My good friend and Telemarketers editor Chris Passig sent me this 1988 police training video, Surviving Edged Weapons, as supplemental viewing for my Craigslist Martial Artist article: Case File 003.
Chris believed there were certain similarities.
He was correct.
The video is an astonishing combination of legitimate police instruction, low-budget horror movie, Milwaukee community theater, martial arts demonstration, and intense midwestern accents.
It also shares something with the Craigslist project: total sincerity, homemade mythology, improvised production value, and the deeply American conviction that somebody, somewhere, is preparing for an attack the rest of us cannot yet imagine.
It is violent, educational, unintentionally hilarious, and somehow much better made than it has any right to be.
I am sharing it here as required supplemental viewing for th…
