The message about "Punishment Park" reminded me of the propaganda
films produced and shown in schools in the 50's.  I saw a fantastic
film called "THe Red Nightmare" with JAck Webb from DRAGNET as the
narrator when I was in 5th grade in Utah.  Anti-communistic propaganda.
I still remember it.  I will be doing a short film series on propaganda
in a class this term and intend to show that film.  There happens to
be a 16 mm copy at a film distributor here in Sweden, but any
other tips on these kinds of films, or packages for sale would be
very interesting to here about.  I plan to bu a copy of Red Nightmare
from Facets.
For those of you that didn't see Red Nightmare:
A man wakes up in his small andy-Hardy-like town and finds it taken
over by Communists.  The local church has been turned into a museum
for Soviet inventions - among them the telephone.  Our hero protests
that that was an American invention!!  Maybe Bell became a naturalized
American citizen????  The children in the family turn their father
in as a contra-revolutionary and he is tried in front of a court (of
the worst kind). He then wakes up from his dream and realizes it is
the good old USA, and he has taken the American system for granted.
He becomes a nice guy to his family and a patriot after all his
complaining about things in the beginning of the film.  Jack Webb
as narrator gives it a kind of pseudo-documentary convincing element.
We believed in him in Dragnet - the forces of good against evil - and
now he will protect us against the scourge of communism.
I have showed this film to Swedish students and they were outraged
that a film like this would be shown to impressionable children.
I don't suppose it is shown anymore, but it was typical of the feelings
that were around where I lived in the late 50's and 60's.
Any comments?
 
Bert Deivert   Univ. of Karlstad    Sweden