It’s been more than a decade since I wrote about it, but my high school had some random elective courses and the one that I have some random memories of was You and the Law. I took it thirty years ago durin gmy junior year, and it was one of those classes that existed to give me a break from APs and a nightmare of a physics course. We went to the Suffolk County courthouse in Riverhead to see some proceedings, and we visited the county jail where we could get yelled at my inmates–I mean, “scared straight.”

The rest of the time, we watched TV.

I mean, I’m sure that there were actual lectures and notes and there was definitely some sort of assessment, but aside from that time a police offier came and talked to us about life as a cop, I don’t remember anything except Law & Order reruns, the occasional news piece or documentary, and a few random TV movies. The Sayville High School social studies department had enough tape to run a cable network.

Anyway, the Law & Order episodes–original recipe, Law & Order, by the way, because SVU was still a number of years away–were fun to watch but never seemed memorable after the couple of class periods we spent watching them. But for some reason, I remember two of the TV movies we viewed: a 1972 prison flick and a 1993 movie about a stalker.

I was able to track down 1972’s The Glass House via Netflix a number of years ago when that company still rented out DVDs. It was in my queue for a very long time and I am pretty sure it was one of the last DVDs I ever rented before Netflix’s DVD operation shut down. The movie stars Alan Alda (right before M*A*S*H) as Jonathan Paige, a political science professor who is sentenced to prison for manslaughter after what at the beginning of the movie seems like a confrontation that escalates quickly because he’s in the wrong place at the wrong time. It really doesn’t matter because the whole purpose of the crime at the beginning is to show him not as vicious or evil and to get him into prison. Running alongside Joanthan as a protagonist is Clu Galagher’s Brian Courtland, a prison guard whose first day on the job is Jonathan’s first day in prison. He’s also a “good guy” because he doesn’t believe or want to give into the corruption of the system.

Over the course of the movie, Jonathan makes some allies, such as Lennox (played by an in-his-prime Billy Dee Williams) and Allan (Kristoffer Tabor), as well as enemies like Hugo Solcum (Vic Morrow). He and Brian both have to deal with the way that the corrupt Warden Aurebach (Dean Jagger) runs the prison. Otherwise, the plot isn’t that complex. Unlike The Shawshank Redemption (which I think was either still in theaters or about to hit home video while I was taking the course) and its wrongfully convicted preisoner who plays the long game so he can escape; or Attica, which Mr. Gerbino showed us as well and features a prison uprising, The Glass House is about how Alda’s character is going to navigate and ultimately survive the prison.

Spoiler Alert: Most of the characters don’t.

Like I said, this aired right before M*A*S*H started, so Alda wasn’t a household name yet. But he is an affable character who seems to be in a bad circumstance or took one wront turn. And so he’s normal in a very tough world, like any of us would be. Clu Galagher had a long career as a TV cowboy and had recently been in The Last Picture Show and you can read him as the upstanding one in the corupt system. Of course, he’s thwarted too, because the corruption is too entrenched. The warden may be in charge, but it’s really Slocumb who runs things. He arranges for a guy named Berma to be shanked, and for Alan to be raped (after which he kills himself). The end of the movie is a full-on prison riot where both Slocumb and Jonathan are killed.

Watching this for the first time since high school, I had two reactions. First, it’s a really good movie. Alda, like I said, is outstanding and you really care about what happens to him. But the movie belongs to Vic Morrow, whose performance as Slocumb is ice cold. He rarely raises his voice and when he does, it’s as scary as it should b efor someone who’s brought subtlety and cold stares to the role. Second, the movie is gritty, realistic, and violent. It was shot on site in a prison in Utah and some of the extras were actual inmates. I can’t believe that Mr. Gerbino got away with showing it in class. Then again, Gerbino had tenure and it was a different time when parents didn’t lose their shit over little things.

Moment of Truth: Stalking Back, on the other hand, isn’t a realistic dramatization of a prison; it’s full-on true crime. Based on the story of Laurisa Anello, the movie tells the story about how from the age of 14 until she left high school, she was stalked by one of the umpires from her softball league. In the real world, the guy was named Bruce but the name is changed to have it be Curt for the film. But he’s still a youth softball umpire. He’s protrayed as .. well, “simple” is a bad way to put it but he clearly gets made fun of for his lack of intelligence. Laurisa is one of the few people who isn’t an asshole to him and he takes that as permission to go after her with romantic gesture. It starts with flowers, then gifts, and then escalates to flat-out stalking–threatening calls and letters as well as following her around for three years.

The cops are useless, saying that they really can’t do anything. The court simply keeps giving Clint probation despite his constantly breaking it. Laurisa feels completely trapped in her house because her mom’s increasing paranoia has made her more and more resrictive. Curt does leave the state at one point and Laurisa gets a semblance of normal, but he comes back and stalks her. And then stalks her some more. It eventually hurts all the relationships, including her parents’ marriage and her burgeouning relationship with Scott, played by a floppy 1990s-haired Paul Rudd. No, really. At least four or five guys that I went to high school had his haircut in 1993. To his credit, Paul Rudd comes to Laurisa’s rescue when Clint follows them. Gets a few punches in, too. But then his parents won’t let him see her again.

There’s a lot of dangerous music throughout the movie, shots of Laurisa through the bars that her parents have put on the house windows, a number of tense drives home, and at least one nightmare sequence. Then, Laurisa’s mom has had enough and writes to a state legislator who invites her to Tallahasse to help her lobby for the “Stalking Bill,” which eventually passes and helps them all finally get back to normal but not before Clint shows up tot he house and tries to attack Laurisa in the garage. This time, the cops actually do their damn job.

I don’t remember what our reaction was to Stalking Back; we probably wondered why we spent nearly a week’s worth of class periods watching it. Hugo Slocumb became kind of a running joke between some friends and I for the rest of the year. One of my friends wrote “Say hello to Slocumb for me” in my yearbook and aside from knowing why it was there, I wish I could remember why it was funny or what our jokes where. Maybe we just thought the name “Slocumb” was funny in that Beavis and Butt-head sort of way. I mean, we were teenagers. Lawful teenagers, but teenagers nonetheless.