Scared Straight! (1978)
- Directed by
- Arnold Shapiro
- Genre
- documentary film
- Country
- United States
- Runtime
- 52 min
- Rating
- 7.4 of 10 from 12 voters
- Elsewhere
- IMDb
The catalogue in 3D
The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.
How it feels
A camera crew follows a group of young offenders into a prison where convicts verbally harass and intimidate them. The aim is to frighten these teenagers away from a life of crime.
rawconfrontationalintenseunsettlingstarkgrittydisturbing
What happens
Scared Straight! is a 1978 American documentary directed by Arnold Shapiro. Narrated by actor Peter Falk – known for playing a police detective on the TV drama Columbo – the subject of the documentary is a group of juvenile delinquents and their three-hour session with actual convicts. Filmed at Rahway State Prison, a group of inmates known as the "lifers" berate, scream at, and terrify the young offenders in an attempt to "scare them straight", so that those teenagers will avoid prison life. The documentary aired on television in the late 1970s, uncensored; it marked the first time that the words "fuck" and "shit" were broadcast on many networks. Some broadcasters (an example being CFQC, a CTV Network affiliate in Canada) added locally produced segments in which experts discussed both the content of the documentary and the rationale behind airing it uncensored. The documentary received several awards, including the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. It found that most of the participants did not reoffend. However, studies that compared and evaluated the effects of various Scared Straight programs against a control group have concluded that they increase the likelihood of participants later committing crimes. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)
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No Lies (1974)- More like this film, on a shelf you can walk up to.It's the lit case on the top shelf.