Review of Tell Your Children (1938) by Chris T — 19 Mar 2011

I really don't know how to review a film like this. It's completely ridiculous in every way, from acting to editing to writing, and it doesn't help that the transfer is so washed out that people's heads are frequently seen to be blending into walls or completely obscured by smoke. There may be better transfers out there, of course, since this one was done by some company whose logo was clearly made with a graphics machine from the late 1980s, but I can't imagine the film being any funnier with a better transfer, so it's probably just as well.

So because of all this, it's a pretty great film to make fun of. It's not that long (just over an hour) so you're not blowing your whole night laughing at it, but it's really hard not to crack your friends up (Flaxgirl and I were having a good old time).

The film was clearly made by people who never smoked pot in their lives, as anyone who has can tell you that 99% of what's shown in the film as pot-induced behavior is pretty ridiculous. IMDb says it's unclear whether the film was made for the army or for a church group, but it was probably made for someone representing cotton growers, since we all know that hemp's industrial properties had a lot to do with getting marijuana (amusingly spelled as "marihuana" throughout the film) declared illegal.

It's made like the sort of educational film you'd watch in school, only ten times funnier, ten times stupider, and ten times worse-looking. As a film it's pretty terrible, but I give it the extra two points (as honestly it would probably be a 0/10 otherwise) for being great to lampoon. It's 10/10 as far as actually lampooning it goes, but I can't give it the same rating as a good film because of that alone.