Public information HORROR film.

i rue the day my company blocked youtube

I can't watch these from work. Is one of those the one with the Slurry Pit of Death in it? That image lives with me till this day.

(I think that's the same one where one kid drinks some poison and dies screaming in his bed that very night)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=M15wU1XYKEk

I can't watch these either but the Donald Pleasance drowning one *shudder*

Before I click on the links, are these for real (4REAL!)?

Yeah, I can't see Youtube here. I guess the last one's the farm slasher flick featuring the slurry pit, death by tractor and other classics?

Loads here: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/films/

including Children and Disused Fridges - "an air tight DEATH TRAP!"

We had a great "Safety in the Workshop" slideshow during woodwork at school. At least 4 kids fainted. These movies really did prepare a whole generation for gore flicks.

they should take the doors of disused fridges tbh. if they're disused, nobody will ever care rite? plus, it creates a job. fridge door dismantler. amazing. and you'd have to be really dumb to be trapped under a prone, doorless fridge. but i'd make a PSA about it just in case.

let's maek it happen!

Yeah, the three parter is the one where the kid drowns in the slurry pit. Jill remembered this scene very vividly. The part where the little girl dies from poisoning, waking up crying for her mother in the night, then you see the mother clearing her bedroom out, god that really got to me. Heavy, heavy stuff.

Jill remembered all the kids at her school sitting in the hall being shown this, and the silence in the hall, punctuated by whimpering children after it had finished.

Okay I'm glad I can't see these. Being a parent puts a different spin on them.

This is the one I remember most vividly - unfortunately the BFI website (where this is from) only has the first 5 minutes, and you only seem to be able to see the rest of it if you're logging in from a BFI-registered school or library or something. Anyway, relive my most traumatic childhood memory, people :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc54mdvZTFw

I wonder how successful these films actually were in preventing accidents. Was freaking kids out useful in getting the message across? Wonder what happened to the death-by-slurry stats after that film was shown.

Most kids were shot by the farmer before they got near his slurry pit.

JIMMY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There was also a film with that one dude who got vaporised pushing a yacht along a road underneath an overhead power cable. I wonder just how big a problem that was in the 70s that they had to make a safety film about it?

How many kids play on farms anyway? I would've thought the local kids would know not to go there and they're boring, dirty workplaces anyway, and the towny kids wouldn't be unsupervised anyway.

The combined might of Alvin Stardust, David Prowse and Kevin Keegan drilled it into my head to be careful on the roads, although maybe common sense had something to do with it too, who knows.

Well, Sale of the Century was giving yachts away practically every week, so it could've been more widespread than you think.

I was scared shitless by the fridge one but it didn't stop me going onto dumps or wasteland (where fridges had been dumped with reckless abandon or so we were led to believe). It did stop me going near the fridge though which was very inconvenient.

Fridges don't have the same kind of doors now though do they though?

Not to forget the countrywide epidemic of frisbees floating into electricity substations.

xpost

SERIOUSLY WHY DIDN'T THEY GO HOME AFTER THEIR FRIEND WAS RUN OVER BY THE TRACTOR????????

Why let a little thing like that spoil your day?

"Two of our friends died at this farm; let's go play there again!"

Farms were great playgrounds, full of cool things to climb up onto, the only downside was that the farmer would always chase you if he caught you and yr friends playing on the haystack or whetever.

One of the places I lived was near a little railway station - the platforms were concrete/stone for most of their length, then wood thereafter. Crawling under the wooden bit and watching the train wheels go by was the best fun, as was putting small stones or coins on the track and watching them get flattened.

Maybe I should have paid more attention to all these PIFs?

when i was a little nipper i had both a friend die from drowning in the local canal, and a friend badly injured from sticking his fingers into a junction box.

kids be doing what they wanna do

I guess I have an overly-developed sense of self-preservation but there's no way my ass would be going back there after dude drowned in the shit pit.

We got a two hour DVD of PIFs as a competition prize at a local night a while back.. the nuclear fallout ones are the freakiest..

*shudders*

With the amount of messing around with fire, chemicals, trees, canoes, ropes, bows, airpistols, home made death slides etc etc I did as a kid I should be dead or at least have lost a few fingers or an eye. But no I've never even broken a single bone.

Don't count thine chickens already!

home made death slides

wau

OKAY I FINALLY GOT TO PART 3 OF APACHES, WTF

does anyone remember "She survived. You drowned", another grim one about drowning in which this stupid girl falls into a river, this guy ineffectually tries to save her only to drown himself while the little witch makes it to safety? It was very sadface.

But I remember some more enjoyable films... like the one about how you should keep over to the left on country bends, in which this country and western band drove around in an open topped car singing about how you should keep over to the left on country bends.

here in Ireland we had our own public information films, which people of a certain age will remember with fondness... notably the "oh me achin' back" one about how it is a good idea to lift things sensibly.

But I remember some more enjoyable films...

Oh there's hundreds of those but this thread is for THE HORROR

I am clearly the only person who noticed that the main kid from "Apaches" was named Daniel Perry.

Excuse me sir, if I inquire,
but isn't that your house on fire?
Well maybe not, but if it were,
I mean, suppose fire did occur?
What would you do? How would you act
to keep your family intact?
<can't remember the next bit>
If in there you start to choke,
lie on the floor where there's less smoke
or lean out of the window where
there's likely to be cleaner air.
But if it gets too bad to stay,
your last resort - a getaway.
Do all you can to break your fall
with cushions, mattresses and all,
then lower yourself gently towards the ground
for choice, where soft earth can be found.
<I think there are a couple of lines in here I can't remember>
These rules could save your life, so heed them!
Although we hope you'll never need them.

I am clearly the only person who noticed that the main kid from "Apaches" was named Daniel Perry.

*shudder*

Is Apaches the shite-pit-pie-crust-ain't-as-strong-as-it-looks one?

It's more the tractor-tires-are-heavy, fences-around-shit-pits-are-slippery, drinking-stuff-from-barn-bottles-is-bad, iron-fences-are-heavy, tractors-like-to-roll-off-the-road one.

Oh, that one

OMG the tractor one - that is some real Sopranos shit right there.

dying in a pool of cow shit: worst death ever OR worst. death. ever.

But I remember some more enjoyable films... like the one about how you should keep over to the left on country bends, in which this country and western band drove around in an open topped car singing about how you should keep over to the left on country bends.

Is that the one about single track roads? I drove Mister M up the wall singing that song when we drove around Pembrokeshire a couple of years ago. There I was, flashing my flasher, putting on my brakes, and pulling right in to that passing space, all the while thanking my lucky stars that I was on holiday.

"never go parking in a passing place/someone might need that yard of space"

Before I click on the links, are these for real (4REAL!)?

Absolutely, you can even enjoy them on dvd.

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/51K5S1ZEB5L._SS500_.jpg

But I bet they don't have the horrible ones on there!

Just watched the dark and lonely water, still seems as terrifying as when I saw it 30+ years ago.

Some people seem to miss the point though.

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.

I'm intrigued as to what 'Splink' presented by Jon Pertwee might be.

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.

I still can't bring myself to watch these again. Especially Apaches.

I have been looking for this thread for a year, trying to remember the name of that horrifying death farm PSA

"Apaches", I will try not to forget your name this time

Next time you can just search for HUGE SHITPIT OF DEATH

now more than ever, can't bring myself to rescreen

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_tngWMToWtCc/TTR7aHZjJyI/AAAAAAAAJho/k5vGP5K_H9Y/s1600/vlcsnap-2011-01-17-17h14m22s117.png

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_tngWMToWtCc/TTR7auQyjNI/AAAAAAAAJhw/UiPgN3x4MJo/s400/vlcsnap-2011-01-17-17h14m36s11.png

Slurry seems to be the hardest word

jesus those pics made my skin crawl

In Ireland these days they have moved from existential dread to gore in public information films (or advertisements as they call them these days). So we have had a number of ones for various aspects of car safety stuff ("Fasten your seatbelt you moron!", "Turn off your mobile phone, you stupid bitch!", and "For fuck's sake what made you think that driving after a feed of pints would be a good idea?" etc.) that show people being graphically mashed by out of control vehicles. They annoy me.

Wish I knew what some of Pashmina's broken links up there were.

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

I remember a lecturer talking about how gross-out public information films are not that effective at changing behaviour. He was talking about when he was in the army, they made the soldiers watch an in-your-face film about the horrors of veneral disease (as they then called it). It was very shocking, he said, and they were all talking about it on the way down to the brothel.

No one ever posted those Canadian "prevent it" ads?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwCyVku1HvI

They're on some other thread. I think about that one all the time.

God, this has been nagging me for a few days now. I can sort of remember an American PSA from the early 1980s, featuring a burnt-out building and narrated by a cartoon cricket. I don't know whether it was for smoking safety, lighter safety, or smoke alarms, but I feel like it had to be one of those. I've already scoped out the various Cricket Lighter commercials on youtube. Would be happy to just have confirmation that something like this existed.

damn, came on this thread via the horror film poll and now i'm looking at horrible public safety ads. as if i didnt have a hard enough time falling asleep.

I'll repeat my request for info/confirmation on the PSA I mentioned above.

This was always a fave - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmImMil6r3k

re: The Finishing Line (ps no fucking way I'm watching this tonight)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slJyhOEo-SY

The David Lynch anti-littering PSA is a thing of beauty, not least for the bikers' revel at 0:42...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSWv90msTUc

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?

― grimly fiendish, Saturday, March 29, 2008 1:11 AM (5 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I love DL's anti-littering PSA. They need to start airing it again because I bet it's pretty effective.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfyfY7PI3pg

I never saw this one, despite growing up in a semi rural environment. Jill saw it when she was seven(!!!! WTF) and recalls it vividly. We watched it last night, and it is the most grim, macabre shit I think I have ever seen. We were both really upset and depressed after watching it. Unbelievable that this was shown to young children:

What was this? Such a tantalising description for a bunch of dead links!

I assume it's Apaches, which sees kids die in a variety of farmyard accidents over the course of a week - the one everyone remembers is drowning in a slurry pit, but also crushed by a gate, run over by a tractor trailer, drank poison and crashes a tractor after accidentally letting the hand brake off. Ends with a list of children that died in farm accidents that year.

That's the way to do it, scare the living shit out of the little baskets.

Grown Ups and Road Sense (it was dad in our new car, above) is one of my favourites and that I remember best*. "You'll ruin your eyes!"

* This is not true, I can still recite all of the Joe & Petunia films, remember Mike who swims like a fish (but looks like a monkey) and "excuse me sir, if I inquire, but isn't that your house on fire?" - as it turns out I said on here 15 years ago.

I notice some querying of SPLINK! earlier, I once offered a ton of bonus points in a pub quiz (enough to win) to anyone who could come up with any of the rules of the acronym.