User Reviews

Another "educational" film from the "Duck and Cover" age, in this case focusing on a student who copies from a classmate's paper. "Cheating" is only memorable because on "MST3K", Dr. Forrester made Mike, Servo and Crow watch it before he showed them "The Wild World of Batwoman". This leads Crow to copy something off of Gypsy's paper, so Mike and Servo do to Crow what the people in the short film do to the student.

Thank God that we have "MST3K" to rip at these boring movies. If anything, this movie alone is enough to make anyone want to cheat on a test. Dreadful.

So what would I do? Trash this movie a little more.

Yes, Johnny did not have time to study for his test so he had to use poor Mary who is so smart. It worked once, will it continue to do so? Ha, these days most kids use their smart phones to look up answers, use the internet to copy essays and have no need for copying. Sorry for being so cynical, but I earned my 3.90 GPA in college, earned my degree actually putting forth some effort and it just irks me how many people simply do shortcuts so yes, Johnny should be burned for his transgression! Seriously I do not like cheaters, do not like liars and can not stand their parents who will take up for them and provide them the means to cheat. Of course, poor Johnny does not seem to have any parents to be seen, at least not in this short. Meanwhile, the moronic student council full of a bunch of most likely hypocrites, decides Johnny's fate. One has to wonder why Johnny needed to study for an algebra test as it is math, really no studying involved. Perhaps go over a few problems to make sure you know who to calculate your answer, but studying really should not be a factor. And what of the teacher? How could she miss it the first time? When your student makes an A on his math test and simply has answers rather than a page full of problems being worked out, it would make me suspicious, sure a person can work it out in their mind, but I am betting poor Johnny never has.

Big Youth on School Grounds Johnny Taylor gets his friend, Mary, to help him cheat on his Algebra test. In time, he slides further and further into the dark world of school cheating, until he is caught and publicly degraded- his friends now hate him, his girlfriend is disgraced, he is totally humiliated and -horror of horrors- he is booted off the School Council. You get the feeling that his life is, effectively, ruined forever by the trauma. Oh, the shame of it all!

The lighting and sets would have been appropriate in a Fritz Lang film like "Metropolis," "Mabuse- der Spieler," or "M". All is eerie foreboding and miasmic horror.

Johnny's got a problem. Algebra just doesn't compute in his head, but he needs that math grade or his position on the student council is kaput. Rather than doubling his study time or approaching his teacher for help, he immediately hits on the idea of cheating and runs with it.

In keeping with the sense of nihilism conveyed by the gloomy cinematography, it feels like everyone in this short is out to screw everyone else over. Johnny shamelessly pries test answers from his friend Mary, Johnny's friend Jim pulls him away from his studies despite his protestations, and when Johnny's cheating comes to light, the entire student body exiles him to the farthest reaches of social pariahdom. And the student council? These Young Americans try, convict, and execute Johnny in absentia, thus showing that the status quo of the early 50's must be maintained even at the cost of due process (a subtle but daring criticism of the then-contemporary House Un- American Activities Committee).

Though not as prominent as their handling of the main theme, the filmmakers include a cursory subtextual exploration of guilt and its effects on the psyche. While it's never given any voice other than an incorporeal appearance by Johnny's teacher as he contemplates his crossing of the line, there are hints that the pressures weighing on Johnny have pushed him to the breaking point. His final act of cheating clearly doubles as a cry for help. As humiliating as it surely was to be exposed as a scholastic criminal, a profound sense of relief must have accompanied Johnny on his long walk to Miss Granby's desk to receive his destiny.

In those staid early days, it's possible that cheating on a test may have erupted into the kind of scandal depicted here. Though we leave him at a crossroads (Will he redeem himself? Drop out of school and hit the road a la Jack Kerouac? Start selling drugs on campus?), the implication of this short is that it's all over for Johnny.

Let the MST3k crew guide you through this existential wasteland. You'll love it.

I'm not sure I understand the need to trash instructional short films of this type; not only did they serve a purpose of sorts in their time, but they're very entertaining to watch today. While they might make us smile condescendingly, their innocence and nostalgic charm cannot but win us over.

In "Cheating" a pre-adolescent Richard Nixon, who calls himself John Taylor, yields to the temptation of getting the answers to an algebra test from Mary, his bookworm of a girlfriend. This leads to a prolonged cheating jag, which in turn disgraces Mary the Bookworm, and ends his own budding political career ("You won't have John Taylor to kick around anymore!"). Throughout the film, John's sense of dread over his pending disgrace is mirrored by the Expressionistic lighting and bleak set design.

Of course, it might be supposed that John Taylor's downfall in high school prefigured his later downfall as President. Perhaps his humiliation here fed his paranoia, which in turn led to the political dirty tricks which ended in his resignation and subsequent exile in San Clemente.

Maybe if Mary had better explained the solving of quadratic equations, we might have spared Watergate and our nation's concomitant crisis of confidence in its governmental institutions.

(Note: Although I really enjoyed the MST3K treatment of "Cheating", I'm commenting here on the original version, sans wisecracking robots.)

For this parable on the downside of cheating on school tests, director Herk Harvey gets a bit more experimental than is typical for these outings. The opening scene is dominated by an eerily lit pendulum clock that casts an ominous shadow on protagonist John Taylor as he awaits a phone call. This clock's slow ticking, measuring the passing time, is a recurring theme of the short. This certainly must be the aspect of "Cheating" that has made at least a couple reviewers compare it to the German expressionist style of film making.

From something out of "M", there's an abrupt transition to a scene reminiscent of 'The Telephone Hour' in "Bye-Bye Birdie". At this point, the story continues in flashback, with a narrator. Oddly, he addresses his remarks not to the viewer but to John (except for a brief aside to Mary and the "What would you do?" questions to the audience at the end). Most of the rest of the film is in the standard no-one-moves-much-during-a-take style of these Centron productions, with acting about as wooden as it's possible to be. However, there's at least one more stylistic oddity. The night after his first, successful cheating, John is haunted in bed by an apparition - the disembodied head of his teacher. This reminds me of a convention used in old romance comics, of all things!

While films like this certainly aren't great art, they are utterly fascinating as expressions of the concerns of their era. With its unusual approach, "Cheating" (along with "The Other Fellow's Feelings", in my opinion) is a stand-out of the genre.

This short I seen on MST3K alongside Latin American cult film, "Wild World of Batwoman". It is about a poor dumb sap named Johnny, whom cheats with his "Girlfriend" Merry and at first is sucessful, but the second time around though, it is total misery. Kicked out of student council, being hated by everybody in the school and breaking up with Merry. Now where the hell are Johnny's parents? Is he orphan or something?

Geez, I was caught cheating in grade school once, but the punishment was NOT *that* severe.