Public information HORROR film.

Don't splink and drive and all that.

I remember one called 'Bobby' or 'Billy' about some guy who played on a railway line and got electrocuted (but didn't die); anyone else see that one?

These are fantastic (and while I can see the horror for a kid watching them as an adult they are really funny.) As I said to my friend when I emailed her the "Apache" link it's like a freaky cross between 7UP, Final Destination and All Creatures Great & Small! And the little dedication at the end is makes me think of the Afterword to A Scanner Darkly!

The scrolling list of kids killed by farms at the end was really WOAH because the first batch of names looked like they were involved in the same incident and when they got to the "a bazillion children were murdered by tractors" part I went "OH COME THE FUCK ON" before I stopped being a dumbass.

Also WTF at the kid in the dedication who blew up on a farm.

When I look at them now, I can't help thinking that they were surely just a scheme for getting work for the people who made them--a way of spending government money on the film industry film without the broke-ass public going berserk about it.

But perhaps I'm overthinking it.

Aaaaaaargghh, I wish I could see this!

How does the penultimate kid die? He seems to jump into a puddle and then the scene cuts to a tractor. How does that work?

Also, drowning in shit = ;_;

(SPOILER alert, obv.)

And the little dedication at the end is makes me think of the Afterword to A Scanner Darkly!

Wow, I never thought of that! You're right!

steerpike66 (3 days ago) Marked as spam
Lovely. Such a blast from the past; kids today never get the chance to be menaced by Donald Pleasance because they're all inside playing on their Wii. or on stupid fucking 'play-dates' organized by control-freak parents.

-- Billy Dods, Friday, 22 June 2007 13:47 (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

I read that one as well. I figured the reason why the parents are control freaks is that they saw all these films when they were children.

don't live before you've died etc etc etc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWb5UhdMHvw&NR=1

*die before you've lived even

things are so much better, now we terrorize children in person

Teachers stage fake gunman attack on sixth-graders aka what the hell is wrong with people

in the future we'll just pick a few kids off to teach the others a lesson

SPOILERS

kid 1: run over by tractor
kid 2: drowns in shit
kid 3: drinks poison
kid 4: crushed by gate
kid 5: rides tractor off a cliff
kid 6: still alive, is all sadface at the wake

there's an interesting psychological component to adults who deal with their fear of mortality by traumatizing children. cruelty beneath a veil of saintly protective benevolence.

my favorites were the drug abuse ones they showed us in grade school - grimy clips of seedy people vomiting in stairwells and police photos of o.d. victims.

We were shown photos of someone who had gone so OTT in their glue-sniffing that they'd covered their face entirely in glue, blocking all their breathing passages, and in desperation had attempted to perform an impromptu tracheotomy upon themselves using only their NAILS.

It's still quite possibly the most sobering thing I've ever seen.

Oh balls to that, glue sniffing is much more fun that, spoilsports

Slightly dissapointed that no-one from the US has mentioned RED ASPHALT and it's ilk yet, apart from the (v funny) simpsons spoof on drivers ed films that tracer posted. We NEVER got shown anything that heavy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyG6NIgpzBM&NR=1

We were shown photos of someone who had gone so OTT in their glue-sniffing that they'd covered their face entirely in glue, blocking all their breathing passages, and in desperation had attempted to perform an impromptu tracheotomy upon themselves using only their NAILS.

It's still quite possibly the most sobering thing I've ever seen./

YSI?

There was this horrifying prom-based one they showed to our driver's ed class that was basically a completely normal "we're going to the prom!" shitty short right up until the ginormous drunk driving accident.

by the way Dubliners, I have a DVD of public information films if anyone wants to become too terrified to do anything.

Dan there are current, snazzy public service ads in the UK that use that same formula to very chastening effect.

my junior-high health class was shown slides of venereal warts, etc. that freaked us all right out. Our teacher ("Coach K") said that if anyone laughed, or even tittered, we would get sent straight to the principal's office. (None of us felt like laughing though.)

We watched a documentary on herpes that included extreme close-ups of herpes breakouts. It was beyond gross.

"veal and ham pie...my favourite"

when I was a senior in high school, we got a live action version of these - they set up a crashed car, dead dummies, 'blood' all over the ground, brought in EMTs and a CareFlight helicopter, played sound effects of the screeching/crashing and moans. It was awesome.

None of the VD films on youtube are as gross as I hoped.

My Mum's friend's son drowned in a slurry pit when I was small. I still remember her crying on the phone when she found out.

Good grief.

I love the Minnesota Twins shirt on that motorbike guy.

The prom one may have been The Last Prom.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=br49e1xOwVA

These are all really some of the best films ever made.

Pay Attention, Britain!

Sat 29 Mar, 2:50 am - 3:30 am 40mins

To mark the 60th anniversary of the Central Office of Information, Fi Glover narrates the story of the British public information film.

Subtitles Stereo Widescreen

aw, fucking hell! magnificent. er, what channel would that be? :)

missed this thread first time round ... anyway, "Panning shot through burned out house w/echoing voices of frightened children. Thus proving that giving matches to the very young is not a good idea" chilled me to the fucking bones when i was a kid, and i'm really quite glad that, when i clicked to watch it there, it had been "removed due to terms-of-use violation". whew.

i have a lengthy DVD of PIFs, and also -- yes -- "protect and survive" on VHS. i love this shit. even though it makes my soul go cold.

i have, however, never seen apaches. indeed: i'd never even heard of it. hmm: it's quarter to one on a saturday morning and mrs fiendish is watching season one of "medium" on DVD. now might be my time ...

note to other late-night PIF-liking UK ilx0rs: BBC2.

the one i always remember, but only ever saw once, was a "be careful with petrol on boats!" kind of thing, where a dude in the middle of the ocean tried to top up his outboard motor while lighting a fag.

i seem to recall the mother of all explosions; they had to pan back several miles [1] to get the whole thing in.

[1] adjust for exaggeration to suit.

hmm. 10 minutes into apaches, i'm not gripped. "threads" it ain't. just scrotes, scroting.

OOOOH, shit. kid in slurry pit. the bubbles are an unpleasantly grim touch.

ok, yeh, this is dark as all hell.

Bloody hell I can't stay up till 3.30, SOME OF US HAVE TO WORK YOU KNOW, let's see if I can remember how to set a video for the first time in about a decade.

Not sure I can actually stay awake 'til then either. Why hide programs like this away? (also why give it a stupid title so it doesn't even jump out of the tv guide as something to watch?). Biggest childhood horror I remember, not sure if it was a general release PIF, or a railway police special, but the 3rd-rail burny-leg disaster was pretty scary, even though I lived in north wales and we didn't have electric rails. There's a good one on the tv at the moment which makes motorcycling look like the ultimate in extreme sport if-this-corner-doesn't-kill-you-something-around-the-next-one-will, I almost turned over, but I knew it'd probably be alright.

bloody hell. on to the third bit of apaches now. the wee girl's screams will haunt my dreams tonight, i fear. fucking hell.

on a marginally less bleak note: anyone remember "play it safe" with jimmy savile, a series of jolly little five-minute PIFs where the bejewelled funster pointed out how your house/garden/bike/etc was trying to kill you?

Am I the only one that remembers The Finishing Line? It haunts me to this day.

xpost ... no, what was that?

as for apaches ... jesus.

that was deeply unpleasant.

anyone seen "building sites bite", then?

i'm off to bed, to sit, huddled and shivering, under the duvet.

i am not watching this tonight.

anyway:

the finishing line.

(piss: you need to be an accredited school/university/whatever to watch BFI streaming videos, of course. ach. next time i'm in the library, then.)

you need more than that - I can't get it to work through UCLs proxy server. I've got 80minutes to try and work out what's wrong I guess..

poxy server morelike. I think maybe I shouldnt've bothered. still, lots of nice stuff to look at on screenonline at least.

So I watched one episode of Star Trek TNG (the one with Max Headroom) and went to bed, as the next episode had Worf's son in it, fuck that. Anyone watch the PIF doc?

recorded it, but not watched it yet. hopefully get a chance today.

I'm still kind of o_O over "Apaches".

i'm not bloody surprised. it was bad enough for me, and i didn't have to look at a grave with my name on it!

documentary: it was OK, if a little short (an hour would have been nicer; maybe a little more social history and a little less of andrew collins stating the obvious). not nearly enough on "protect and survive" for my liking, or the whole banality-of-danger stuff from the late seventies and early eighties (eg your boat/chip pan/electric fire/kettle/bike/frisbee/rug/etc is going to kill you); that said, i'd also like to have seen some more of the immediate post-war ones, so i guess i'd only have been truly happy with a five-hour epic.