The Terrible Truth
{{short description|1951 film}}
{{Infobox film
| name = The Terrible Truth
| image =
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| caption =
| native_name =
| director =
| producer = Sid Davis
| writer =
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| based_on =
| starring = William B. McKesson
| narrator =
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| studio = Sid Davis Productions
| distributor = Sidney Davis Productions
| released = {{Film date|1951}}
| runtime = 10 minutes
| country = United States
| language = English
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The Terrible Truth is a 1951 American anti-drug documentary film created by Sid Davis Productions.
Summary
The film contained messages such as "marijuana has similar properties to amphetamines" and "the Soviet Union was pushing drugs in America".{{Cite web|url=https://filmow.com/the-terrible-truth-t121802/|title=The Terrible Truth|via=filmow.com}} 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.{{citation|title=Supervisor's Lobbying of Colleagues Brings McKesson Unanimous Vote to Fill DA Vacancy|author=Roger M. Grace|date=June 9, 2008|newspaper=Metropolitan News-Enterprise|location=Los Angeles|id=PERSPECTIVES #63| url=http://www.metnews.com/articles/2008/perspectives060908.htm}} 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."
Reception and legacy
The film has been called "faux documentary ... ironic, naïve, campy",{{sfn | Null | 2009 | p=9}} 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".{{citation|title=Ersatz Truths: Variations on the Faux Documentary|journal=Postmodern Culture|first=Edward |last=Brunner|volume=8|number=2|date=January 1998 |doi=10.1353/pmc.1998.0001|s2cid=144984222}} quoted in Null (2009) 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".{{citation|title=The 5 Worst Anti-Drug Ads in the Last 100 Years|author=Keri Blakinger|date=February 17, 2016|url=https://www.thefix.com/worst-anti-drug-ads-century}}{{citation|title=Four Vintage, (Unintentionally) Hysterical Anti-Marijuana Films: Movies about the dangers of marijuana have often depicted the drug in cartoonish terms|author=Brian Resnick|date=April 20, 2015|work=The Atlantic|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/four-vintage-unintentionally-hysterical-anti-marijuana-films/453600/}}
The film is included in the Prelinger Archives, a scholarly collection of film related to U.S. history.{{citation|title=Prelinger Archives. The Terrible Truth|oclc=860691153}}
References
{{reflist|30em}}
=Book sources=
- {{cite book | last=Null | first=J.W. | title=American Educational History Journal: Volume 36 #1 & 2 | publisher=Information Age Publishing | year=2009 | isbn=978-1-60752-277-5 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=srDWCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA9 }}
External links
- [https://archive.org/details/Terrible1951 The Terrible Truth] at Internet Archive (public domain)
- {{IMDb title|0260424|The Terrible Truth}}
- {{tcmdb title|id=732170}}
- [https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2p81ex The Terrible Truth on Dailymotion]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Terrible Truth}}
Category:American films about cannabis
Category:American social guidance and drug education films