Pick Your Poison: Medicine and Madness Screens at Oddball Films

Sat, Apr 1
8:30PM
$10.00 RSVP (Limited Seating) Adults Only!

"Pick Your Poison: Medicine and Madness"
Screens at Oddball Films

On Saturday, April 1st "Pick Your Poison: Medicine and Madness", a
program of medical, psychoactive and mental hygiene films screens at
Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco. The screening begins
at 8:30PM, Admission (limited seating by RSVP) is $10.00. For
reservations please email or call 415.558.8117.
"Pick Your Poison" is a head rushing survey of 50 plus years of
stress, psychosis and drug induced euphoria as seen through medical,
educational and corporate sponsored films. Whether campy, eye-
poppingly lurid, informational or coldly clinical these films are
sure to give us thanks for our own "sanity".

"Le Monde Du Schizophrene" (The World of the Schizophrenic)
A surreal Daliesque film produced by the Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company
(Makers of such drugs as LSD) in Switzerland. "The World of the
Schizophrenic" portrays one afternoon in the life of a hunky
schizophrenic as he wanders about his bedroom and strolls outside
hallucinating to the sounds of a Harry Partch like avant garde sound
score. Hideously garish and bad trippish to the max it's a bizarre
counterpoint to the clinical reality of "Mental Symptoms #2
Schizophrenic: Catatonic Type"(1951, B+W) produced by the National
Film Board of Canada in which 3 men are interviewed and their
frightening symptoms displayed.

"Pain and Its Alleviation" (Color, 1961)
It would take a colleague of horror/gore maestro Hershel Gordon Lewis
like Ivo Kantor to edit a film described in educational films guides
like this:
"Discusses the complexity of the pain phenomenon and the role of
nursing in providing help and comfort on a professional level.
Variations in responses to pain are indicated and the causes of pain
suggested. Designed as an incentive film to stimulate independent
study and research."
In actuality "Pain" is a drama-laden horror inspired mental hygiene
film produced for the UCLA Nursing School with a over-the-top jazz
score by Sam Weiss. Watch nurses comfort and medicate nut-job
neurotics and car crash victims in their hospital beds. Don't miss
the last vignette with its "shocking" and hilarious ending.

"Addictive Sopers"(Color, 1978) Watch a tweaked out Ohio teen talk
about Quaaludes and other relaxants as men in suits talk about the
dangers of "Sopers". The drug companies remain mum while a ski masked
user comes clean on camera. Only in Ohio!

"Psychoactive"(Color, 1976) This well-made educational film features
ex KRON TV News anchor Evan White(in his polyester shirt, bushy hair
and 'stash) narrating and demonstrating the effects of psychoactive
drugs on the systems of the human body. Drugs include sedative
hypnotics, opiates and opiods, stimulants, psychedelics and alcohol.
It's good to see rock impresario Bill Graham educate us as he talks
about how people think they are buying THC are really getting
"cheated" when they've actually bought PCP! Thanks for the warning
Bill! Shot in San Francisco with a montage and voice over intro by
comic provocateur George Carlin.

"Ulcer at Work"(B+W, 1957) Sourpuss executive and browbeating bruiser
Steve Hall is the prototypical 1950s cash register dad with his
shopaholic wife and materialistic kids. His stress level at home and
at work is at an all-time high. Doc Olmstead tells Steve his stomach
is being eaten away by hydrochloric acid. It's all caused by the
"wrong kind of feelings." When Steve-o shifts his need for self
esteem from work to home and starts spending time with the family
he's back in the driver's seat in this classic mental hygiene film.

"Medical Man"(B+W, Silent, 1969)
A found film of unknown origin. Can you say "mouth muzzle" or "dental
trance"? Weird. Really weird.

Plus! Oddball medical filmstrips!

Venue:

Oddball Films
275 Capp Street
San Francisco
415-558-8117
www.oddballfilm.com

Off Mission between 17th and 18th, Mission and S Van Ness, closer to
18th Street.

Additional Info:

415-558-8117
www.oddballfilm.com