn for the first time, and during another (they’d just brought us back from a class trip and had to fill the rest of the day) they showed all the fifth-grade classes a very well-done made-for-TV version of Little Lord Fauntleroy, with Ricky Schroeder as Cedric and Sir Alec Guinness as the grandfather. Of course, the second he shows up on the screen, forty kids in unison shout, “OBI-WAN KENOBI!”
Ha! I supposed the last one was called Run Over. Or maybe Tire Tracks Across Your Body.
Hello Dolly
El Cid
American Graffiti
Viva Max!
Lawrence Of Arabia
One that I remember from the early 1970s was an animated film about differences and prejudice, “The Point”, which had a soundtrack by Harry Nilsson.
In reading the IMDB entry on it, I find it interesting that it was re-dubbed repeatedly, with different narrators.
Hemo the Magnificent! Thanks for the memories on that one. Think I saw Hemo a few times through my school career.
Worst grade school a/v memory (Catholic School sub-division): In either first or second grade we watched a religious film (or filmstrip, perhaps) “God is Love”. Some joker in the class started a laugh chain reaction that swept through the class and in turn pissed off the teacher something awful. The next day we all had to get up in front of the class one by one and explain how we had made Baby Jesus sad by laughing at God and how sorry we were.
I remember on the last day of grade school one year we were treated to Where the Red Fern Grows. The dogs die, have a great summer kids! The “edgiest” film we were treated to in grade school was Cloak and Dagger.
Return of the Jedi in high school was a lot of fun.
They showed it over the school’s CCTV out of the A/V class room. They let some of the popular senior guys do a MST3k of it over the audio feed. When Bib Fortuna (Jabbas 2nd in command) first appears we heard “That dude has a huuuge neck.” My friends and I still say that to this day.
We watched “Clash of the Titans” (the original) in 6th grade after learning about Greek myths. The teacher covered up Andromeda’s naked buttocks with her hand during that scene…
I can’t remember any other Hollywood movies that we saw.
I still remember watching The Miracle Worker. Great movie.
I remember seeing a cartoon of “The Tell-Tale Heart” when I was in fourth grade. Scariest thing I’ve ever seen.
Also, at my school they showed once a year or so the dinosaur section of Fantasia. I was surprised when I first saw the movie in a theater and recognized that part.
We had filmstrips, not movies. 
We did have movie projectors, and used them from time to time, but they were all educational films. The only one I remember was the classic scare film Printed Poison (Even more amusing today than when it came out).
That reminds me of watching Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet in junior high. The film was split over two VCR tapes, conveniently excising Olivia Hussey’s nude scene.
The only ones I specifically remember were:
The Alamo (with John Wayne)
Gone with the Wind
(The one were the guy gets hanged in the end)
I remember seeing “LSD: Trip To Nowhere” and “Pit of Despair”. And some sword and sandal movie with a sweaty Kirk Douglas.
I’ll always remember the time my AP Euro teacher spent several minutes talking about an intensely disturbing documentary we were going to watch about the Spanish Inquisition. He offered to let any of us sit out if we didn’t want to watch it. Needless to say, we were on the edge of our seats.
It turned out to be the song and dance number from Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part I.
And I bet you didn’t expect that.
