Kroger Babb's roadshow: how a long-running movie walked the thin line between exploitation and education

Reason, Nov, 2003 by Joe Bob Briggs

But wait! There's more! Two scenes later an expert on venereal disease named Dr. Burrell addresses an all-male class. And now comes the piece de resistance. The third film-within-the-film is called Seeing Is Believing, and it's every teenage boy's nightmare, showing grainy footage of syphilis victims struggling to wall, blinded, horribly scarred, teeth rotting, their bodies oozing with chancres and open sores, and, in one case, a fleeting image of a person whose feet have been eaten away by disease. Throughout the film there are silent-movie-style caption cards: "Millions learn these facts the hard-way ... by bitter experience!" "The Price of Ignorance!" "Self-Styled MORALISTS Would Like To Keep These Facts A Secret!!!" "Is The Gamble Worth the Price?" The audience sees crippled and blind crying babies, horrible pox-ridden arms and legs, a festering sore where someone's eye used to be, and the big payoff, introduced by the title card "Doctors and Health Officials Agree--These shocking pictures of infected genital organs will awaken you!" What follows are fully naked bodies, but so bruised and disease-ridden that they're anything but attractive. The film concludes, oddly, with images of track and field athletes, healthy young swimmers, and the U.S. Army marching in formation, as though to say, "This is what Americans should look like."

Joan's story has three more brief scenes, concluding with a doctor coming into a waiting room where the nervous Blake family is pacing and praying, to say "It's all over." Joan has a good chance of recovery. And the baby? In the version I saw, the doctor says the baby has just barely survived--presumably to be adopted by a childless couple--but I've also seen accounts by Mom and Dad viewers who claim the baby is stillborn. The fact is, there were dozens of versions of Mom and Dad, including some that didn't have any films-within-the-film, so that the movie could still play in markets with strict obscenity laws. Babb was not above showing his "cold" version to local authorities and screening the "hot" version in the theater. He also always carried with him a "square-up reel." In cases where he was forced to show the "cold" version, he would sometimes be faced with an angry audience that felt cheated by the absence of what they felt they had been promised by the advertising. To appease them, he would quickly rack an additional reel of what the carries called "pickles and beaver"--footage of full-frontal nude bodies. Remarkably, it worked. The audience left feeling they had experienced at least a little of the "good stuff."

There's one additional piece of film after the story ends. The final screen image is Kroger Babb himself, sitting at his desk and speaking directly to camera. "And now, friends, you've seen the entire production," he says. "If you agree that these pictures have been bold and shocking enough, that you've learned a very worthwhile lesson from them, I wish you'd show the management your appreciation at this time. By your applause." And of course the theater, so prompted, would erupt in applause, thereby cutting down on the possibility of anyone ever asking for his money back.