This 1962 Movie Is The Anti-Porno Version Of 'Reefer Madness' And It's Hilarious

[onager]

Standard Disclaimer - posted in the Atheists/Agnostics group, a safe haven. We don't have a god in your fight.

And why did I post this in A/A? Look at who commissioned it, in the first para:

This 1962 Movie Is The Anti-Porno Version Of 'Reefer Madness' And It's Hilarious

by Megan McCormick - January 22, 2016 12:12:27 pm

Sex, violence, and sensible heels on housewives...this movie has it all. Pages of Death was a half-hour video commissioned by The Hour of St. Francis radio program and distributed by a group that was affiliated with the Catholic Church. Its mission? To teach the world about the dangers of girly mags.

See, according to Pages of Death, a porno mag had the power to sway "even grown men" to a life of crime and violence.

Yes, we're talking about those magazines with ladies in their underwear. No, it doesn't make sense. That didn't stop them from creating a cinematic masterpiece, though...

So obviously all of this is bullshit, since if everyone who ever saw pornography became a murderer, we'd all be killed by now.

Oh, by the way, the narrator, Tom Harmon, who asserts all of these facts? His wife was Elyse Knox, an actress who started her career as a pin-up girl during World War II.

http://distractify.com/humor/2016/01/22/meg-pages-of-death

[mountain grammy]

1. I was in my second year of high school in 1962

with a lot of Catholic kids.. many from Catholic middle schools. This sounds so very familiar. Some of the weird stuff the Catholic Church pulled then fueled irrational fear of our Catholic president, and I had an aunt that bought it all. Luckily my mom was grounded and smart and proclaimed it all "bullshit," as, I'm sure, our president did.

[nil desperandum]

2. This is most interesting

perhaps they could make a film about how wearing a white robe and praying to an invisible being caused their male priests to molest little boys and how the same odd clothing and invisible being led the men who managed the careers of the pedophiles to move them to a new unsuspecting community instead of turning them over to the cops for incarceration.

There's a lot of sin associated with catholics to be sure, and most of it by the church that purports to represent their deity.


Disclaimer: Posted in atheists and agnostics, if you don't like hearing that your beloved catholic church is a horrible entity don't read the posts here.

[progressoid]

3. And the narrator also had a son named Mark Harmon!

Father of Mark Harmon, Kristin Harmon and Kelly Harmon.
Ex-father-in-law of Ricky Nelson, Mark Tinker and John DeLorean.
Father-in-law of Pam Dawber.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0363567/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

Thanks for this Onager.

I'm forwarding this to a friend who just sent me a vintage National Lampoon from 1971. Which, its safe to say, would be the polar opposite of this!

[onager]

5. Have you seen this documentary?

"Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon"

Features interviews with many of the old NatLamp staffers, and seques into the creation of "Saturday Night Live," "Animal House," etc. Lots of rare, never-before-seen video footage and photos, some of it from the private collections of NatLamp people. Fascinating stuff.


And look, Ma, I'm on-topic! The film says NatLamp finally shut down because of the Christian Coalition (remember them?). The famous "baby in a blender" pic, with Satan's finger ready to hit the "Puree" switch. After that appeared, the CC arranged a massive boycott of NatLamp's national advertisers.

I hoped they would mention the brouhaha over "Son O' God" comics. Where some wowsers in Massachusetts resurrected a 300-yr-old blasphemy to go after National Lampoon. But they didn't. Or maybe that was part of the overall CC boycott.

Here's the IMdb writeup:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1674785/

[progressoid]

6. No, I haven't seen that.

I'll look for it.


A couple years ago I listened to the audio version of this:

That's Not Funny, That's Sick: The National Lampoon and the Comedy Insurgents Who Captured the Mainstream

http://www.amazon.com/Thats-Not-Funny-Sick-Insurgents/dp/0393074099

[Goblinmonger]

4. Found a streaming copy online

Thanks Oregon Historical Society. I only watched a few seconds because of other duties pressing at hand, but even the credits at the beginning--sweet fuck, hold the camera steady; you're giving the baby Jesus a headache.

[MindPilot]

7. Thanks! I watched it yesterday.

This whole idea that human minds are so malleable that looking at pictures of naked women, turns an otherwise wholesome American teen into a rapist and murderer in a matter of days is just pima faca stupid. And then of course, passing the blame off to the guy who sells the magazines in his "candy store" just makes it even weirder.

Doesn't have quite the flamboyance of RM, but it plays like a parody of a Dragnet Episode.