# Movies you watched in school **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 15, 2013, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325 "2013-10-15T16:42:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Sam\_A.Robrin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sam_a.robrin/32/14497_2.png) [@Sam\_A.Robrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_A.Robrin)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325/81 "2013-10-18T02:16:41Z")
> [@Hermione](#): > > 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. That was a Philadelphia-area TV show called _Tottle_. Here’s all I could find about it: > **[Tottle / Philly's Local Kid Shows](http://www.tvparty.com/lostphilly-tottles.html)** > > Philly's Local Kid Shows ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_A.Robrin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sam_a.robrin/32/14497_2.png) [@Sam\_A.Robrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_A.Robrin)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325/82 "2013-10-18T02:51:54Z")
> [@UncleRojelio](#): > > (The one were the guy gets hanged in the end) “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”?: https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZK0_tJtappQ?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque ---
**Author:** ![Hermione](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/cdc98d/32.png) [@Hermione](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hermione)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325/83 "2013-10-18T03:06:42Z")
> [@Sam\_A.Robrin](#): > > That was a Philadelphia-area TV show called _Tottle_. Here’s all I could find about it: > > [Tottle / Philly's Local Kid Shows](http://www.tvparty.com/lostphilly-tottles.html) THANK YOU! If it was Philly-area (in the general area I grew up), no wonder our school had some 16mms of it. ---
**Author:** ![AppallingGael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9bd4f/32.png) [@AppallingGael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AppallingGael)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325/84 "2013-10-18T06:27:00Z")
I’ve seen “Red Balloon” two or three times, and once at least was probably in school (never at home. Probably once or twice at the public library). Other than that, as far as movie movies, maybe none. I remember a Howard Cosell-narrated flick about a kid who doesn’t like school or homework but eventually gets into reading and even manages to finish “the Frank Robinson Story”. Oh yeah, it somehow tied into MS, which stood both for multiple sclerosis and also “mystery sleuth”, who I think was a dog. Then there was a kid who kept buying tuna fish at the grocery store, on account, to feed a stray cat. Till one day the storewoman said “oh, no. You’ve been a bad boy”, I guess because the tab had run so high. I thought she was kind of harsh. It’s not as if his borrowing was in a bad cause. There was one 50’s-looking one about a kid who notices that a fireman’s hose has a leak, so he keeps his finger on it while the men are fighting the fire. Eventually he gets bored by the fire and also it’s past his bedtime, so he falls asleep, but he keeps his finger on the hose. One of the men later finds him and sees what he’s done, and the kid is given a parade down Main Street. Various drug films wherein LSD trippers think they’re Superman. ---
**Author:** ![Vashbul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Vashbul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vashbul)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325/85 "2013-10-18T07:18:13Z")
_The Rival World_, fifth grade science class. It was about insects and the devastation they cause, sponsored by Shell Oil (pesticide division). Two things I’ll always remember: a sequence showing a series of gross diseases spread by bugs (“The tiny tsetse fly causes… **THIS!** ”. Kids went “ewwww!” Lots of jokes afterwards about “elephantitis” (sic). Then there was a bit where an airplane flew through a swarm of locusts. Splat, splat, splat, soon the windscreen was covered with bug goo, so they turned on the wipers! ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 8:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325/86 "2013-10-18T08:28:40Z")
The first year I was in junior high, they showed ten-minute snatches of feature films during lunch period. I think each showing cost 15 cents admission. They were all films from the '40s through the early '60s: _ **Francis, the Talking Mule** _; _ **Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein** _; _ **Jerry Lewis in The Big Mouth** _; and so on. In eighth grade PE, they showed us some films on baseball, particularly the new Minnesota Twins and Met Stadium, “designed to last well into the 21st century.” Yeah, right! :rolleyes: In the one about the rules of baseball, the line “Put your foot on the rubber!” (directed toward the pitcher) never failed to get a laugh. From grade school, I remember _ **Paddle to the Sea** _, documentaries on the new St Lawrence Seaway and DEW Line; the Bell films on DNA (with a very young Don Grady, “Rob” on _ **My Three Sons** _), _ **Our Friend, the Atom** _, _ **Hemo** _, and so on; Disney’s _ **Donald in Mathemagic Land** _, _ **The Truth about Mother Goose** _, plus _ **A Trip around the Moon** _ and _ **Man in Space** _ with Wernher von Braun. There was one movie in sixth grade that made a great impression on me: It was a feature-length B&W British film about a bunch of schoolchildren. They had ruined a saw trying to make a cage for a rabbit, and spend most of the rest of the film raising money to buy a new one before the owner found out (and it, of course, also got ruined immediately). After watching it, I wanted to pack up and move to England! ---
**Author:** ![KRC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/45deac/32.png) [@KRC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KRC)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325/87 "2013-10-18T09:36:10Z")
Romeo and Juliet The Hound Dog Who Thought He Was a Raccoon Hemo the Magnificent Other than that, Let’s Learn About VD type movies. ---
**Author:** ![Oglomott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/oglomott/32/3543_2.png) [@Oglomott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oglomott)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 10:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325/88 "2013-10-18T10:04:25Z")
Besides the usual health/sex ed films, they once showed us “Captains Courageous”. ---
**Author:** ![Chanteuse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9de053/32.png) [@Chanteuse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chanteuse)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2013, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325/89 "2013-10-18T11:43:06Z")
> [@Drum\_God](#): > > Wow. You missed out. In ninth grade English, we read R&J and got to watch the movie, complete with boobies. I nearly fell out of my chair. Boobs! At school! And they weren’t all wavy like on the scrambled cable channels at home. My ninth grade English class got to see this unedited as well. Our teacher told us of the content and warned us that she did NOT want to hear any immature giggling or remarks. That was the year we also watched _An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge_. Other movies we saw in high school: _Brian’s Song_ (the original, of course) and _The Gumball Rally_. ---
**Author:** ![Harvey\_The\_Heavy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Harvey\_The\_Heavy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harvey_The_Heavy)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2013, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325/90 "2013-10-19T16:41:57Z")
> [@AppallingGael](#): > > Oh yeah, it somehow tied into MS, which stood both for multiple sclerosis and also “mystery sleuth”, who I think was a dog. Sounds like the MS Read-A-Thon, where you were supposed to hassle family and neighbors to pledge a certain amount of money for every book you allegedly read. Pretty sure I blew it off. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2013, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325/91 "2013-10-20T18:38:04Z")
Lots of them. One, [Bless the Beasts and Children](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068286/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1), had no educational content I could think of and seemed to be an attempt at 70s relevancy. It starred Bill Mumy and was about a summer camp for troubled kids who decided to free a pen of bison, with disappointing results. ---
**Author:** ![Magicicada](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c67d28/32.png) [@Magicicada](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magicicada)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2013, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325/92 "2013-10-20T20:39:29Z")
Our big thing, if it was a movie shown on a film reel\*, was to get the teacher to let us watch it backwards. The Red Balloon and Paddle To The Sea work really well this way. Also, there was a documentary on volcanoes that was great in reverse with the lava flowing back into the crater. We didn’t get out much. In 1st grade, as a treat for the Christmas party, they showed…Old Yeller. (I am assuming we were all too traumatized to ask to see it backwards. Although it would have been much happier…boy unshoots dog…dog recovers from rabies.) I also have a distinct memory of THE Romeo Juliet, except oddly enough I am pretty sure it was in film strip form, with still pictures. Which would make it easier to cut the nudity, which they’d likely want to do since the film strip would presumably be made for school use. Except burned into my mind is this still image of Romeo’s bare ass. And also I’m pretty sure it was the Health teacher that showed it to us… - 1970s, when vcrs were way out of price range for many schools. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2013, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325/93 "2013-10-20T20:47:36Z")
Does anyone remember a film about weather, and climate? There was an animated “Greek” goddess interacting with live actors, two scientists, an older and a younger one, wearing lab coats of course. And I loved “Hemo the Magnificent” First time I ever saw film of a real, beating heart. ---
**Author:** ![Ponch8](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ponch8/32/9883_2.png) [@Ponch8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ponch8)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2013, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325/94 "2013-10-21T00:43:00Z")
Middle school: Charly (we had just read an excerpt from _Flowers for Algernon_, which the movie was based off of. It just happened to be on TBS a few days later, so I recorded it and brought it in for us to watch in English class. It sure beat listening to the teacher.) High school: Rain Man National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation Jean de Florette and its sequel, Manon des Sources (we watched these in French class. The latter had full frontal nudity.) Home Alone, dubbed into French (the family was speaking French all along, but when they got to the hotel in Paris, they needed an operator who spoke English!) ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2013, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325/95 "2013-10-21T02:16:06Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > Does anyone remember a film about weather, and climate? > > There was an animated “Greek” goddess interacting with live actors, two scientists, an older and a younger one, wearing lab coats of course. > > And I loved “Hemo the Magnificent” First time I ever saw film of a real, beating heart. Most likely _[The Unchained Goddess](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bell_Laboratory_Science_Series#The_Unchained_Goddess_.281958.29)_ from the same series as _Hemo_. ---
**Author:** ![chizzuk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e36b37/32.png) [@chizzuk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chizzuk)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2013, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325/96 "2013-10-21T02:23:52Z")
Let’s see. Off the top of my head, I can recall: Stand and Deliver Manon des Sources Au Revoir Les Enfants (I found this one extremely upsetting) Le Huitieme Jour several Asterix cartoons Memento One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Finding Nemo (11th grade–the AP Psych teacher argued that it was educational because of that blue fish with short term memory loss) The Outsiders Fly Away Home Gattaca I went to a high school that gave a lot of AP/IB exams. The exams were in May, but school wasn’t out until early June, so basically after each class’ exam, that teacher would put on movies for the next 2 weeks. I remember our AP Statistics teacher walking into class one morning in late May, handing us the TV remote, and telling us she’d be in her office if we needed her. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2013, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325/97 "2013-10-21T02:51:28Z")
Plenty, but I can only remember a few of them: In Latin class, _A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum_, since it’s apparently pretty true to the conventions of actual Roman comedies. In assorted English classes, several different Shakespeares. Including _Romeo and Juliet_. Including the nude scene. This, in an all-boys’ Catholic school, with an old monk for a teacher. IIRC, I also saw _Hamlet_ and _Julius Caesar_, in other classes. In senior AP biology, the Nova classic _The Miracle of Life_. Which also IIRC had some explicit scenes, but by that point the teacher knew us well enough and trusted that we were mature enough to handle it. We also had an after-school film club in high school, with a membership and faculty advisor which happened to be identical to the AP English class. The only films I specifically remember watching there were _Casablanca_ and _Plan 9 from Outer Space_. One the week right after the other, because the teacher wanted us to see both just how great and how terrible the medium could be. Then, this past year, the teacher I was student-teaching with (8th grade) would reward his good students by letting them come in to the room over lunch to watch movies, 40 minutes at a time. He mostly tried for educational or inspirational films, but also included a few that were just fun. Offhand, I can remember him showing _October Skies_, _Sarafina_, _Akeelah and the Bee_, _Big_, and _Robots_. ---
**Author:** ![I-VI-ii-V](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c89c15/32.png) [@I-VI-ii-V](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I-VI-ii-V)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2013, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325/98 "2013-10-21T03:53:00Z")
_Romeo and Juliet_ w/nudity in 9th grade. _Harold and Maude_ in 12th grade. Now that I’m in the teaching racket, I’ve shown my students _This is Spinal Tap_. But I didn’t show _Resevoir Dogs_. Nope. Not even after school to a small group of students who had never seen a Tarantino flick. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![california\_jobcase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@california\_jobcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/california_jobcase)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2013, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325/99 "2013-10-21T04:18:18Z")
One film that we saw every year (sometimes several times a year) from '72 to '78 was “Why Man Creates.” One youth minister even showed it to us in Sunday school. I had the head basketball coach for health class (Indiana, and we were a top 5 team). We had a movie every day, but the only one I remember is “Emergency Childbirth.” Quite graphic. In driver’s ed we had all the scary, graphic movies. The only one that really made sense was one on somebody’s concept of “space cushioning.” The idea was that if you keep your distance from other drivers, collisions are less likely. Somebody needs to show that film to all the idiots I see tailgating each other at 70+ mph out on I-75 and other interstates. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2013, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325/100 "2013-10-21T13:44:22Z")
> [@fiddlesticks](#): > > 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. We saw that one intact during my freshman year of high school. The teacher didn’t warn us or anything so I think half the class was busy dorking around, not watching the film, and missed it. That’ll learn ya not to pay attention in school. Ironically, we had to get warned before watching _Working Girl_ in my senior film studies class that we’d be seeing Melanie Griffith in her undies. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-watched-in-school/671325.md?page=6)