HOW TO BE A MAN: Classic Educational Shorts Volume One – The DVD Review

Review by Sam Moffitt

I have a confession to make. I am now and have always been such a Movie Geek that I have watched closely and studied films that would bore my contemporaries to tears. I am talking about class room instructional films, industrial training films, military training films, you name it.

I not only recall the Hollywood and foreign films I’ve seen over the years and in what theatre and in what town, I recall the year, the classroom, the circumstances, and my reaction, to classroom training films of all kinds. Just a few as an example:

In the Sixth grade I still remember a film about soil erosion and flood control. Soil erosion and flood control? That’s kind of sad isn’t it? Why does it stick in my memory? It was filmed in the early Forties, black and white, and showed levees being built in the deep South, by hand and mule power, not a bull dozer or tractor or a back hoe in sight. Our Sixth grade teacher, Mr. Hutton, (a salty old pooh bear of a curmudgeon,) explained to us how out of date the film was. Still the sight of poor blacks, the shanty shacks they lived in, the results of no flood control when the Mississippi would over run it’s banks and mess up people’s lives, well that was powerful stuff to a 12 year old.

In a High School Science class I recall seeing Our Mr. Sun, a classroom staple for years, directed by none other that Frank Capra and hosted by Dr. Frank Baxter, the Carl Sagan of his day. I have a copy of Our Mr. Sun on VHS, it holds up very well.

In Driver’s Ed class we got to see the notorious Signal 30, made by the Ohio Highway Patrol it had footage of car wrecks so gruesome some of the kids passed out, whoopsed their cookies and blew chunks and had to leave the room. Powerful stuff.

When I joined the Navy in 1975 I was eager to see the notorious VD training film and was bitterly disappointed when we did not have it screened! Instead we got a slide show of various pustules and discharges and painful urination and what have you. We did however get to see a wonderful film on the duties of Shore Patrol, filmed I would say, in the early fifties. The acting was about at the level of Dragnet or The Lone Ranger, not a bad thing in my book. I recall a wonderful tracking shot of the two Shore Patrol Petty Officers walking down a street, after dark, that looked like Sailor Heaven. What I’m talking about, strip clubs, pool halls, peep shows and bars, saloons and cabarets, Sailors shooting craps in a back alley, fist fights, all to the tune of the sleaziest jazz saxophone music you ever heard! Magnificent! Everything I joined the Navy for, I wish I could see that film again. And I may soon get my wish.

Kino Video has released two collections of classroom educational films, How to Be A Man and How to Be a Woman. All films are from the collection of AV Geeks (why does that name sound familiar?), the personal collection of Skip Eisheimer. AV Geeks has their own website and I highly recommend it, my Shore Patrol film is probably in there somewhere. AV Geeks has several thousand of these films and quite a lot of them for sale in dvd-r format as well as the Kino releases, of which there are several others besides the Man/Woman set.

How To Be A Man offers an even dozen of these films and each one is interesting in it’s own way.

First up is Fears of Children and it starts the collection with a bang. This is seriously creepy stuff with a little kid who is both Mothered too much and bullied by his Father. He ends up drowning and choking his favorite teddy bear in the bathroom sink. The technical level of this one is more like a Hollywood film with good camera angles, tracking shots, moody lighting and professional actors. You’ll probably recognize the actor playing the Father.

Am I Trustworthy is a Coronet Film, one of the main producers of classroom films in the Fifties and Sixties. A little kid is disappointed that he was not elected class treasurer of his Hobby Club. His Father helps him make a list of what makes a person trustworthy. Easy to laugh at, it is close to the Leave To Beaver idea of an ideal family where Pop has all the answers but the list is actually right on the money, be on time, keep your word, that sort of thing.

Act Your Age is one long lecture about childish behavior. A teen ager carves his initials in his desk top ( a common practice, the first classroom desks I sat on had initials all over the top), gets into trouble and damned if this kid doesn’t just make a list, he fills up a notebook about “what kind of person am I?” The Principal at this High School looks like a real weasel!

The Other Fellow’s Feelings is a Centron film and that is one very interesting aspect of this collection. Centron was the production company in Lawrence, Kansas that made the incredible Carnival of Souls! It’s nice to get to see some of the material that helped Centron pay the bills, and adding enough profit for them to shoot a totally unique and classic scary movie. You won’t find anything scary here, except maybe the fact that school bullying has been around forever. A young girl is brought to tears by an in bred looking yokel who repeatedly calls her “stinky!” Centron’s films were unique in that they were open ended, there is no resolution at the film’s end but instead a request for class room discussion about the issues raised.
Your Body During Adolescence is the sex education film, the one you probably had to have a note to watch and was shown to boys only and girls only. Nothing graphic mind you, but the animated sex organs are pretty goofy.

The Showoff is another Centron film, this one about kids who, well, show off too much. Being made in Lawrence, Kansas by Centron it’s interesting to spot one of the actors from Carnival of Souls. Frances Feist, who played the landlady that Mary Henry rented a room from in Carnival, plays the hostess at a teen Party who wails uncontrollably when the show off breaks her “best glass!” Can’t say I blame her, the show off in this film is not only annoying he’s not very funny. Again the ending is open for discussion, what would you do about a showoff in your classroom? How about a brutal hazing out behind the gymnasium?

Planning For Success is all about sticking to it and keeping to your plan, no matter what. A teen boy who used to go out for sports gets a lecture, from his elderly female English teacher! Huh? Say What? Shouldn’t the coach be talking to this boy? And yes we get another list of things to do and a chalk board lecture about sticking to it, don’t be discouraged, make a plan and keep working toward your goal. You expect Dr. Norman Vincent Peale to show up any minute and really get the positive vibrations rolling.

Moment of Decision (in color!) and Car Theft, cover the same theme, car theft, and from different angles. And how easy it was to steal a car in the Fifties and Sixties, when people left the keys in their cars! Damn! We had to hot wire the cars we stole! Uh, I mean, I heard all about that from guys who did that kind of thing, don’t you know! Forget I just said that!

In Moment of Decision the guys who steal the car get pulled over by the cops within minutes of it being stolen. Did police really move that fast in the days before computers? License plate data bases? Anyway these punks get off easy. The greaser looking hoodlums in Car Theft not only steal a car and run from the cops they run over and kill an innocent little girl! The Mother’s anguish is so well handled it reminded me of the poor Mother in M, looking for her little daughter. Sad, pitiful stuff, the wages of sin!

And speaking of the Wages of Sin, now we get to the really good stuff! Dance Little Children is all about the horrors of….wait for it…… VENEREAL DISEASE! Boys and girls all over Anytown USA are getting the clap and it’s up to the Department of Health, with the help of other Authority Figures to track down the typhoid Marys and Billys who are spreading the infection. This one is really sad, a girl whose parents are not well off, wearing a home made dress that her poor Mother made for her,( instead of making dresses to put more money in the household budget,) gets taken for a ride, literally, by the “rich” boy in town who takes her to the country club and sweeps her off her feet, into the back seat of his car, and into a good dose of the clap, what a heel! The girl’s longing for a better life and hoping to find romance and maybe a life time companion are dashed on the shoals of a sexually transmitted disease.

The Decision is Yours was not made for high school classrooms, this one is a Navy training film (you knew I’d get back to the Navy at some point, right?) all about taking responsibility for your actions and try to keep it in your pants, Sailor! A young ship mate gets the kind of Dear John letter every service man dreads, a girl he has dated three times is pregnant,(way to go ship mate!) and what is he going to do about it? He tries drinking too much, with his imaginary friends (I am not making this up, this shit heel has two invisible friends who follow him around doing a good cop/bad cop routine and riffing on his troubles.) He goes to the Chaplain for some utterly worthless advice (now that part sounds familiar!) the Chaplain tells him, for instance, that masturbation is not satisfying! Gee Father, you could of fooled me! The Chaplain also discourages the Sailor from drinking too much, smoking, using drugs and warns him against homosexual activity! Well that would rule out the risk of pregnancy right?

Both Dance Little Children and The Decision is Yours also blame the media for the sex madness sweeping America. The Navy film shows some lovely magazine and paperback covers as well as some hot looking go go dancers, woo hoo! Very nostalgic.

Finally the bonus film is really a gem, From Rugs to Riches is a motivational film for carpet salesmen, with Jonathan Winters giving the performance of a life time, all to sell carpeting! Winters does all of his various voices/characters and all of them praise carpets made of caprolan (a man made fiber still being used). Pat McCormack is also in the film and this one easily is reason enough to watch this disc, very funny stuff, Winters is in peak form here.

As you might expect film quality is all over the place, all the films show some scratches, dirt, splices, audio quality is strictly mono but serviceable.

Extras include an interesting interview with Skip Eisheimer, the owner of all these films and head of AV Geeks. He tells a lot more about each film and genuinely appreciates them for what they are, snap shots of America from each year they were made and the towns they were produced in. Classroom films were made in Middle America, none are Hollywood products and rarely had professional actors. He also provides notes on each films date of production, company, credits when available. This is a wonderful collection of short films, nostalgic, campy sometimes, but sincere in their wish to teach a moral lesson, provide guidance and hopefully, relieve classroom boredom for about 15 minutes and get us out of class by the time the lunch bell rings.

See you in Study Hall!