Jump to content

The Terrible Truth

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Terrible Truth
Produced bySid Davis
StarringWilliam B. McKesson
Production
company
Distributed bySidney Davis Productions
Release date
  • 1951 (1951)
Running time
10 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

The Terrible Truth is a 1951 American anti-drug documentary film created by Sid Davis Productions.

Summary

[edit]

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]

Reception and legacy

[edit]

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

[edit]
  1. ^ "The Terrible Truth" – via filmow.com.
  2. ^ a b 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, S2CID 144984222 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

[edit]
[edit]