JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 512

I wouldn’t look at this linked video if it is bedtime where you are.  It is a singularly creepy experience, at least for me, to watch this exceptionally bad marionette go through the paces of explaining how rural folks should/could prepare for the consequences of Atomic Armageddon.  Delivered to god knows where by the Department of Defense in  1965, this cretinous, bunch-crotched, simian-fingered, dead eyed, helmet haired, waxy marionette with a Joker mouth that goes from ear-to-ear wants to help in ways that make you want to run into the flames to drink a flaming glass of Pure Radiation.  As we watch the ten or so shorts unfold, the creepiness grows denser and bolder, watching the shaky walls behind hay bales in the basement fortress, collecting the errant cow to stuff it into the bomb shelter with a pat on the butt, the deeply disturbing profile of Marionette Man watching tv, the fully-dressed-wide-eyed-shocked-into-consciousness-zombie sleep, the black mirror, and on and on. 

These films are bizarre, errant, meaningless masterpieces, sugar coating the End of Things with flippant advice from a scary man moved with shining string–could such an important message be delivered with less care and still be delivered? Well, yes, of course, as anyone who can still remember “duck and cover” exercises can tell you. These supposedly “uniquely” stupid messages bombed onto the American population were basically part of an entire genre of visual seduction that induced an intellectual collitis that enabled such broadcast monologues to be delivered in the first place.  The best way to lie and have your message be believed is Lie Big, and these public betterment messages were among the Biggest Lies of the decade.