Saturday Matinee

Something for the weekend, sir? Yes, thank you how about a nice educational film? This Nude World from 1933 is billed as 'the most educational film ever produced'. Billing a tittilating movie as a documentary was an old dodge to get round censorship laws. Shotgun Wedding from 1962 looks like hokey fun and was directed by one Edward D Wood Jr - it's listed as a comedy on IMDB but the poster here certainly seems to push it as a real life expose. Why and when Sweden in particular became associated with sexual licence is a mystery to me, but just adding 'Sweden' or 'Swedish' to a title or description seemed guaranteed to pull in the dirty mac brigade. I can't find this one on IMDB but guess it dates from the late sixties.

Saturday Matinee

When you just can't make up your mind what you're in the mood for... how about that old standby, Nazi exploitation horror-porn? Where's my popcorn?

Sunday Matinee

Good heavens, I am really getting out of my routine. So as a belated Saturday Matinee a couple of posters to help you keep the sabbath in a clean and wholesome manner. They are promoting an early anti-drugs movie of the Reefer Madness type. The Pace That Kills dates from 1935 and I'm guesing that 'dope' in this instance refers to cocaine, which was the trendy drug of choice among affluent delinquents of the 1930s (cf Agatha Christie's Peril at End House, 1932, in which muderous young socialites are bonded by their shared coke habit).

[I've just seen another poster for this intriguing film, and yes it's definitely coaine their bashing on about].

Saturday Matinee

Starring Drew Barrymore's dad (I think) and Charlie Chaplin's son. But putting Jerry Lee lewis in a film like this is surely asking for trouble! (Mind you, judging by the aged juveniles in most films of this period, he probably wouldn't have found anyone young enough to appeal to him.)

Saturday Matinee

The Flaming Teen-age, also known as Hooked!, from 1956. There's a whole subculture of these shock-horror-expose movies, most of which seem to be entirely salacious, with fake disapproval providing the excuse for a bit of soft porn. Not so, this strange offering, according to a reviewer on IMDB (somebody who's actually seen it!). He writes:

"The Flaming Teen-Age is a standard slice of conservative moralizing, a scare film about the evils of the world backed by the church."

Quite right, too - look at the wild craziness going on in the bottom right for example. Depravity! I can see her ankles, for chrissakes! The reviewer, who also adds the interesting detail that it was directed by the guy who later made The Blob (and apparently wasn't enjoying the job very much), outlines the plot as follows:

"It details a young man who forsakes his family for the big city, quits his job at a candy store, moves to the city to find his dreams, becomes an alcoholic, quits, produces a Broadway revue, becomes an alcoholic again, joins a booking agency, nearly dies from alcohol poisoning, gets arrested for dope peddling, gets out on bail, and becomes a junkie himself. All this is because he drank a bit of alcohol at a party he once attended with his girlfriend. Whew!"