Screening of Film in Class Spurs Inquiry : Education: The Conejo Valley Unified School District considers disciplining a teacher who showed seventh-graders a movie with sex and cannibalism scenes.

A controversy has erupted in Thousand Oaks over a teacher’s decision to screen “Quest for Fire,” a caveman movie with sex and cannibalism scenes, to a junior high school social studies class.

Complaints from some parents led the Conejo Valley Unified School District to consider disciplinary action against the Sequoia Intermediate School teacher who showed an edited version of the film to seventh-graders, a school official said Friday.

The 1982 movie, which has an R rating, was not approved by a district committee that normally screens all sex education films for viewing, said Richard Simpson, an assistant superintendent for instructional services.

Simpson said it should have been submitted to that committee because of scenes revealing nudity, although it was not intended to be used as a sex education film. He said parents were not advised that the film would be shown and should have been informed.

The scenes in the edited version shown to the classroom included “scenes of violence. There are scenes that suggest cannibalism. There are scenes that suggest sexual activity,” Simpson said.

District officials are conducting an inquiry and will decide what action to take against the teacher next week, he said.

“If what was alleged to have happened happened, then it shouldn’t have,” Simpson said.

Because it is a personnel matter, Simpson declined to name the teacher. But parents identified the Sequoia schoolteacher as Clint Dillon, a social studies instructor who has been at the school for two years. Dillon declined to be interviewed Friday.

Two teachers also showed a different edited-for-television version of the film to two 10th-grade world history classes at Newbury Park High School, Principal Charles Eklund said.

“Quest for Fire” was directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud and stars Ron Perlman and Rae Dawn Chong as prehistoric lovers. Movie critics lauded the French-Canadian film for its special effects, calling it one of the most realistic portrayals of a caveman and his search for fire.

The special effects disturbed parents of Sequoia schoolchildren, eight of whom complained to the school district, Simpson said.

Teresa Muse, 37, whose 12-year-old daughter Danielle saw the movie with a class of about 30, said she and a dozen other parents tried to contact Dillon about the movie, but could not reach him for three days.

Muse said she was shocked by her daughter’s graphic description of dismemberment, violence and nudity.

“There was this man and this woman and they were naked and tied up and hanging upside-down. The man’s arm was ripped off and a group of cannibals was eating his arm,” Muse said. “When she came home, she was sick to her stomach. This movie really bothered her.”

Other parents told Muse that their children also described the film as sickening, and one child had nightmares of cannibals, Muse said.

Sequoia is not the only school where middle-school students screened the film. Muse said Dillon admitted showing the film to students at Colina Intermediate School several years ago but had no complaints.

Carol Kimball, 40, a parent who spoke with Dillon at an open house, said Dillon had a videotaped copy of “Quest for Fire” on his desk.

When she reported the negative reactions her 12-year-old daughter had to the film, Kimball said Dillon’s “response was, ‘She didn’t tell me that.’ ”

Kimball said she would have barred her child from seeing the film if she had known about it in advance.

Three school board members declined to comment about the film, but said they have called for an investigation of the incidents and a review of district policy on feature films in the classroom.

School board Vice President Mildred Lynch, who has not seen “Quest for Fire,” said she believes that it should not have been shown to a class of seventh-graders.

“I have simply been told that what was in it would be inappropriate for a junior high school student to see,” she said.

Teachers usually enjoy some latitude in what to show their students, but parents should also know what their children are watching in the classroom, school board member Dolores Didio said.

Simpson said that students who saw the film were studying social sciences and history, but that “Quest for Fire” did not relate to the same time period they were studying.

The teacher had delivered a lesson on “elements of culture and power. . . . But you certainly would not need this film to teach those concepts,” he said.