The House in the Middle

House in the Middle, The (1954)

** (out of 4)

The National Clean Up- Paint Up- Fix Up Bureau produced this documentary teaching people how to save their houses if an atomic blast was to take place. The Nevada Test Site is the setting for the short that shows various houses and how well they take an atomic blast. I'm really not sure how true the details provided in this short are but we're told that if you clean and paint your house then it won't be destroyed by an atomic blast. If you leave newspapers around your living room or trash bags by your house then you're going to die when the blast comes. Again, I'm not sure how true this research is but the short comes off as a neat freak trying to use an atomic scare to get his neighbors to clean up the yard. The film is rather boring in all of its tests but those who enjoy the atomic scare films should get a few laughs. Telling someone to mow their lawn before an atomic blast is pretty funny in its own right.

Atomic tests at the Nevada Proving Grounds (later the Nevada Test Site) show effects on well-kept homes, homes filled with trash and combustibles, and homes painted with reflective white paint. Asserts that cleanliness is an essential part of civil defense preparedness and that it increased survivability.

Alright, so this was not supposed to be funny but was a real film created by the government to help prepare people for nuclear war. We know now (2016) that nuclear war never happened, and seems less likely now that it ever will (keeping in mind that America is protected by two large oceans). This film in unintentionally funny, because who could really believe a clean house was less likely to be destroyed? That makes even less sense than "duck and cover".

This short subject starts off with a picture of a mushroom cloud arising from a nuclear explosion. It is produced by "The National Clean Up - Paint Up - Fix Up Bureau" -- with of course, the cooperation of the Federal Civil Defense Administration. This was an era when they exposed soldiers to atom bombs to study effects. Indeed, it was a couple of years before Howard Hughes imported sand from atomic testing sites for studio retakes of THE CONQUEROR. This eventually resulted in the death by cancer of Dick Powell and the removal of one of co-star John Wayne's lungs. So, at the time, this seemed a sensible question.

In retrospect this industrial film looks like a parody of itself -- will a semi-gloss or a latex best resist the end of the world and should I use a white undercoating? Or would wallpaper do a better job? Maybe one of the Morris prints which uses lots of green arsenic for the nursery. In the meantime, you'd better throw out those old newspapers because when they drop the Bomb next door, they will burst into flames and lower real estate values.

Yet, in many ways, B movies and industrial films provide us with the best view of contemporary thought from an era. For a major picture, you have many bright people laboring intensively to make every choice. For something like this, it's a matter of getting it today, not right, and so the casual, easy choice that reveals the habits of the era is the one taken.

So while you're busy laughing your head off at the stupidity of people more than half a century ago -- and trying hard not to think of what people will think about us in another half century -- consider this from a sociological viewpoint, if you would.

I actually am affiliated with the successor to the organization that sponsored this, but no one in the organization even knew about this. So far over the top that people may have been embarrassed to admit to it. It seems to be a parody, but it isn't. Amazing how someone convinced the federal government to test the proposition of the film, but they apparently did. And the narrator seems to be the guy who narrated all of this genre of movies (which include the driver's ed and scary health education films I recall. I suspect this guy had cornered the market on the VD prevention movies they showed to poor GIs back then too. Anyway, worth the time to watch -- a real hoot.

The National Paint, Varnish and Lacquer Association using the name "national clean up paint up fix up bureau with the cooperation of the federal CD administration tried to convince people to paint their house to Protect them from a nuclear storm. Somehow that would protect their home and I guess them... nowhere do they mention the nuclear radiation that would kill them pretty quickly and painfully. But at least they will have a nicely painted house.

The film is spooky to watch, knowing what we know today about dangers of radiation.