FILMS OF MENACE AND JEOPARDY Sunday, January 30 at 2:00 p.m. Safety films have been frightening and shocking audiences almost since motion pictures were first invented. Although some of the most effective storytelling shows up in auto and industrial safety films, do they actually prevent accidents? Audiences seem to sit spellbound through these sad narratives, but what they're really doing is waiting for the accident to happen. That's the payoff, and all too often it seems to be the reason for the film's existence. No matter -- the films in this program will haunt your mind more than any others. DAYS OF OUR YEARS Produced by Dudley Pictures for the Union Pacific Railroad, 1955. Kodachrome, 20 min., 16mm. Director: Allen Miner. Script: Herman Boxer and Joseph Ansen. Cinematography: Alan Stensvold. Editor: Ernest Flook. Music: Howard Jackson. Voice: Art Gilmore. With The Rev. C.S. Reynolds, Florence Shaen, Henry Rupp, William E. Hill and Bennie R. Wadsworth. Producer Carl Dudley took to the familiar streets of Los Angeles to make this despairing trilogy of accidents and their devastating effects on railroad workers and families. In the age-old tradition of holding workers (rather than management or the makers of machines) responsible for accidents, this film presents people who are "the victims of themselves." SAFETY BELT FOR SUSIE Produced by Charles Cahill and Associates in association with the Institute of Traffic and Transportation Engineering at UCLA, 1962. Eastmancolor, 10 min., 16mm. Director: Pat Shields. Script: Mac MacPherson. Cinematography: J.D. Mickelson. In a time when safety belts still weren't installed in most American cars, human dummy research at UCLA was heavily publicized to promote their use. This attention-grabbing film has an absurd plot (Nancy, a little girl, travels with her doll Susie, who is damaged in a traffic accident; Nanc's parents hear a lecture on how dolls have been used at UCLA to assess the effects of accident injuries on children; Nancy and Susie wear seat belts thereafter) but its real attraction is the shocking films of the crash tests conducted on an airstrip somewhere in California. The tests are edited to menacing and portentous music, and tragic shots of damaged dolls are shown. Although the use of dolls allows the filmmakers to avoid the unshowable, even this violence-by-proxy stimulates complex (and deeply repressed) emotions in the minds of the viewer. MORE DANGEROUS THAN DYNAMITE Produced by Panorama Pictures for the California State Fire Marshal, 1941. 8 min., 16mm. Director: Guy D. Haselton. More sensational than a horror movie trailer, this film exposes the little-known dangers of an even more little- known problem: using gasoline as a cleaning fluid. Appearing at first to be produced in the public service, it soon reveals itself to be propaganda for the dry cleaning industry. Prewar safety films (of which many, unfortunately, have gone the way of improperly stored flammables) often express themselves with a certain extremist flair, and More Dangerous Than Dynamite is no exception -- just wait for the explosion! GOODBYE, MR. ROACH Produced by The Clemson College Extension Service for the Velsicol Corporation, ca. 1957. 10 min., 16mm. Direction and cinematography: L.W. Riley. Made in the golden age of Chlordane, this film describes the common cockroach and methods of its eradication (in New York City, we speak only of its control). Key sequence: the birth of baby roaches. Cover your eyes. SIX MURDEROUS BELIEFS Emerson Film Corporation, 1955. 12 min., 16mm. Using amateurish title cards, poor acting and well-staged accidents, Six Murderous Beliefs aims to define the difference between "bravery and foolhardiness." It suggests, among other things, that the proper place for risky conduct is in the military, not civilian life. Unlike macho teenage boys, true heroes -- pilots -- "aren't cowards, but they aren't fools either." The film also graphically demonstrates the dangers of swimming too soon after a meal. THE LAST CLEAR CHANCE Produced by Wondsel, Carlisle and Dunphy for Union Pacific Railroad, 1959. Kodachrome, 26 min., 16mm. Director: Robert Carlisle. Script: Leland Baxter. Cinematography: Bert Spielvogel. Editor: Mort Fallick. Produced under the supervision of Francis B. Lewis, Director of Safety and Courtesy, U.P.R.R. With Bill Boyett (Patrolman Jackson); Mr. Harold Agee (Frank Dixon, Sr.); Mrs. Harold Agee (Mrs. Frank Dixon); Bill Agee (Frank Dixon, Jr.); Tim Bosworth (Alan Dixon); Christine Lynch (Betty Hutchins). Another engaging Kodachrome feature story (formatted for television broadcast) from the Union Pacific. This film ostensibly deals with safety at railroad grade crossings, but it's about much more: youthful carelessness; the highway patrolman as authority figure; the look of the rural and urban West in the late 1950s; the urge to speed through an unpopulated agricultural landscape; and the train as both servant and potential killer. Overanalysis? Perhaps. But longer films aspire to higher goals, and one way to achieve them is to pack them with hints of meaning in every direction. Quotable line: two railroad crewmen standing by the wrecked automobile, one says: "Why don't they look, Frank?" Frank responds: "I don't know. Why don't they look?" See also an excerpt from the classic driving safety film .