The Hour of St. Francis – a “Reefer Madness” religious anthology series

Who doesn’t love a dose of cheezy cinema? The kind of movies where you expect to see silhouettes of Tom Servo and Crow T Robot in the lower right corner? Yeah, those films.

Well, I’ve got one for you today. Follow along with me on this.

You’re probably familiar with “Reefer Madness,” a film originally produced to dissuade people from smoking marijuana. A film which, due to its hokey acting and cross-eyed moralistic stand, is now considered a cult classic “midnight movie” film with unintentional hilarity.

Okay. Now that you’ve had that little toke, I’m going to bring you the buzzkill.

These are episodes of a 1960’s syndicated anthology TV series called “The Hour of St. Francis,” which originally aired as a 15-minute radio show in the 1940’s. Both iterations contained moral parables set against the growing threat of secularism.

The radio show would run into the early 1960’s, and featured some of the top radio talent of the era. Elliot Lewis, for example, worked on several radio dramas and comedies, and this was a unique ecumenical turn for him.

By the time the program transitioned from radio to television, the stories went from religious fervor into moral panic. Such as this one, an anti-pornography diatribe straight out of the Chick Tract library. “Pages of Death” suggests that looking at adult magazines will turn you into a killer. That, and musical stingers straight out of an Ed Wood movie.

Here’s another episode. This one, called “The Challenge,” features the story of an athlete who feels a calling toward the priesthood. Played by – double-checks notes – a young Jack Nicholson. Woah.

From what I have found, the television version of The Hour of St. Francis would air in syndication for decades, oftentimes either starting a station’s Sunday morning programming, or ending the broadcast day before the station sign-off and the National Anthem.

Definitely a curiosity in and of itself.