The above thread references an old movie they used to show us in school, with a street cat being fed tuna on the sly by a little boy. I hadn’t thought of it maybe since 6th grade or the last time I saw it, but just reading the description brought it back with astonishing clarity. So I wondered about other movies like it that kids probably don’t see anymore.
Paddle to the Sea came to mind. A little wooden Indian in a toy canoe going down the river. That’s all I remember. But we were shown that movie every year, including the year we did an overnight at Mystic Seaport. And I remember that I was thrilled to see it, every time.
Any others you might remember?
Wow! Just went to Youtube and found it. Goddam the interweb is an interconnected series of tubes going all the way back to Colchester CT circa 1972.
Do they still show the “Peanuts” Christmas special? I wonder about that because of the overtly christian message (Linus reciting a passage from the Gospel) would certainly rile up some parents.
Or “Go Ask Alice” - I can’t imagine that kids of today would even remotely take seriously an anti-drug film from 1971. (Besides, compulsive texting has taken over as the new addiction for kids today.)
We used to watch Free to be You and Me back in grade school. My wife had the record as a kid and played the thing to pieces. We bought the DVD for our daughter a few years ago and watched it a few times since.
We also used to watch Mulligan Stew and a few others that I can’t think of off the top of my head.
My elementary school used to show The Golden Voyage of Sinbad every year as an end of school year treat. Huh, seeing the year (1974), I realize now it was a relatively contemporary film then; I had had the impression that it was some cheesy thing from the 50s they were showing us.
There was a scare movie they showed us in an early year of elementary school back in the early 70’s. I remember my older sisters telling me about it, and that it would be shown when I reached such and such a grade. Apparently it was important enough to organize a special assembly, IOW, it was shown to multiple classes in the gym, rather than in the classroom.
IIRC, it was about a couple of girls who got into some guy’s car with the promise of candy, or something. They were chased into the woods, where they were knifed to death. The final scene of the film was either: a bloody sneaker floating down a creek; or an aerial shot of the two dead girls. I can’t remember which, but I do recall both scenes. I’ve been meaning to open a thread about it, to see if anyone else remembers this. It definitely left an impression on a sprite in the single digits.
I’ve often wondered if they still show “The Red Balloon”. I’ve seen other’s reference it and I assume they were in grade school in the '70s, as I was. There’s nothing particularly controversial about it, it’s just kind of arty and probably wouldn’t be very engaging to students today.
I have a vague memory of a movie and I wonder if this rings anyone else’s bell . . .
The main character is a young boy and there’s also an old man, possibly his grandfather, and there’s a raccoon that learns to unlock the chicken coop and steal eggs. It seems like the raccoon was his pet and the old man wanted to shoot it (?) Also not controversial but now I keep seeing the image of that raccoon’s paws untwisting the wire or whatever that was on the chicken coop and I’m racking my brain trying to remember the rest of it and what possible reason they had to show it to us (a few times) as I recall.
There was another film we saw several times that showed the differences between America from 100 or so years ago and now (and by now, I mean the early 70s).
A Grizzly Adams type travels through the wilderness and the scenes jump from what it used to look like to whatever change there was. For instance, his canoe was all of a sudden 50 yards off shore because the water drained from a lake or he was about to drink from some crystal clear spring but then it turned all brown and chunky from polution.
I remember Paddle to the Sea… we were still watching it in elementary school in the mid-80s… well that was in Montana, so the rest of the country had probably moved on.
We read the book as late as 1998. It was on the recommended reading list and it was one of the books we could choose to write an essay on when we did our ostracism unit. And I went to one of the better schools…
There was also this series of health films that I remember mostly for the cool jazzy theme song. The premise was that there were three equally important aspects to well-being (physical, mental, and emotional, I think), and the song went:
The health of man is like an equilateral…
Triangle
Completely dependent on the length and strength of each…
Siiiiide!
I don’t think this is quite in the spirit of the OP but, having gone to school in Texas, we were treated to John Wayne’s The Alamo in history class every year.
From what I’ve heard (I haven’t been in school in a very long time) there’s a whole class of films they don’t show in schools anymore: the gory driver’s ed film. I remember watching “Mechanized Death” and a couple of others during my early high school years, and those things were really gory. I mean severed limb-and-decapitation gory. They weren’t fake, either–there used to be a company whose job it was to follow around cops and ambulances to accident sites and film the carnage. “Red Asphalt” was another one.
It seemed every grade school in the early 80s saw The Electric Grandmother. I’d totally forgotten about until last year when I remembered “wasn’t there a movie where this family was waiting for a robot to be dropped off”. I had to search for it and lo there it was.
And if this isn’t still shown in schools, it SHOULD be:Donald Duck In Mathmagic Land
When I was in about 5th grade (about 1979), the school held a surprise school assembly before winter break, where they showed the Walt Disney version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It was awesome. But I’m sure they wouldn’t show it today, because the special effects are so dated (the movie was made in 1954).
In high school, the school showed us a scare movie a few days before the prom. It was about a group of 4 teenagers who drink alcohol; first they’re partying and having a great time, but then they all die in a car accident. Then they told us that a group of students from our school had died in the same way on prom night a few years ago. It was a pretty effective scare tactic then, but I don’t know if it would work as well today.
