{"id":26766,"date":"2017-10-27T09:43:17","date_gmt":"2017-10-27T13:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=26766"},"modified":"2017-10-27T13:24:04","modified_gmt":"2017-10-27T17:24:04","slug":"the-bootleg-files-halloween-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/27\/the-bootleg-files-halloween-safety\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: Halloween Safety"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 611:<\/strong> \u201cHalloween Safety\u201d (1977 educational film).<\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> A copy can be found on several online video sites.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> None.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> It fell through the cracks.<\/p>\n

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> Unlikely as a standalone work.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a little easy to dump on the old-time educational films. These works were shot on shoestring budgets and aimed at school children in a less sophisticated era, so the financial and intellectual poverty of these productions immediately disqualifies them from being taken seriously as cinematic art.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But not all educational films deserve to be treated with scorn. A 1977 effort called \u201cHalloween Safety\u201d has a weird charm about it, offering a generous serving of sincerity with a dash of unusual (but well-intended) advice.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s opening credits calls immediate attention to unusual professional credentials: the adviser on the film is credited as Richard C. Clement, the chief of police in Tom\u2019s River, New Jersey, and the past president of the International Association of Police Chiefs. This notable law enforcement professional is the only behind-the-camera individual to receive on-screen attribution \u2013 and, sadly, Chief Clement never gets a chance to make his acting debut here.<\/p>\n

Instead, we find ourselves with a group of children who are dressed up for their annual trick-or-treat odyssey on Halloween night. The film focuses on one girl who is wearing a plastic witch\u2019s mask and a witch\u2019s costume, complete with a broom. The narrator, a woman with a firm matronly voice, warns the viewer that the girl is \u201ctaking some frightening chances of getting hurt\u201d because of the problems related to her costume, adding that her get-up is \u201cvery, very dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s so bad about the costume that it rates two \u201cverys\u201d instead of just one? For starters, the witch mask has tiny eye holes, which the narrator insists makes it difficult for the girl to see through. The camera cuts to quick POV shot from the girl\u2019s perspective \u2013 she can see straight ahead, but her peripheral vision is blocked and the full scope of the surroundings can only be absorbed by repeated head turning. The POV shot then shows an unexpected car barreling at the child, but thankfully there is no impact. The girl\u2019s mask also prevents her from glancing down, resulting in her falling off a curb and spilling all of her candy into the street. Then, a second car comes along and nearly runs over the girl. Too bad Chief Clement or one of his officers isn\u2019t out directing traffic that night.<\/p>\n

Then, the black garment and hat worn by the girl is faulted by the narrator because it does not stand out in the dark street, thus making the girl an easy target for a car. The girl makes it across the street and falls again, due to the length of the witch\u2019s robe and the cumbersome broom she is carrying. \u201cIt seems that she\u2019s collecting more bumps and bruises than candy tonight,\u201d the narrator observes with slight condescension. The angry girl then kicks her broom and pulls off her mask with the same level of fury that Herbert Lom displayed when he unmasked himself at the conclusion of the 1962 \u201cPhantom of the Opera.\u201d<\/p>\n

From here, \u201cHalloween Safety\u201d shows the viewer the smart way to prepare for October 31. We\u2019re in the girl\u2019s home and her mother, who is wearing the Dorothy Hamill-style hairdo that half of the white women in the mid-70s sported. Mom pulls out some safety pins to shorten the witch\u2019s garment, then sticks the broom in a vice to shorten it with a saw. (Looks like Mom is a Bob Vila fan!) The narrator suggests a cardboard broom as being safer before adding that no broom was truly needed.<\/p>\n

The narrator then recommends changing the costume\u2019s color from black to white, with red reflective tape wrapped across the girl\u2019s upper torso like a St. Andrew\u2019s cross. The mask\u2019s eye holes are widened, but Mom is unhappy and allows the girl to paint her face with make-up. The girl then joins her costumed friends in the living room, where everyone is gorging on Halloween candy.<\/p>\n

The rest of the film offers pointers on how to behave when trick-or-treating, with tips about staying in one\u2019s neighborhood and avoiding homes where you don\u2019t know the residents. Apparently, the trick aspect of trick-or-treat needs to be considered, as the kids in this film are pressed by their candy philanthropists to tell jokes before getting their goodies. (\u201cWhere does Dracula keep his money? In a blood bank!\u201d) The narrator also reminds the viewers that there are some weirdos out there, so all Halloween candy should be inspected thoroughly before consumed.<\/p>\n

\u201cHalloween Safety\u201d was produced by Centron Educational Films, an operation out of Lawrence, Kansas, that churned out dozens of non-theatrical shorts distributed to schools across the country. Most of their films have zero name recognition, but they have great titles: \u201cBananas: Gold From the Tropics,\u201d \u201cCindy Goes to a Party,\u201d \u201cHow Plants Reproduce\u201d and \u201cThe Low Countries: Very Much Alive\u201d are some of their offerings.<\/p>\n

One individual at the company, a principal director named Herk Harvey, gained B-movie immortality by creating the 1962 feature \u201cCarnival of Souls\u201d during a three-week sabbatical from his educational film output. It is not certain if Harvey played any role in the creation of \u201cHalloween Safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHalloween Safety\u201d was a popular title in the Centron canon, and in 1985 the company did a \u201csecond edition\u201d remake that covered the dangers in carving pumpkins and dressing like a robot. That film offered an animated talking jack-o\u2019-lantern as the narrator rather than a smarty-pants off-screen lady.<\/p>\n

To date, this film has never been released in any commercial home entertainment format. \u201cHalloween Safety\u201d is copyright protected, but unauthorized postings can be found on YouTube<\/a>, Vimeo<\/a> and Archive.org <\/a>\u2013 which is a treat for those interested in vintage educational films, but a crummy trick on the film\u2019s current copyright owners.<\/p>\n

IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.<\/em><\/p>\n

Listen to \u201cThe Online Movie Show with Phil Hall<\/a>\u201d on SoundCloud, with new episodes every Monday.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 611: \u201cHalloween Safety\u201d (1977 educational film). LAST SEEN: A copy can be found on several online video sites. AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None. REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It fell through the cracks. CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Unlikely as a standalone work. It\u2019s a little easy to dump on the old-time educational […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":26767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1513],"tags":[1834,1833],"class_list":["post-26766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-halloween-horror-month","category-bootleg-files","tag-educational-film","tag-halloween-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26766"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26769,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26766\/revisions\/26769"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}