Really horrible public information films that gave you the fears

[Phil_A]

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.

It seems crazy now, but prams being left out on the pavement while mothers did their shopping definitely used to happen, although we're talking fifties and sixties here. There's a even a joke about this in the Python "Hell's Grannies" sketch. I guess it's because shops were smaller back then and prams were too big and bulky to push around the shelves, maybe?

I guess it was a more innocent(or possibly just more naive) time.

[doppelkorn]

I got bitten by a parrot in Singapore a couple of years ago and convinced myself I'd been infected with rabies.

In the end I emailed the bird park to explain the incident and ask for advice. They responded about three weeks later saying, "yeah no worries mate the bird's fine."

I grew up in the 90s, and I don't remember this Scarfolk type PIF directly. I vaguely recall being shown one about railways and then a much longer one about drugs or tides which featured a cast of scouse lads. They took the piss out of one of their group for supporting Udinese, but he was swept away by a strong tide/died of drugs. Anyone know what I'm on about?

The one that really stuck from TV was this one: Come on Dave, just one more.

That's much worse than I remembered.

[lgpmachine]

I remember seeing this one as a child and found it very disturbing. There's something about a lack of music and a silent caption that gives me chills.

https://youtu.be/48Dc7bqU_Dg

[Phil_A]

Applemask's channel has been an absolute goldmine of obscure PIFs for the last decade, as well ads and continuity that make your brain hurt with nostalgia.

It's where I was able to track down this utterly bizarre 1989 "Fire Kills" ad which for reasons I can't fathom was shown repeatedly on ITV post-midnight in the early 2000s. OH DA-DEEEE! YOU'VE PUT THEM OUT OF REEEEEEACH!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0f8r-EjSMM

This one from a few years back is pretty haunting, although I have gained some amusement from the fact the lads playing football are using the dead ginger kid as a goalpost. Enduring image, isn't it?

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

[Depressed Beyond Tables]

LSD soldiers always fails to sway me away from the drug as a good thing.

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

[Sydward Lartle]

Rabies was absolutely huge in the  mid-70s to early 80s. I once got bitten by a dog on the way to school and spent weeks convinced I was going to die of rabies. Did anyone in Britain actually ever get it?

Last reported case of rabies in England was nearly a hundred years ago. The return of the rabies bogeyman in the seventies was down to a combination of Europhobia (the Common Market) and concerns about the safety - or lack thereof - of the proposed channel tunnel. The good old soaraway Sun serialised a pulp novel called Day of the Mad Dogs, complete with a television advertising campaign that was utter nightmare fuel and banned after one screening. Other pulp novels about rabies included Saliva, Rage and Nigel Slater's the Mad Death, adapted for a disturbing BBC Scotland mini-series in 1983.

[doppelkorn]

Not a PIF per se, but who remembers the McDonald's safety advert where Ronald McDonald sings a song about safety to the tune of Da Doo Ron Ron? Then the kids would do backing vocals.

Don't play with matches leave them well alone
We do Ron, Ron, Ron, we do Ron, Ron.

Google gives me nothing.

[Twed]

I remember it as a straight-up advert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72t7KzJQQxo

(bit sinister on its own, integrating McDonalds into children's lives at that age)

[doppelkorn]

I remember it as a straight-up advert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72t7KzJQQxo

(bit sinister on its own, integrating McDonalds into children's lives at that age)

It was like that, but with lyrics about safety - presumably made around the same time.

When walking down stairs, take your time, don't run
We do Ron etc.

Don't play with matches leave them well alone
We do etc.

Yeah, being silly is fun
Yeah safety's number one
Take care when you're at home (doesn't scan brilliantly)
We do Ron etc.

[doppelkorn]

Don't thrust scissors in your cousin's ear!

If you see a rabid parrot run the fuck away!

Glasses are for drinking not for throwing at mum.

[Phil_A]

Not a PIF per se, but who remembers the McDonald's safety advert where Ronald McDonald sings a song about safety to the tune of Da Doo Ron Ron? Then the kids would do backing vocals.

Don't play with matches leave them well alone
We do Ron, Ron, Ron, we do Ron, Ron.

Google gives me nothing.

There were a few of those ads. I remember Ronald inexplicably sounded like Nigel Planer doing a David Bowie impression.

"TAAAAAYKE CARE WHEN YOU'RE AT HOME!"

[Sydward Lartle]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP5u5q6Ecdk

There used to be a shorter version of this, with a male voice-over, that was even more brutal - because it left it to the viewer to ponder whether the baby got a red hot iron across the skull or not. At least in this version, it's only the doll that gets its head caved in.

[Bad Ambassador]

I recall a firework safety one with Hale and Pace singing such a song as the Two Rons.

"If you break the fireworks code, we'll break your legs. Then you won't run, Ron. Ron?" You won't run, Ron."

EDIT and here it is.
https://youtu.be/3MP_EO1pE1s

[Sydward Lartle]

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

Vintage Michael Palin action here.

[Catalogue Trousers]

You want 21 minutes of FUCKED MATE? You got it.

This is Sound An Alarm from 1971, a long-form PIF about the work of the United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation - basically the good men and women operating the early warning systems set up to monitor and hopefully minimise the damage caused by a nuclear attack. It decides to do so not by just showing us the procedures, but by constructing a narrative where the unthinkable happens. It's all played out by decidedly non-glamorous, believable cast members who could have stepped straight off of the set of Doomwatch or Special Branch, and for all of the attempts at a tough hope and a 'well, now we're going to rebuild' that the closing moments offer, the sheer sense of grimness and doom is impossible to overcome. A neat visual trick of using colour film for the flashbacks to the build-up and attack, bookended by present-day monochrome, adds a lot of power.

It's not an uplifting watch, but Jesus it's haunting stuff. Enjoy - if that's the word.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3y0WmONP4E

[MattD]

As a kid growing up in the 90s, they seemed to do away with all these traumatic public films. Ours were relatively tame, like a 'Don't Play With Matches' video in which Richard Briers voiced cartoon aliens who accidently burnt down a house.

[Attila]

You want 21 minutes of FUCKED MATE? You got it.

This is Sound An Alarm from 1971, a long-form PIF about the work of the United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation - basically the good men and women operating the early warning systems set up to monitor and hopefully minimise the damage caused by a nuclear attack. It decides to do so not by just showing us the procedures, but by constructing a narrative where the unthinkable happens. It's all played out by decidedly non-glamorous, believable cast members who could have stepped straight off of the set of Doomwatch or Special Branch, and for all of the attempts at a tough hope and a 'well, now we're going to rebuild' that the closing moments offer, the sheer sense of grimness and doom is impossible to overcome. A neat visual trick of using colour film for the flashbacks to the build-up and attack, bookended by present-day monochrome, adds a lot of power.

It's not an uplifting watch, but Jesus it's haunting stuff. Enjoy - if that's the word.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3y0WmONP4E

Christ, but that was a bleak episode of Dad's Army.[nb]Apologies; the one actor looks a heck of a lot like John Le Mesurier.[/nb]

[jobotic]

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

Ay caramba!

[Rocket Surgery]

It's where I was able to track down this utterly bizarre 1989 "Fire Kills" ad which for reasons I can't fathom was shown repeatedly on ITV post-midnight in the early 2000s. OH DA-DEEEE! YOU'VE PUT THEM OUT OF REEEEEEACH!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0f8r-EjSMM

Even more so than most of these others, this one seems far more intent on freaking the fuck out of you than actually informing or advising anyone about anything. Like an aspiring horror director got the gig by pure fluke and decided to use the opportunity to hone their chops, while the rest of the country continued to burn.

[yesitsme]

Funnily enough me and eldest were walking back from football yesterday and we cut through a bit of woods where there's an electricity sub station.  He said they'd been shown a film recently about not messing about near these things and I thought that someone must have spotted a gap in the market updating the old 'British Life Will Kill You' filums of our youth.

I told him about how The Finishing Line mentally scarred me - still does, I've never been able to eat tomato sauce but not sure whether I'd want him to watch it.  One because I think it's genuinely traumatic (job done) and because he's now older than I was when I saw it and he might just start laughing at me.

The Smith and Jones (Nt9OCN?) news parody still makes me laugh.

[Cuellar]

It seems crazy now, but prams being left out on the pavement while mothers did their shopping definitely used to happen, although we're talking fifties and sixties here. There's a even a joke about this in the Python "Hell's Grannies" sketch. I guess it's because shops were smaller back then and prams were too big and bulky to push around the shelves, maybe?

I guess it was a more innocent(or possibly just more naive) time.

Still happens loads in Copenhagen. I remember being in a coffee shop and sitting near a young couple, both engrossed in tablets/laptops/phones, and with a weird looking plastic device with an aerial at one end of the table. Took me a while to work out that it was a baby monitor, and they had a very young child in a pram outside on the street. They must have got up once to check on it while I was there (about 30-45 mins). There were a few empty cups/plates around them and they were ordering more things, so they must have been there for hours, all told.

Once you noticed it, you saw it everywhere. Parents walking past a shop, letting go of the pram, entering the shop and just leaving the baby lying around. The person I was with was having panic attacks every time she noticed it.

[Catalogue Trousers]

MattD wrote -

As a kid growing up in the 90s, they seemed to do away with all these traumatic public films. Ours were relatively tame, like a 'Don't Play With Matches' video in which Richard Briers voiced cartoon aliens who accidentally burnt down a house.

To be pedantic, Briers voiced one called Frances The Firefly, which involved cartoon but terrestrial fireflies - well, a firefly and a cockroach - accidentally burning down their city with matches. But Alexei Sayle voiced another called Moonlighters, which involved a cartoon alien on the Moon accidentally burning down his people's city with a lighter. Both were about five minutes long in their original versions, and were later cut down to the point where their stories made almost no sense but were easier to shove into commercial breaks.

[Glebe]

So I found that infamous pylon safety thing... I actually forgot about "JIMMMMMMY!", also remember the man handing back the ball bit now... maybe I'm being a right dummkopf and it's already been posted, but it's actually part of this. Cribbins and Brian Wilde as the bird and owl ("If you want to have fun and stay alive...") and the twirtling moog somehow makes it all the more unsettling.

Meanwhile, anyone remember this late-'80s one? "No, Tom!" There's another one involving a kite... I can't help laughing at the oddness of the dummy falling at the end.

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

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!'

So that's what happened to Barry!

This one about

Spoiler alert

broken glass on the beach

[close]

.[/url]

Reading the Spoiler makes that especially winch-enducing to watch from the get-go.

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 just reminded me of the ever-changing face of Jez North in the Brass Eye Special.....

Heh, I immediately thought, "JAAAAAAAAAAAAM!"

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. There I was being all amused by the chattering voices, then "ARRRRGGGHHH!!!"

Hey, Sheepy -

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

These two American PSAs are very disturbing.

First one about Fire Safety is just plain weird.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXcrbpMNvTs

These accidents in the workplace PSAs might require a strong stomach. Rather like a more gruesome versions of the set ups in early episodes of Casualty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwCyVku1HvI

The Smokey Bear one is freaky, the accidents one is like a ZAZ movie gone horribly wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEv-wrRVl54

"Do you know where your lads going tonight?" *SMASHING GLASS*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML8SiH6X8rA

Felicity 'treacle' Kendal's gently reprimanding closing voice-over, and the greasy, over-saturated quality of the 16mm film stock itself

And there's a Briers one too... perhaps this is a dark clue as to why we never saw either Barbara and Tom or Margo and Jerry's kids?

Even trying to save a child from drowning could result in your premature death. Something about the Vaseline-smeared lens, the ragged point-of-view shakycam, the absence of background music and (again) the grimy film stock gives this one a definite 'video nasty' quality. Not even the narration by Duty Free's Keith Barron can prevent it from being anything but bleak.

Fuck, yeah, total '70s horror vibe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO1lGaO-8aw

This one made me shit-scared of the fridge when I was about four.

And yet it saved Indiana Jones' life. The sheer hypocrisy is astounding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxNgHE0rXdI

David Walliams doesn't do too bad of a job of impersonating Kenny Everett's demented wailing as Charley

Didn't know Everett voiced Charley! Actually thought that was Stephen Mangan at first before seeing it was Walliams.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYPcfmmC2uU

This one works by stealth, really. There's nothing graphic or nasty or ominous about it whatsoever - it could almost be a jolly, upbeat trade test transmission about a long-distance lorry driver and his best friend, a sloppy old golden retriever who loves nothing more than a bite of his master's roadside café sausage sandwich. Then along comes the stentorian voice-over and the bleak message in the last five seconds, and... yeah, well done mate, you've just smuggled adorable death into England.

All the way from Discworld! Seriously though, thought that was Boycie as the customs guy at first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWuLSkS2iiE

Rabies was absolutely huge in the  mid-70s to early 80s.

Yeah, it just became old hat after a while! Seriously though, indeed, there was a big panic about it around that time, and if it hasn't already been mentioned, surely quite a few of you lot remember this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cbgDjB-aS8

Poor old Rupert the Bear being dragged into the sordid proceedings! Worst use of a waterphone ever at the end there.

Also, what about 'I am the spirit of dark and lonely water.? Surely someone has already posted that. Featuring the young Benny Hill fact fans.

Haaaaa, see what I did in the quote there? Seriously (again) though, Jockice:

The Spirit Of Dark And Lonely Water (Public Information Film 1973).

It's like an except from a Dr. Terror's-style horror anthology!

It seems crazy now, but prams being left out on the pavement while mothers did their shopping definitely used to happen, although we're talking fifties and sixties here. There's a even a joke about this in the Python "Hell's Grannies" sketch. I guess it's because shops were smaller back then and prams were too big and bulky to push around the shelves, maybe?

I guess it was a more innocent(or possibly just more naive) time.

And it also features as a disturbing sitcom moment, the culprit making it all the weirder. Una Stubbs' screams are just horrible.

[Replies From View]

Glebe mentions the one with the little girl face down in the garden pond. Well, here it is - and it stands up pretty well. Note also brief cameo by another adorable cat, the Carpenter-esque synthesiser music as peril beckons, and the use - also seen in the Prams And Pushchairs PIF - of the pattern THIS IS THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN/NOW DON'T PANIC, HERE'S HOW TO PREVENT IT/BUT DO IT NOW NOW NOW OR THE WORST WILL HAPPEN. Although I've also just noticed, after the really loud splash that heralds the poor sprog's end, her Mum is still placidly gardening away as the camera pulls out from the corpse. Maybe she's deaf.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YSKmMkQ7d0

I reckon the girl committed suicide because she let go of her balloon.  It's horrible when that happens.

[lgpmachine]

No doubt we're all familiar with this favourite, but does anyone know who did the voiceover?  I had an idea it was Patrick Troughton but could be wrong.

https://youtu.be/vt016gTNp_k

[Chriddof]

As a kid growing up in the 90s, they seemed to do away with all these traumatic public films.

Though as briefly mentioned earlier in this thread, they continued to stick the old ones on very late at night / early in the morning on ITV whenever they had unsold ad space during "The Big E" or "Get Stuffed!" or whatever. Generally they'd turn up in the breaks from around about 3am-ish until 6am (or a bit earlier than 3am if you were watching somewhere far outside London). Sometimes they'd appear in batches of three or so at the end of breaks, after a load of chatline ads (such as this) or ads for mail order only CD compilations (as with this). As the night went on, they'd often end up being the only thing in those breaks. It was during an edition of the ITN Early Morning News around about 1996 that I saw the following, which shat me right up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2NhdWHeB18

On the broadcast I saw, it had a great big messy film splice at the point where the echoed girl's cry ends, which made it worse. My blood ran absolutely cold, no joking. I was so glad when it got faded out after what felt like an age and we returned to reports about the latest sales figures of What's The Story Morning Glory (or whatever the bloody hell was in the news in 1996). Though watching it back it's not as nasty as I remembered it - I would recall the ending audio loop going on for a bit longer and getting really distorted, which seems to have been a trick of the memory...

[jobotic]

No doubt we're all familiar with this favourite, but does anyone know who did the voiceover?  I had an idea it was Patrick Troughton but could be wrong.

https://youtu.be/vt016gTNp_k

Fucking hell that's shat me right up. And he'd only just come from the hospital!

[jobotic]

That Screaming Telephone one - "I'm not going to feed you anymore". Eek. Is the bloke shouting "you're fat!"?

The girl in the pond is worse than it should be as the quality makes it look like she has no eyes at one point. Creepy, man.

[Catalogue Trousers]

lgpmachine wrote -

I had an idea it was Patrick Troughton but could be wrong.

Well, you're not. That's Pat. He did voiceovers for a few PIFs in his time...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMinv2Tx4S8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0ghcs3NdzY

[Catalogue Trousers]

Chriddof wrote -

On the broadcast I saw, it had a great big messy film splice at the point where the echoed girl's cry ends, which made it worse. My blood ran absolutely cold, no joking. I was so glad when it got faded out after what felt like an age and we returned to reports about the latest sales figures of What's The Story Morning Glory (or whatever the bloody hell was in the news in 1996). Though watching it back it's not as nasty as I remembered it - I would recall the ending audio loop going on for a bit longer and getting really distorted, which seems to have been a trick of the memory...

Early morning was a very good time for a really grim PIF to freak you out no end - whether in the very small hours as you describe, or - as a child - if you switched on the telly eagerly waiting for Tiswas, which is where I first encountered that one at an age young enough to shit me up as well (twenty-eight I was aaaaaaah). Saturday and Sunday mornings were great for those and the sadists in charge of advert breaks always made sure to put in one really nasty PIF before the repeat of UFO or Captain Scarlet or in between segments of the aforementioned Tiswas. I clearly remember these two bowel-looseners turning up in such a slot...

This one is all about making sure the wee ones don't drown in grain on a farm. You'd often get farming programmes on ITV on a Sunday morning, and this was just the way to ease an impressionable kid into a screening of the aforementioned Gerry Anderson masterpieces or Turnbull's Finest Half-Hour. Voiceover by that nice Keith Barron.

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

While this one, despite its 1984 date, was already being used during the earlier 1980s, as it's one that I remember showing up to put a sharp downer on the antics of Tarrant, Carolgees, Henry, James, Gorman et al. Often referred to as 'Psycho' because of the synth stings as the car indicator goes on, although for me it's the animated sprog's anguished resonating scream that's the real killer punch, followed by that incongruously kindly voiceover by someone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IazNDoQun0w