By Kenny Byrnes
Special to YNOT

PORTLAND, Ore. – One of the most important movies ever made in this country, once thought lost to history, has been unearthed. The film is part historical document, part cautionary tale and part prophecy.

Until recently, the only surviving copy of 1962’s Pages of Death had been tucked away in the recesses of the moving image collection at the Oregon Historical Society, likely buried at the behest of porn industry bigwigs who rightfully fear the movie’s compelling and persuasive depiction of porn’s damaging effects on the mind.

While not nearly as well-known, Pages of Death is every bit as prescient and accurate a docudrama as Reefer Madness, which was released the following year.

Unfortunately, these films are also linked by the fact the American public failed to heed their clarion warning calls, allowing generations of young people to grow up thinking there was nothing wrong with firing up a “doobie” and watching “blue movies” until they developed murderous, psychotic tendencies — not to mention a disturbing penchant for playing at vivace tempo piano music that clearly was written to be played allegretto, tops.

Hosted with appropriate gravitas by “Old 98” himself, former Los Angeles Rams star Thomas Dudley “Tom” Harmon, Pages of Death relates the tale of a sweet, innocent young girl named Karen Fleming and her untimely demise at the hands of a porn-addled sex fiend.

Tragically, this sex fiend happens to be a local boy who, until recently, was sweet and innocent, himself. Naturally, porn warped the young man’s mind, porn with titles like Scorching Sex Stories and Shows All, Tells All and Night of Horrors and Home of the Stripper.

While much of the action of Pages of Death revolves around the painstaking, 21-minute investigation undertaken by the story’s two detectives, throughout the film important and telling themes emerge, revealing the tale’s true villain: our legal system’s indefensible modern interpretation of the First Amendment, which permits smut peddlers to profit from their filth while transforming our youth into homicidal perverts.

Of course, porn wouldn’t be able to do all of this without the complicity of smug booksellers who resist all attempts by decent citizens to prevent smut from taking root in their homes, and without corrupt, arrogant politicians who fight sensible city ordinances under the guise of protecting constitutional and commercial rights.

Further demonstrating its clear vision of the future, Pages of Death depicts both of these despicable subspecies. They take the form of one Mr. Baker, owner of Baker’s Variety Store, and George Halliday, a “big wheel” on the local city council and the man most responsible for allowing Baker’s and other places like it tosell their filth to the local community’s detriment.

I don’t want to reveal any spoilers, so you’ll have to watch Pages of Death for yourself to answer the literal “whodunit” questions, but figuratively speaking, this murder has porn’s fingerprints all over it — and, presumably, porn’s DNA in several key body cavities, as well.

The production company behind Pages of Death, Citizens for Decent Literature Inc., was an offshoot of the community activist group by the same name. Although many have claimed CDL was obsessed with pornography, this claim is belied by the incredible variety of territory covered by the studio’s three other films: Printed Poison, Perversion for Profit and Target Smut.

While progressives, liberals and other porn apologists often refer to CDL as a “pro-censorship” group, in truth the organization was a grassroots Catholic movement started by good, small town folks who cared deeply about things like decency, literature and public policy.

Nobody cared more about decency, literature and public policy (and financial deregulation, in particular) than the founder of CDL, a true American hero named Charles Keating who later ran a heroic company called Lincoln Savings and Loan. In the 1980s, Lincoln S&L quite decently and valiantly rescued hundreds of millions of dollars from lazy, greedy, viciously entitled elderly pensioners.

What’s most important to remember about Keating and CDL, however, is they got everything about pornography absolutely right.

Just as Pages of Death warned, in the years since its release the proliferation of porn has led to a general public tolerance for perversion, aberrant sex acts and various “alternative lifestyles” abhorred by God. Entire generations of Americans have been corrupted by dirty magazines, Dan Savage, vile “adult” websites, violent video games and gangsta rap lyrics.

With the unearthing of this brilliant, revelatory film, hopefully Charles Keating’s vision of a decent, God-fearing America will rise from the ashes like a Phoenix — by which I mean Phoenix the mythological figure, not Phoenix the city in Arizona, where Keating lived when he became good friends with other decent, God-fearing Americans like Sen. John McCain, who totally did nothing wrong during the Lincoln S&L scandal except maybe exercising “poor judgment.”

Kenny Byrnes is an aspiring Christian documentarian, family values investor and author of the e-book “Subliminal Fadvertising: How Hollywood Systematically Undermines the Public’s Faith in God and Controls Our Footwear Purchases.”