I seem to remember seeing this movie in school between 6th & 9th grade, so early 80’s. The film itself seems to come from the late 60’s or during the 70’s. Its educational merit seems minimal at best, although the “plot” seems to rely on some principle of economics. What that principle is I have no idea; obviously I didn’t learn whatever lesson the teacher was trying to teach :rolleyes:.
Oh yeah, and the movie is silent. It’s in color, but there are no spoken words or other sounds (save background music).
Anyway, here goes:
Surfers and beachcombers alike are bummed because their beach is too crowded, as are the waves. The nearest uncrowded beach is private and thus charges outlandish admission fees. So, surfers and their “gals” go on a quest to find the Ultimate Beach. Eventually they happen upon a kindly old spinster who owns a small cottage on unspoiled beach (yeah, I know: to own beachfront property in SoCal would require being a multimillionaire, but this is a movie). The surfers strike a deal with her wherein they can use her beach provided they don’t pollute it, play loud music, etc. So, surfers and “gals” enjoy their new private beach; that is, until word gets out and the beach is crowded once again. So the surfers and the spinster work out a deal: she charges a fee. One memorable scene shows a sign: “Surfers - 50 cents. People - 25 cents.” Everybody gladly pays the nominal fee and eventually the old spinster’s beach is as crowded as any other. So the surfers are faced with a choice: allow the beach to be cheap and thus crowded, or to charge a higher fee to keep it to themselves. IOW, they’re right back where they were at the beginning of the movie. It seems that in their quest to avoid being oppressed by The Man, the boys became The Man.
Or something like that.
So, does anybody else remember this? Also, what economic principle is being taught here?
Not really the name of it, but another strange film was shown to us in jr. high, around 1970. Like the surfing one it was silent, and one part involved a ping pong ball that
could bounce higher than the place from which dropped. In the film it bounces higher and higher, with a happy “Binnnggg!” accompanying each bounce, while its awestruck
fellow ping pong balls ooh and ahh. Finally the bouncing ball disappears into the clouds, permanently. Then we see
some titles on the screen that speculate as to its final fate, and one of them says something “…because Ball was not meant to fly”.
Totally arcane, but not a bad way of spending the afternoon.
I understand kids today don’t get to see projected films in
school at all today; instead they just wheel out the TV and
VCR…not nearly as much fun.
I agree completely. We used to look forward to actually working the film projector and then after the movie was done, run it backwards and see the entire movie in reverse. You can’t really do that with VCR’s.
Any of you remember one that demonstrated a nuclear chain reaction with a room full of mousetraps, each loaded with two ping pong balls? Then they toss one ball in the room and film the chaos. I’ve always kind of wanted to do that…
On second thought, that could have been a tape–we had a mix…
There was this guy from San Raphael who made “the world’s first science-fiction/horror/teen-exploitation/anti-shoplifting film”, I Was A Teenaged Alien. Pretty hilareous. Man, I’d like a copy of it!
I kind of hope this does degenerate into MPSIMS as ‘recollections of films/filmstrips’.
Few films compare to the (in)famous ‘Guten Tag’ films, designed to teach German. There was a man named ‘Felix’ who came out at the beginning to maybe talk (in English) a little about what would happen, and/or demonstrate some of the phrases in the film. The rest of the film in almost no way expanded on the educational value of Felix’s lecture, but was definitely entertainment. When Felix was done, he’d always say, “Now watch, listen, and you will learn German . . .” Maybe it was all just hypnotic suggestion.
The films themselves consisted of very long stretches of no dialogue, with the occasional phrase slipped in. I remember one which was set around Fasching/Karneval when people make large costumes for parades. On a desolate mountain road you see a giraffe (costume) slowly lumbering towards you. As it gets closer, suddenly a dinosaur emerges from the brush and attacks?/mates with? the giraffe. Cut to a bar scene, lots of people around. Another one was set on a beach, but was somehow reminiscent of The Seventh Seal, since a weird chess motif seemed figured in, with enormous pieces just stuck inexplicably in the sand.
I was also fortunate enough that my 6th grade science teacher (my dad) would screen a series of old films to see if they were of any use. Some were a series on car safety, with an animated figure named Dopey who always did the wrong thing. But everytime Dopey got hit by a car, he’d just get pushed off the screen instead of flattened. We all wanted to skate like Dopey.
There was also the kid who nearly died when he didn’t wash his face properly, but my favorite one was a propaganda film which showed Mr. Jones conversing with the happy workers in his orchard, and commenting that “not the sort of thing you’d see in a Communist country”; when Mr. Jones gets home, little Jimmy is playing in the sandbox with his toy truck. “In Communist countries, most families are too poor for the kids to have toys to play with like Jimmy’s!”
I remember the pingpong film. Definitely film when I saw it, because I remember it backwards too. My favorite was totally uneducational. They used to round us all up into the cafeteria on rainy days in elementery school, then show us Warren Miller ski films, forwards, then backwards.
My stupid film strip story…a couple of years ago I was substitute teaching a 6th grade social studies class. The teacher left this really cheesey late 60’s-ish film strip about daily life in Mesopotamia. I had an education in how much slang has changed in the last few years. There was a section on conscripted soldiers and how they were paid through spoils of war. The sound track said “Strong young men eager for booty…”
I never heard the end of the sentence. I have never seen 6th grade boys actually fall out of their chairs laughing. It happened every period consistently.
One of the boys decided he was going to have a band, just so he could name it “eager for booty.”
Oh, dear! I’m about to cause my own thread to be moved to MPSIMS :rolleyes:
I remember one they showed in 2nd or 3rd grade-- good Lord, it was like SIX HOURS long! They had to show it over three or four days.
It was more or less about Life and Finding Your Way in the World, and Being True to Yourself. It starts out in a nursery, two little babies, moves on through elementary school, shows scenes of bullies and stuff. Lots of touching songs throughout. The only one I remember specifically is a kindly black gentleman singing “It’s Alright to Cry.”
Don’t worry. You’re just as likely to get someone who remembers the filmstrip in the OP in MPSIMS as you are in GQ.
As for me, I have repressed the traumatic memory of all the filmstrips of my youth. Except of course for the ones I never retained in the first place because of the poisonous fog of ditto fluid.
I loved Hemo the Magnificent. We saw it at least once in elementary school, in the auditorium and everything, and then my 10th grade Biology teacher showed it to us again, partially for educational value, but mostly for entertainment.
That’s part of it. Hemo challenges the doctor to come up with the two words that best explain the purpose of blood. He says “salt water” because the early multi-cellular critters in the ocean got their nourishment directly from the water they were in.
(Be thankful folks, I almost wrote that last paragraph as a rap lyric.)
And sorry for the continuing hijack. I didn’t realize I was opening such a flood of memories.
This is not a film but a record that was played at school. It that close enough?
I remember in Jr. High there was a record that was played during gym class called Chicken Fat. You were instructed to touch your toes, do jumping jacks, march around the room, etc. All I remember is that we had to run in place, follow the commands and sing along during the refrain which went something like this----(march in place) GO YOU CHICKEN FAT (get those knees up) GO YOU CHICKEN FAT GO (faster) GO YOU CHICKEN FAT GO (I CAN’T HEAR YOU)
This song and the square dance hollarin record (Western Reel)are the soundtrack to my nightmares, Please tell me someone else remembers them.
I recall one end-of-year movie night the teachers showed “Saturday Night Fever”, with an announcement that there were ‘technical difficulties’ with some parts of the film. The principal sat by the projector with a stopwatch and a checklist, and frigged up the audio or the focus or both, as the case might be, whenever the predetermined naughty bits came up.
Of course, this was at the end of the film era, and the dawn of the VCR age, and most of us had already seen the uncensored version and knew what was going on. It was pretty pathetic, and even the teachers seemed sheepish about having to do it.