Kurt Vonnegut is supposed to have suggested to the Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys that even people who work hard to make a bad movie deserve some respect. As much as I love MST3k, I'm inclined to agree...except in the case of the industrial/educational shorts from the 40's and 50's. Centron, Jam Handy and Union Pacific can bust a gut putting out the best product they're capable of, but when their aim is to educate rather than entertain, they risk veering into the insultingly pedantic. This where you feel someone really needed to push back, and MST3k is up for the job.Hygiene films are the worst. Most of the other shorts MST3k has skewered deal with topics that, for all their ridiculous presentation, give a fairly benign and inoffensive take on an issue: "Cheating" (it's bad), "Last Clear Chance" and "Days of Our Years" (don't muck about with safety or you'll get killed), "Mr. B Natural" (playing a musical instrument is enriching), "Chicken of Tomorrow" (eat 'em), and so on. However, shorts like "Body Care and Grooming" (and its kiddie version, "Keeping Neat and Clean") make the very plain statement that your personal and social worth are inextricably tied to the degree to which you keep to a certain ideal.In this short, we're taught the importance of showering, washing hands, keeping our clothing nice, and many other things that really don't need to be explained in a developed society. What they're really saying is that not doing these things will prevent you from being happy, productive, and acceptable. I suspect it was exactly this point of view that led to the development of scruffy, unwashed counterculture types a generation later. The filmmakers must have anticipated just such a movement and, in their efforts to stave it off, ended up fulfilling their own prophecy.

Maybe being born in the 1960's has something to do with it, but this movie's ideas about what's attractive vs. unattractive as well as other movies like it always give me reasons to scoff. Regardless of this, some ephemeral films of this period are just too easy to make fun of. While the cast of MST3K easily ripped this movie to pieces, we can just as soon do this ourselves.According to an uncensored version of what the narrator is trying to tell us, Spring is a time when young college men start thinking of boning beautiful women. But suddenly behind three typical 1940's college girls is something that isn't supposed to exist; A girl with medium-length straight hair, apparently no make-up, a supposedly frumpy skirt, and one sagging sock. Oh, no! We can't have that in 1947! Well, maybe THEY can't, but if she walked up to me, I'd have to struggle not to take her up to my dorm room. Yes, she could use a mini-skirt, but those won't exist for another 16-20 years.Now we see her as a typical 40's girl with her hair pushed back with a barrette, some make-up, more than likely typical colors of the period, and apparently another outfit.The rest of the movie is a lame lecture on basic grooming that kids should've known way back in elementary school. Yawn! I'm sure kids of that period trashed this movie even way back then. Honestly, what was supposedly so wrong with those shoes that one girl was wearing? Other than that, I really don't know what else I can say about this that hasn't been said before.

Another so-called educational film starring a bunch of pasty white people. The topic of "Body Care and Grooming" is personal hygiene, and it's the sort of movie that will likely make anyone want to ditch hygiene as an act of defiance.Sure enough, "Mystery Science Theater 3000" tears it to shreds. There's a "Psycho" reference and sexual stuff added. I keep wondering if, when these shorts first got made, people heckled them like the Satellite of Love crew does. Even if a lot of the country was trying to be really wholesome, someone had to have laughed at the movie's mindless optimism. As the "MST3K" showed, doing so would be the only way to avoid going crazy while watching this crap.

(r#19)Having watched Body Care and Grooming, I'm not quite sure what to believe anymore. It's like the entire world has been turned up-side-down. Until this day, I was convinced that nothing was more important in my life than keeping a good posture. Now I've seen this short film and suddenly it's washing my face that I should worry about? I better keep doing the knee test, just in case.This 40's short (oh, what a great period for "life for dummies" short films this was!) teaches us that if you're not good-looking, you might as well blow your brains out because you're never going to be of any use, ever, to anyone, and no one will ever like you. Having spread this uplifting message, a narrator with all the charm of a greasy McDonalds worker teaches us how skin works, why we sweat, and how to stay clean. It's stupid, shallow and dated as hell, but also pretty amusing for all the wrong reasons.Remember: socks that have slid down your ankles a bit might mean the end of your social life! So be careful.