Really horrible public information films that gave you the fears

[Ambient Sheep]

That Screaming Telephone one [...] Is the bloke shouting "you're fat!"?

"You're sacked", hence his wife wanting a divorce, not being able to feed his kids, etc.

[Billy]

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

I remember a drum & bass remix (yes really) of that doing the rounds on the internets back in the early noughties. Never found it since but teenage me loved it, although if I ever heard it now I'd probably be underwhelmed. It was basically Troughton + opening instrumental repeated over and over again over a jumpup boom-tish-boom-boom-tish beat.

[lgpmachine]

lgpmachine wrote -

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

Hadn't seen those other ones, thanks.  He's got the perfect voice for them.

[jobotic]

"You're sacked", hence his wife wanting a divorce, not being able to feed his kids, etc.

Ah that makes sense. I thought it just people having horrible things said to them.

[Catalogue Trousers]

Hey, lgpmachine - here's another Troughton-voiced PIF about the dangers of being a complacent parent around Bonfire Night. Also starring Jean Boht from that Bread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_igOluKaq0

You're right about his voice - just the right blend of compassion and authority.

[lgpmachine]

Hey, lgpmachine - here's another Troughton-voiced PIF about the dangers of being a complacent parent around Bonfire Night. Also starring Jean Boht from that Bread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_igOluKaq0

You're right about his voice - just the right blend of compassion and authority.

Good stuff.  I was given a 2 disc DVD of PIF's for Christmas (form an orderly queue, ladies) that I haven't got around to watching any of yet.  I'll have to see if he pops up anywhere else.

[Sydward Lartle]

A long(ish) 'stranger danger' PIF from the early eighties, helmed once again by John 'Apaches' MacKenzie of the Long Good Friday fame, and featuring Duncan 'Acorn Antiques' Preston and Timothy Spall as unsavoury types. Even better, there's a clip from one of the best episodes of the Sweeney!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89TmSYj8PK4

Going off-topic a bit, but this episode of Grange Hill properly shat me up when I was a young 'un, largely because of the uncomfortable shifts in tone. What begins as a fairly standard scene of the GH kids arsing about and getting right on each other's tits during a swimming lesson (complete with the kid pulling a sickie taking the piss out of the teacher by aping his movements) quickly shifts gears into outright panic when the loathesome short-lived character of Jeremy

Spoiler alert

fucking drowns

[close]

.

https://youtu.be/BAFR09-qXO8?t=21m38s

It's horrible - the panic, the screaming, the sudden transitions between the hubbub around the pool and the silence beneath the water, the alarm blaring, the kids watching in horror

Spoiler alert

as one of their number is dragged, lifeless, to the surface

[close]

, the hopeless

Spoiler alert

life-saving

[close]

attempt... granted, the mood is shot to pieces by Alan Hawkshaw's Chicken Man theme erupting onto the soundtrack as the credits roll, but it's still bloody strong stuff for a teatime programme.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

A long(ish) 'stranger danger' PIF from the early eighties, helmed once again by John 'Apaches' MacKenzie of the Long Good Friday fame, and featuring Duncan 'Acorn Antiques' Preston and Timothy Spall as unsavoury types. Even better, there's a clip from one of the best episodes of the Sweeney!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89TmSYj8PK4

Going off-topic a bit, but this episode of Grange Hill properly shat me up when I was a young 'un, largely because of the uncomfortable shifts in tone. What begins as a fairly standard scene of the GH kids arsing about and getting right on each other's tits during a swimming lesson (complete with the kid pulling a sickie taking the piss out of the teacher by aping his movements) quickly shifts gears into outright panic when the loathesome short-lived character of Jeremy

Spoiler alert

fucking drowns

[close]

.

https://youtu.be/BAFR09-qXO8?t=21m38s

It's horrible - the panic, the screaming, the sudden transitions between the hubbub around the pool and the silence beneath the water, the alarm blaring, the kids watching in horror

Spoiler alert

as one of their number is dragged, lifeless, to the surface

[close]

, the hopeless

Spoiler alert

life-saving

[close]

attempt... granted, the mood is shot to pieces by Alan Hawkshaw's Chicken Man theme erupting onto the soundtrack as the credits roll, but it's still bloody strong stuff for a teatime programme.

The  earlier one where Antoni Karanopolis died falling from a roof was oddly summary in approach by contrast.

[Glebe]

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

It's like a sneak preview of a new Radiohead video!

[Replies From View]

Going off-topic a bit, but this episode of Grange Hill properly shat me up when I was a young 'un, largely because of the uncomfortable shifts in tone. What begins as a fairly standard scene of the GH kids arsing about and getting right on each other's tits during a swimming lesson (complete with the kid pulling a sickie taking the piss out of the teacher by aping his movements) quickly shifts gears into outright panic when the loathesome short-lived character of Jeremy

Spoiler alert

fucking drowns

[close]

.

https://youtu.be/BAFR09-qXO8?t=21m38s

It's horrible - the panic, the screaming, the sudden transitions between the hubbub around the pool and the silence beneath the water, the alarm blaring, the kids watching in horror

Spoiler alert

as one of their number is dragged, lifeless, to the surface

[close]

, the hopeless

Spoiler alert

life-saving

[close]

attempt... granted, the mood is shot to pieces by Alan Hawkshaw's Chicken Man theme erupting onto the soundtrack as the credits roll, but it's still bloody strong stuff for a teatime programme.

Yes.  I haven't clicked on that link but I know what you're referring to.  In my memory one of the weirdest bits is how he just stays at the bottom of the pool once drowned.

[Sydward Lartle]

Yes.  I haven't clicked on that link but I know what you're referring to.  In my memory one of the weirdest bits is how he just stays at the bottom of the pool once drowned.

Wouldn't that happen if his lungs filled with water?
Apologies if that sounds thick but I haven't set foot near a swimming pool since I left secondary school.

[Jockice]

In 1984 one person drowned.

[Replies From View]

Wouldn't that happen if his lungs filled with water?
Apologies if that sounds thick but I haven't set foot near a swimming pool since I left secondary school.

I don't know.  Maybe.  Bit scared of googling it though, in case it curses me to do so.

It was just a really weird image, the way he froze like that at the bottom, with his body distorted by the movement of the water.

[Jockice]

In 1984 one person drowned.

Or is it 'one person died.'?

[greenman]

In 1984 no one died.

[Jockice]

In 1984 no one died.

Except for Jeremy Irvine.

[Sydward Lartle]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0x1nE0fHm8

Bloody hell. This one's a bit strong.

[AsparagusTrevor]

There seemed to be an aged-related scale of danger back in the 70s-80s, and children were by far the most vulnerable:

Babies - Irons and medicine
Children - Electricity sub-stations and pylons, crossing roads without help from Star Wars actors or bequiffed pop singers, swamps/rivers, frozen lakes, strangers and their inviting looking vans, farmyard equipment, fireworks, train-tracks, building sites
Adults - Forklift trucks, chip pan fires, car crashes
Pensioners - Electric Blankets

We can all take comfort in the fact that by the time you get to retirement age it's only something you have to actually plug in yourself and then willingly climb underneath that poses any threat to you.

[Sydward Lartle]

Thanks to Ebay, my DVD copy of Network's double-disc set Charley Says arrived this morning. Over two hundred and eighty public information films spread over two discs. Glorious.

[Golden E. Pump]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5ma_Xv7rGM

Couldn't listen to that song as a child.

[Catalogue Trousers]

Time for an 'honorary PIF', as made for cinemas by Compassion in World Farming. That nice David Graham - yes, the voice of Parker and Brains in Thunderbirds - explains how battery farming really isn't so terrible. Warning - contains brief scenes of actual battery chicken farming which may distress some viewers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lkl9-zWJcYc

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Time for an 'honorary PIF', as made for cinemas by Compassion in World Farming. That nice David Graham - yes, the voice of Parker and Brains in Thunderbirds - explains how battery farming really isn't so terrible. Warning - contains brief scenes of actual battery chicken farming which may distress some viewers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lkl9-zWJcYc

Can't watch it.  But well done CIWF for highlighting the issue.

[Sydward Lartle]

I think I would have crapped my entire spinal column if I'd seen Welcome to the Battery in a cinema. Great performance from Graham as well.

I think that short film sums up in about a minute and a half what the Animals Film spent over two hours trying to do.

[Catalogue Trousers]

And, to further demonstrate that PIFs still haven't entirely lost their balls, here's a mini-epic from the British Heart Foundation from 2008, which aired on ITV in the evenings. Imagine bumping into this in the middle of Coronation Street.

Another bravura, if more typically, psychotic performance from Steven Berkoff, a first-person puke shot, lots of dizzying camera work and abrupt, flash-frame imagery, all in the service of informing the general public to take more care if they reckon the old ticker's playing up a bit. Grim, grisly, and quite marvellous in getting its message across.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqXYNT_Bj4E

[Sydward Lartle]

That first-person puke shot is horrible...

... fucking HORRIBLE!

[Glebe]

https://youtu.be/BAFR09-qXO8?t=21m38s

Oh yeah, fink I remember that now!

In 1984 one person drowned.

I mean I could go on... right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0x1nE0fHm8

Bloody hell. This one's a bit strong.

Fuck me.

Time for an 'honorary PIF', as made for cinemas by Compassion in World Farming. That nice David Graham - yes, the voice of Parker and Brains in Thunderbirds - explains how battery farming really isn't so terrible. Warning - contains brief scenes of actual battery chicken farming which may distress some viewers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lkl9-zWJcYc

Crikey. I'm not really an egg-eater myself, but when I do buy them, I wouldn't even consider non-free range. Also, I was a vegetarian for four years and still get pangs of guilt about the way animals are slaughtered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqXYNT_Bj4E

Invisible lead soup.