Really horrible public information films that gave you the fears

[Sydward Lartle]

Doubly inspired by the excellent Scarred for Life and the accompanying thread about the Pan Book of Horror Stories series, let's discuss the public information films that really did scar people for life. I'll try to steer clear of the obvious choices (Donald Pleasance's 'dark and lonely water', the 'Charley says...' series of films which were ruined by the Prodigy, Tufty's annoying mate Willy the weasel getting knocked down by the ice cream van) and go straight for the nasties.

Railway safety films in particular seem to go in for the kill by hammering home the dangers in as remorseless and bleak a fashion as possible. Take this one for example...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoIuiKl1RKg

As 'Applemask' (real name Matthew Harris, he contributed quite a bit to Scarred for Life) comments, 'It's just a thirteen second clip of something horrible happening with absolutely no context whatsoever. I can't believe it's a full version. It must be an extract from a longer one, like Play Safe. Otherwise it's just brutally existential'.

From where I'm sitting, it's a smash-and-grab raid on the senses. The lack of music, the absence of a voice-over, the lack of dialogue, the use of freeze-frame (especially the horrible final shot of the kid saucer-eyed with horror at an obviously nasty accident we're mercifully spared the sight of)... it's almost punk.

Then there's Killing Time, rather a late (1992) addition to the canon, which ups the ante by giving us the indelible image of a transport police worker picking up

Spoiler alert

a dead child's severed arm, for Christ's sake

[close]

off the tracks, before the film decides that isn't quite horrible enough and throws in three consecutive real life photos of

Spoiler alert

children who've been horribly killed in rail accidents

[close]

- though they've been pixillated in this particular upload, it still packs an almighty punch.

The one that gave me the most nightmares, however, is the excellent Rabies Means Death from the early eighties - it doesn't even give you time to say 'Ha, that's Julian from Hi-De-Hi!', because the thing has barely even begun when it decides to splice in actual sodding footage of a third-world rabies victim convulsing in a hospital bed, accompanied by the nastiest synthesizer stings in history. You're not even allowed the comfort of saying 'aw, what a cute cat' (although the cat is indeed adorable) because the narrator's banging on about death 'in a manner that is beyond description'. It was the beyond description bit that chilled my marrow. (If you're curious about what rabies actually does to human victims, Google it. It's not nice.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WteRPXpjBzc

[Gurke and Hare]

This one about

Spoiler alert

broken glass on the beach

[close]

.[/url][nb]Style question: should the closing url tag contain the full stop or not?[/nb] I still can't watch it to the end.

[Ambient Sheep]

The "Peach and Hammer" road safety adverts always stuck with me as a kid.  Here's an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcAFNnVg0q8 but that's not the one I remember, which I think involved a child or three and a MUCH longer and much more sickening tyre screech before the squelch.


As for railway safety films, I have an enduring mystery about those.  We were shown one in junior school on a film projector, and it was quite sobering to say the least.  My only real - but very lasting! - memory of it is a kid scrambling to get clear (probably while playing chicken) and not quite making it, falling to the ground and clutching his out-of-sight leg... cut to a graphic shot of his foot (still in trainer) lying beside the rail, having been cut off just above the ankle by the passing train.  Cue a loud "ewwwwww!" from the class and several children (mostly the girls) turning very pale.  One lad actually fainted.  That picture of the severed foot will last with me forever.  (I guess when you grew up in Scarfolk, you didn't need rotten.com.)

Thing is, I've never been able to find out the title of this film, still less watch it again.  It couldn't have been the famous The Finishing Line, because I left junior school in 1976 and The Finishing Line didn't come out until 1977.  In any case, having watched the latter a couple of years ago out of curiosity just in case someone had their dates wrong, it doesn't have the shot in question.  The feel of it is very familiar though - either it was made by the same people and/or I might have been shown The Finishing Line as well at some point.

Any ideas on this would be gratefully received.


Finally something that really did put the shits up me when I was very small.  Not strictly-speaking a Public Information Film, but a BBC2 Trade Test Transmission called On The Safe Side -- a film on basically how not to be electrocuted by massively high voltages at work.  I would only have been about 5 or 6 years old when these were being shown[nb]Although in theory I could have been from 4 to 8 years old (the former when I was allowed to watch TV on my own in our new house, the latter because they stopped showing them in August 1973), they showed them less and less in the final years, and my favourite ones - mainly this one, Prospect for Plastics, and Evoluon - hardly ever got shown by then.[/nb], and the tension[nb]No pun intended.[/nb] while waiting for the inevitable nasty bit[nb]Actually, when seeing it again as an adult,

Spoiler alert

it's not actually that nasty, nobody dies or even gets burnt a bit

[close]

, but I don't think I realised that as a kid.[/nb] near the end became almost unbearable.[nb]The anticipation also gave me what I now recognise was a fear-based sexual thrill, but no, I don't have an electroplay fetish -- quite the opposite in fact![/nb]

I actually downloaded it from a collection on UKNova many years ago (say, around 2004-5?) but didn't watch it for maybe another ten years.  Why not?  Partly because I was afraid that viewing it as an adult would be a huge let-down and not as I remembered, and partly because I WAS STILL SCARED!!

Eventually, about three years ago I happened across the file on a hard disk tidy-up and finally watched it.  I actually found it really interesting, and yes, the scary bit was still a BIT scary, but obviously not so much as an adult.  I was still glad I watched it though, but I did feel that something was missing, something that had been present as a kid was no longer there.

Tonight, I've just found out why.  The copy I had from UKN, it turns out, was missing most of the opening titles, just coming in towards the end of them.  Having now found it on Youtube... there, that's what was missing!  The scary opening titles, with increasingly loud electrical humming and increasingly scary looking equipment[nb]Mercury rectifier ftw![/nb] really builds the atmosphere!

You can watch it here.[nb]Couple of great Youtube comments: one from a bloke who says that his Dad was in the film, and another from a guy who said that the accident shown in the film actually happened to him once![/nb]

And still the hairs go up on the back of my neck...

[zonko]

https://youtu.be/-oB6DN5dYWo

[Ambient Sheep]

Style question: should the closing url tag contain the full stop or not?

In a case where you've made the whole sentence a link, probably yes, it should.

In a case where only the latter part of the sentence is a link, then probably not.


_{You can tell it's 2017 and not 2002, because those links aren't Goatse and Tubgirl.}

[BJB]

This one shouldn't shit me up as much as it does, it's a  pretty silly (not to mention highly exaggerated) idea in the classic Reefer Madness tradition, but fucking hell, that face...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3CuePztYV0

[BJB]

There's a few PIF's for the Samaritans that really defy description, you just have to kind of let them unfold:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3YlzBRdqT8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXJb4a53YKQ

[Mr Banlon]

Seven Green Bottles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqpqc8iKn7I
The basic warning was : Don't grow up working class in West London in the 1970s.
I didn't really have a choice with that.

[jobotic]

Building Sites Bite

[Ambient Sheep]

There's a few PIF's for the Samaritans that really defy description, you just have to kind of let them unfold:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3YlzBRdqT8

Fuck.  Me.

That really shit me up!  Shan't be watching that again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXJb4a53YKQ

Seen that one before... a bit weird but didn't fuck me up like the first one did!

[Ambient Sheep]

This one shouldn't shit me up as much as it does, it's a  pretty silly (not to mention highly exaggerated) idea in the classic Reefer Madness tradition, but fucking hell, that face...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3CuePztYV0

That's just silly. :-)

Seven Green Bottles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqpqc8iKn7I

Played the first minute or so, but the children singing that song was enough to make me twitchy... plus it's 33 minutes long.  Maybe another time.  Think I might have seen that one at the time, but don't know until I watch more.

[Glebe]

The one where the kids throw a Frisbee into a Pylon site. And, of course, the girl lying face-down in the garden pond.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Fuck.  Me.

That really shit me up!  Shan't be watching that again.

Haha, I just had the same reaction. Surely it must have put people off working for the Samaritans for life!

[Mr Banlon]

Building Sites Bite

That was a bad one for me. My old man was a navvy, and from the age of 7 I'd spend quite a few days of my summer holiday with him out on building sites. I'd spend my time monkeying about on scaffolding, breathing in asbestos dust without a care in the world.
Then, just before the summer break in 1979 they did a showing of Building Sites Bite on a bat-wing telly in assembly.
Fucking shit the life out of me. I didn't want to go to work with dad anymore.
Well, up to the point my dad cuffed me round the head and told me not to be such a 'fucking poof'
I don't know whether it was quite a few of my dad's friends dying on-site, my dad dying aged 44 from a respiratory illness, or the PIF Building Sites Bite that turned me.
Sure as hell, you won't catch me on a building site now.

[asids]

I have a bit of an interest in watching a load of these old PIFs. First one that came to mind in terms of fear was this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsfCeSnfr4I

There's a channel on YouTube called easportsbig899 (I think the video I just linked is on that channel actually) who has a massive amount of these old PIFs if you want to watch them. Plenty of them fucked up, a bit out there or just plain weird but they're quite entertaining to watch.

I'm quite young so the one I actually remember the most from my youth is probably this NSPCC one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsMuGefVvno I always kinda laughed at the bit with the boy Tom as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is playing in the background and I thought "Well, can't be all that bad can it?". It was quite intimidating though. Compare that to the shit the NSPCC come out with now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1n9Jly3CQ8

[Sydward Lartle]

The "Peach and Hammer" road safety adverts...involved a child or three and a MUCH longer and much more sickening tyre screech before the squelch.

There was another one shot in Dagenham, where the young stuntwoman actually had her arm broken on the first take, but insisted it on doing it again anyway! So that brings the 'Peach and Hammer' tally up to three now, because I've just found this one which I didn't know existed until just now! Thanks, I think!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSZ01nveayY

[Sydward Lartle]

There's a few PIF's for the Samaritans that really defy description, you just have to kind of let them unfold:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3YlzBRdqT8

I wish to Christ I hadn't just watched that at 1.10am.

[Ambient Sheep]

There was another one shot in Dagenham, where the young stuntwoman actually had her arm broken on the first take, but insisted it on doing it again anyway! So that brings the 'Peach and Hammer' tally up to three now, because I've just found this one which I didn't know existed until just now! Thanks, I think!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSZ01nveayY

Now THAT one I remember!  Thank you!!  Definitely, the "eyes and ears" bit especially brings the memories flooding back.

However it's still not the one I most vividly remember, which was shot from the pavement on the passenger side of the car, looking across the road.

You mentioned three Peach & Hammer films... there's only been two in this thread that I've seen so far (comical old bloke coming out of shop that I linked earlier, and the schoolgirls above), did I miss a third?

[Ambient Sheep]

I wish to Christ I hadn't just watched that at 1.10am.

I hear you.  That's like listening to The Boiler - once is most definitely enough.

[Ambient Sheep]

I'm suddenly reminded (out of thin air), that Northern Ireland does some truly nasty road safety films.  I was tipped off about this a few years ago (probably by another thread like this), and got about 3/4s the way through the first one before I hurriedly clicked off it.  Am not going to go searching now, but if you want horrible emotionally gut-wrenching PIFs, they're the ones to go for.

[BJB]

I hear you.  That's like listening to The Boiler - once is most definitely enough.

It was made for cinemas too. Imagine seeing that, in a dark room, massive screen, no escape. It's not like you can just change the channel, you have to pretty much endure the whole thing if you don't know what's coming.

Also, it was rated U. Universal. Acceptable viewing for ALL. Even all the little kids who probably saw it before Aladdin or whatever was out.

[BJB]

I'm suddenly reminded (out of thin air), that Northern Ireland does some truly nasty road safety films.  I was tipped off about this a few years ago (probably by another thread like this), and got about 3/4s the way through the first one before I hurriedly clicked off it.  Am not going to go searching now, but if you want horrible emotionally gut-wrenching PIFs, they're the ones to go for.

This is one of there more recent efforts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N0Kd9wQyyo

Personally, I found it a bit...*makes noise*. It's not on a par with...brr...this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpcMPiPdK6g

Incidenntly, my heart actually stopped for about two seconds there when the headphone's decided to unplug themselves from my laptop, and my whole house was greeted to the sounds of

Spoiler alert

CHILD DEATH

[close]

[Sydward Lartle]

You mentioned three Peach & Hammer films... there's only been two in this thread that I've seen so far (comical old bloke coming out of shop that I linked earlier, and the schoolgirls above), did I miss a third?

P&H 1 - the old man coming out of a shop
P&H 2 - the schoolgirls above
P&H 3 - Carol Hill getting knocked down on Dagenham High Street (the one where the stuntwoman broke her arm, and still went for a second take!)

By the way...
https://youtu.be/xqpqc8iKn7I?t=6m59s
...I used to live on that very street! (Wow, you'll all be wanting to go there now, won't you!)

Back to the bleakness, and...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUZM28sphPQ

...this offering, in many ways, absolutely encapsulates the essence of the PIFs. There's no music, there are no captions, nothing to give away its origins, it just plunges you in at the deep end (no pun intended) and proceeds to fuck with your head with a succession of jump cuts, disorientating sounds and horrible images, and the closing narration hits you like a fist. Plus, it's all filmed on a typically overcast British day on faded, grainy stock by people who apparently grew up on a steady diet of Hammer horror films and precious little else. Absolutely bone-chilling.

[Catalogue Trousers]

This still remains one of those PIFs with the power to shake you up, badly. Imagine the impact that it had on its original transmissions, though. I only remember it turning up during, usually at the end of, ITV ad breaks.

Now, those that remember ITV ad breaks during the mid to late 1970s will probably recall the round-up of local businesses that would be advertised at the end of them - appallingly cheap and cheerful bilge with the accent on the cheap - where you'd find your Don Amotts, your Gulliver's Kingdoms, your 'Little and Large together onstage in Dick Whittington at the Matlock Hippodrome'...and, after this blandly cheery guff, back to your regularly scheduled programmes. Unless some bastard of a programmer decided to slip in the nasty little bonus ball of a PIF like this one.

It still seems an extremely niche thing to make a PIF about - safety with prams and pushchairs? But with the stern warning tones of the late Barrie Ingham on narration, the wobbly, sketchy animation like some nightmare version of Roobarb, all 'monochrome' blue and white like faded fountain pen ink and distorted human figures and faces, and most of all that bloody reverberated scream. A shock tactic used by some other PIFs, but this one still does it best. The way that it opens like a smack round the chops with said scream. And then gives you it again at the very end. Bloody hell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vONUg6la9ZE

[Ambient Sheep]

P&H 1 - the old man coming out of a shop
P&H 2 - the schoolgirls above
P&H 3 - Carol Hill getting knocked down on Dagenham High Street (the one where the stuntwoman broke her arm, and still went for a second take!)

Yup :-)  I meant, did you have a link to P&H 3?  Presumably not, sadly.

Also, [the Samaritans advert] was rated U. Universal. Acceptable viewing for ALL. Even all the little kids who probably saw it before Aladdin or whatever was out.

Yeah, I saw that in the comments.  Unbelievable.

[Catalogue Trousers]

Also, Ambient Sheep -

As for railway safety films, I have an enduring mystery about those.  We were shown one in junior school on a film projector, and it was quite sobering to say the least.  My only real - but very lasting! - memory of it is a kid scrambling to get clear (probably while playing chicken) and not quite making it, falling to the ground and clutching his out-of-sight leg... cut to a graphic shot of his foot (still in trainer) lying beside the rail, having been cut off just above the ankle by the passing train.  Cue a loud "ewwwwww!" from the class and several children (mostly the girls) turning very pale.  One lad actually fainted.  That picture of the severed foot will last with me forever.  (I guess when you grew up in Scarfolk, you didn't need rotten.com.)

I'm not sure if it's this one. The youthful protagonist certainly loses his feet, and that nice Mr Purves is terribly upset about it. Gotta love the incredibly jaunty theme music, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxXDw3WOGQs

[Ambient Sheep]

There's one I'm looking for on Youtube and having absolutely no luck finding... an animated one for children about not taking the grown-ups' medicine.  It features a little family of rabbits[nb]Or possibly squirrels, but it doesn't seem to be The Tufty Club as far as I can tell.[/nb], and although it's not remotely scary for adults (I saw it a few years ago) the sight of the poor baby rabbits rubbing their sore tummies (while the rabbit doctor says stern words over them) is a very sorry sight, especially if you're a kid yourself.

However, while we're on the subject of Keeping Medicines Away From Children, there's always this old classic, although it doesn't really qualify as "really horrible".  Just rather unsettling.

[Catalogue Trousers]

Hey, Sheepy -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnC7AAHxRV0

[Small Man Big Horse]

This still remains one of those PIFs with the power to shake you up, badly. Imagine the impact that it had on its original transmissions, though. I only remember it turning up during, usually at the end of, ITV ad breaks.

Now, those that remember ITV ad breaks during the mid to late 1970s will probably recall the round-up of local businesses that would be advertised at the end of them - appallingly cheap and cheerful bilge with the accent on the cheap - where you'd find your Don Amotts, your Gulliver's Kingdoms, your 'Little and Large together onstage in Dick Whittington at the Matlock Hippodrome'...and, after this blandly cheery guff, back to your regularly scheduled programmes. Unless some bastard of a programmer decided to slip in the nasty little bonus ball of a PIF like this one.

It still seems an extremely niche thing to make a PIF about - safety with prams and pushchairs? But with the stern warning tones of the late Barry Ingham on narration, the wobbly, sketchy animation like some nightmare version of Roobarb, all 'monochrome' blue and white like faded fountain pen ink and distorted human figures and faces, and most of all that bloody reverberated scream. A shock tactic used by some other PIFs, but this one still does it best. The way that it opens like a smack round the chops with said scream. And then gives you it again at the very end. Bloody hell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vONUg6la9ZE

That didn't bother me too much as the concept of someone leaving their kid in a pram outside of a shop is so ridiculous now that I know it'd never happen. Unless they wanted the local nonce to steal it, I guess that does happen sometimes.

[BJB]

However, while we're on the subject of Keeping Medicines Away From Children, there's always this old classic, although it doesn't really qualify as "really horrible".  Just rather unsettling.

The last shot of that is fucking brutal.