Bad movies, BIG trouble.

[RCMerchant]

[/quote]

As a student, though, I was almost expelled for showing the Pennsylvania State Treasurer R. Budd Dwyer's suicide from a copy of Traces of Death.  I was rebelling for having been put in a Physical Education Health class two years in a row.  I told the teacher that my clip was violent, and he warned the class ahead of time, never suspecting it was real footage.  The students, anticipating harmless cinema violence, paid strict attention.  Afterwards, several people left the room crying.  One kid begged to have it played again.  I was accused of "endangering the lives of the students" with material that "may [have been] appropriate for college level courses," but certainly not high school.  I got off with a well-earned two week vacation.
[/quote]

LOL! I was showing the same scene from a tape called DEATH SCENES II to a freind of mine...and Tara Sue walked in the room,saw it ,ejected the tape...and tore it to pieces and SMASHED the box! THAT horrified me maybe more than the clip did her!

[ulthar]

All I can say to this thread is "Wow."

My question is why were you all doing this stuff AT SCHOOL?  I mean, you had to KNOW it would get someone's panties in a bunch.  Seems to me that part of the purpose might have been to ruffle some feathers and push on authority a little bit.  If that's the case, you cannot complain too much when authority pushes back.

When I was a kid, we watched pretty much whatever we wanted - at someone's house.  Sometimes with the parent's approval, sometimes not.  But hey, we used to get into R rated movies all the time, too.   I guess it was different times....

That said, some of my teachers did show/play some pretty off-the-wall stuff.  We learned to not yap about it outside of class an draw attention to it, and I don't recall the teacher's getting in trouble for it.  I went to high school right smack dab in the middle of the Appalachian Bible Belt, and we had plenty of folks ready and willing to "put 'em in their place" - but the school was pretty good at edumecatin and 'munity 'lations.

Funny...at the time, I never thought I'd be defending that school's progressiveness....

[BoyScoutKevin]

I rembember going to see GP movies...not PG...GP! Does anyone know exactly what that stood for...I really can't recall.

I recall them showing the Beatles MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR once,as a Thanksgiving movie...in a lame attempt to be "hip",I guess...(this was about 1978)....kids just started walking out of the auditorium...next year they went back to the annual HUNCHBACK of NOTRE DAME(1939)....which at least,if not overly familiar,everyone always enjoyed.

Yes, it stood for General Public. With a rating like that, you can understand why they quickly changed it to Parental Guidance. Hard to believe, I can actually remember a time when movies came out without a rating.

[peter johnson]

First JAWS: 
There is nothing at all in Back to The Future to compare to the lifting of the severed, quivering rubber body part from the dissection pan, or have you all forgotten?  The initial murder of the girl in the first scene, leaving only bits of her?  The torso tipping over in the water?
Forget Quinn's murder -- Jaws had PLENTY of violent, gory parts so the story remains strange because, YES, JAWS was and IS gory and violent --
Ratings:
GP stood for "General Public".  Once there was only GP and M -- X was not an actual rating for another year yet.  Anyone know the first real X rated movie?  And I don't mean the pornos that would rate themselves with make-believe XXX and XXXX ratings -- Give up?  Midnight Cowboy, very tame by today's standards.
Anyway, I recall going to a M picture while very young, by myself:  Coogan's Bluff.  More eye-popping sex and nudity than you could shake a stick at, let alone the violence and language & drug use.  Nobody batted an eye when I presented my ticket, sans parents.  Fast forward a few years, and I'm lying my butt off at age 17, trying to get into R-rated Clockwork Orange, as in Virginia R meant 18 without parent.
Ratings, are, of course, a joke --
peter R/denny XXX

[peter johnson]

Also, I have a poster for "Zachariah" on my wall here -- came out in 1970, and shows the "GP" rating on it.  Today, this film would probably get a PG-13 or maybe a R for the violence/homosexual overtones alone --
peter G/denny P

[RCMerchant]

It's funny...I used to get into GP movies easily...many quit violent and bloody...I was 8! And here at the Strand,which was (and still is) a tiny hometown movie house,built in the '20's I believe, was happy to get business,so they would let anyone in,whethter it was an R or not! Dad figured,if it was a horror movie,it was ok! So he had no problem with me seeing DRACULA AD 1972, PSYCHIC KILLER,or FRANKENSTIEN's BLOODY TERROR,(which really p**sed me off,as Franky wasn't even in it!) BUT, I rember the ONLY time he went to a movie,was,oddly enough, the VAMPIRE LOVERS...which was rated X! I heard him talking to my Uncle Ron about it...he said it was boring....