Just when you think short films from the '70s can't get any weirder, along comes Telezonia. I first heard about this short from FilmThreat's The Bootleg Files. Reading about the short is one thing; watching it is a whole different experience. The film was originally created by Bell Telephone to teach kids how to use the telephone (not the smartphones of today but the rotary dials and coin-operated pay phones of yesteryear), but when you see the four kids in the short, all look about ten years old and should know how to at least pick up the receiver and say "Hello". When the phone kept ringing, I wanted to scream, "Someone pick up the friggin phone! It's not that complicated!" These kids play dumb unconvincingly. Next thing you know, the yellow phone grows huge, the dial opens up, and the kids follow some effeminate manboy named Telly to watch phone operators, technicians, etc. do their jobs before heading to the abyss called Telezonia, where they get forgettable songs and a crash course in everything from phone manners to how to use the yellow pages, courtesy of humans dressed as a question mark, an exclamation point, an Rx symbol, a pair of parentheses, and the letters Q and Z. I'd love to know what the filmmakers were smoking when they were making this.
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