Public information HORROR film.

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.

Road safety, innit

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.

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.