Midnight Horror Film Shows Deplored

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29735, 31 January 1962, Page 6

Midnight Horror Film Shows Deplored

(N.Z.P.A -Reuter—Copyright)

' MELBOURNE, January 30.

Melbourne church and youth club leaders said last night that midnight horror film shows should be banned.

They were commenting on brawls and a trail of damage left by youths early yesterday after horror shows at the Melbourne suburbs of Preston and Thornbu:-y. The youths ripped pickets from fences and smashed hundreds of milk bottles, tore letter boxes from posts and set fire to a truck and a car. Police said 21 youths would be charged.

In yesterday morning's out-bi-eak fence pickets were used to attack a group of New Australians walking peacefully home. Six police ca-s reached the scene just in time to stop reprisals by several carloads of Italian youths. The director of the Methodist social services department, the Rev. Jahn Westerman, said: “The time of these shows is wrong. They are at a time when these youngsters should be in bed. To turn these youngsters on the streets at two or three in the morning with this kind of stimulus is asking for trouble.”

A member of the Presbyterian public questions committee, the Rev. A. Crichton Barr, said: “We believe these films are obviously intended to excite and stimulate the wilder emotions and in our opinion they should be entirely banned." The Dean-elect of the Church of England, Archdeacon T. W. Thomas, said: “The so-called midnight horror show is designed to exploit for profit- the weaknesses of a certain type within the community. I wish the film industry would show in this matter a stronger sense

of responsibility to tihe weaker members of the commu nifty.” The director of programme training for the Victorian Association of Youth Clubs. Mr J. H. Jamieson, said: “It is a bad thing to send young people from this stimulus on to the streets at night.”