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Author Topic: After School Specials  (Read 2335 times)

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side_show

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After School Specials
« on: June 21, 2012, 03:43:50 am »
I have two after-school special style movies that haunt my memory, only I can't identify them.  If any of you pop culture vultures and mavens can help me it would be much appreciated.

Special one:  A story where a colony of children who live on another planet (Venus maybe?) where it rains every day but one, attend school.  It looks like present day (which at the time was late 70's - early 80's) earth apart from the constant rain.  It's not the future, it's just another world.  They all look forward to the one day it will not rain.  One kid is bullied and I think locked in a broom closet and misses the one day without rain as all the other kids enjoy it.  The moral of the story was something to do with bullying.

Special two:  a lonely old lady orders an artificial child from a catalog for companionship.  The child arrives in a shipping box, and either by adding water or pulling a rip cord, the child inflates and comes to life.  I can't recall much else of what happens, but it was entrancing and somewhat disturbing to watch the child inflate and become real, and there was a strong undertone of melancholy about the whole show and the idea of needing to order a fake companion from a catalog. 

Anyone else remember these?  I remember watching both of them more than once in rerun on tv...
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Re: After School Specials
« Reply #1 on: June 21, 2012, 04:05:05 am »
Oddly, for all the television I've watched, I didn't watch many after school specials.

I mostly just turned it to the cartoons when those came on.
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side_show

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Re: After School Specials
« Reply #2 on: June 21, 2012, 04:07:04 am »
Ah, look at that.  The last time I wondered about this was before the dawn of YouTube.  Turns out the first movie about the kids on Venus was based on a Ray Bradbury story: All Summer In A Day and the other one is Konrad.  Pretty interesting re-hydration scene there.  I'm watching it now.
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Re: After School Specials
« Reply #3 on: June 21, 2012, 07:24:23 am »
Well kiss my grits, it's Polly Holliday.
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Re: After School Specials
« Reply #4 on: June 21, 2012, 12:19:00 pm »
I recognized the Ray Bradbury story from your description but I don't think I ever knew it was filmed. Was it any good?
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Re: After School Specials
« Reply #5 on: June 21, 2012, 01:45:48 pm »
In a similar vein, I discovered that The Water Babies is on Netflix Instant. I loved it when I was a kid, must have watched it 700 times. Watched it with Chaos Girl yesterday. Holy Hell, 70s cartoons were both shitty and disturbing.
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Re: After School Specials
« Reply #6 on: June 21, 2012, 02:09:26 pm »
Quote from: wombat on June 21, 2012, 12:19:00 pm
I recognized the Ray Bradbury story from your description but I don't think I ever knew it was filmed. Was it any good?

Yeah, I definitely read/had it read to me with the Bradbury story.
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side_show

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Re: After School Specials
« Reply #7 on: June 21, 2012, 04:07:19 pm »
Quote from: wombat on June 21, 2012, 12:19:00 pm
I recognized the Ray Bradbury story from your description but I don't think I ever knew it was filmed. Was it any good?

It must be pretty good to have stuck in my mind.  I'm going to watch it another day though - today is actually the first day in weeks where we're not getting rain here, and tomorrow the forecast calls for rain again, so needless to say, the last thing I want to do is stay inside and watch this thing today.
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