The Terrible Truth

The Terrible Truth is a 1951 American anti-drug documentary film created by Sid Davis Productions. The film contained messages such as "marijuana has similar properties to amphetamines" and "the Soviet Union was pushing drugs in America".[1] The film follows William B. McKesson (to become Los Angeles County District Attorney in 1956) who interviews a young woman about her use of marijuana as a gateway drug to intravenous use of heroin.[2] McKesson states at the end of the film "Some say that the Reds are promoting drug traffic in the United States to undermine national morale."[2]

The Terrible Truth
StarringWilliam B. McKesson
Production
company
Release date
  • 1951 (1951)
Running time
10 minutes

The film has been called "faux documentary ... ironic, naïve, campy",[3] and according to Edward Brunner in Postmodern Culture, one of the "scandalous examples of how thoroughly the media environment has been penetrated by schemes for social engineering".[4] It can be found alongside famously bad movies like Reefer Madness on popular film lists, for example those found at thefix.com as one of the five worst anti-drug works of the past century, and The Atlantic where it is described as "hysterical" and "cartoonish".[5][6]

The film is included in the Prelinger Archives, a scholarly collection of film related to U.S. history.[7]

References

  1. "The Terrible Truth" via filmow.com.
  2. Roger M. Grace (June 9, 2008), "Supervisor's Lobbying of Colleagues Brings McKesson Unanimous Vote to Fill DA Vacancy", Metropolitan News-Enterprise, Los Angeles, PERSPECTIVES #63
  3. Null 2009, p. 9.
  4. Brunner, Edward (January 1998), "Ersatz Truths: Variations on the Faux Documentary", Postmodern Culture, 8 (2), doi:10.1353/pmc.1998.0001 quoted in Null (2009)
  5. Keri Blakinger (February 17, 2016), The 5 Worst Anti-Drug Ads in the Last 100 Years
  6. Brian Resnick (April 20, 2015), "Four Vintage, (Unintentionally) Hysterical Anti-Marijuana Films: Movies about the dangers of marijuana have often depicted the drug in cartoonish terms", The Atlantic
  7. Prelinger Archives. The Terrible Truth, OCLC 860691153

Book sources

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.