Just like the anti-Pot hysteria of the film "Reefer Madness" and it's camp value to a generation of potheads, this classic 1965 anti-porn warning from the Citizens Against Pornography and featuring well-known Los Angeles news commentator George Putnam ranting against the menace of girlie magazines and the associated "vicious climb in violence, forcible rapes and assaults to kill".
"Do you want your children stimulated and driven into an early, unstable marriage?...or your daughter lured into lesbianism?..." and on and on he goes. Interesting in that the filmmakers have no problem with blatantly showing a tremendous sampling of porn magazines of all types including full nudity, bondage, homosexuality and much more.
Just think what s step All in the Family, Boys in the Band, 9 1/2 Weeks, Will and Grace, video stars, the Internet and so many other sexually conversant creative works of art really were when in 1965 not too long before them, the kind of propaganda espoused in this film (and its flashcards of warning and hints to combat porn's influence) was par for the course. Seems so campy and reactionary now. Then again, as Putnam offers the greatest civilizations in history were all tore down by the wrath of decadence. "...Save us from the wrath of evil."
Such vehement anti-homosexuality and antl-lesbian rhetoric here is perhaps the most shocking aspects of the perspective displayed in the film
I was 9 in 1965 and if I had seen this film when it came out, I would have been completely intrigued and would have wanted to know more because I wasn't exposed to any of this stuff back then. My mother (who in fact watched George Putnam's show regularly, made my father draw in ink pen, a turtleneck over the cleavage of a model pictured on a Firehous Five + 2 album of Dixieland music which did nothing butt make me WANT to see the model's breasts even more. Oh, the joys of censorship.
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