- Awards
- 44
The Seventies and Eighties in particular are an embarrassment of riches when it comes to PIFs, safety campaigns and grim training videos. Which ones do you remember watching? And which ones scarred you for life?
Vintage British public information films
- Thread starter Mel O'Drama
- Start date
- Copy link Copy link
- Awards
- 44
This is a lesser-known one I've stumbled upon today. Much longer than many, it was made as an in-house training video for British Leyland, and positively oozes glorious Seventiesness (right down to randy men and Page 3). It's also packed to the rafters with familiar faces... mostly from sitcoms but also soaps, dramas and sci-fi series.
Behold as Summer Wine's Sid loses his rag with Xrds' Adam Chance over an error not picked up by Hercule Poirot's little grey cells. Meanwhile, Denzil from Only Fools and Horses and Arthur from On The Buses disagree about figures while Are You Being Served's Mr. Lucas is fed up with doing someone else's work and Duffy from Please Sir! is negligent after being distracted by Madeline Smith from Benny Hill and the Carry Ons. Here's the full cast list for anyone keeping score.
As much as anything else, it's a fascinating look into the numerous quality control issues that BL were suffering at the time. The fact that they put this out there is very telling.
It all leads to a typically hard-hitting and shocking tragic ending in which not everyone lives to tell the tale.
Watched beginning to end it's a decently-constructed story that, with a bit of tweaking, could have been a Play For Today or an episode of The Sweeney or something
Behold as Summer Wine's Sid loses his rag with Xrds' Adam Chance over an error not picked up by Hercule Poirot's little grey cells. Meanwhile, Denzil from Only Fools and Horses and Arthur from On The Buses disagree about figures while Are You Being Served's Mr. Lucas is fed up with doing someone else's work and Duffy from Please Sir! is negligent after being distracted by Madeline Smith from Benny Hill and the Carry Ons. Here's the full cast list for anyone keeping score.
As much as anything else, it's a fascinating look into the numerous quality control issues that BL were suffering at the time. The fact that they put this out there is very telling.
It all leads to a typically hard-hitting and shocking tragic ending in which not everyone lives to tell the tale.
Watched beginning to end it's a decently-constructed story that, with a bit of tweaking, could have been a Play For Today or an episode of The Sweeney or something
- Awards
- 7
I think that this is one of the more infamous ones.
They used to show us films like these in school in the early 90’s. I distinctly remember the frisbee one in your first post and there was another where someone either died or was paralysed after falling off gym equipment that they were messing on. Informative but also terrifying in equal measure.
- Awards
- 44
I can remember being shown one of the Beware Of Strangers one at school in which a child went off with a friendly man whose face then changed. It terrified me and I probably had nightmares afterwards. It didn't help that the man in the video looked rather like the school caretaker.
Anything to do railway tracks also used to scare the bejesus out of me. Here's one that was apparently controversial enough to be banned, which is quite a feat given the times:
It was replaced with this one, which I remember seeing:
- Awards
- 39
Charlie was wise!
Half the films scared me out of my wits , I did like dark Waters
Half the films scared me out of my wits , I did like dark Waters
- Awards
- 19
It's Adam and Eve.
- Awards
- 44
Oh - the problems that boy would have had without Charley to save him. "Would you like to see my puppies", indeed..
Back then I thought nothing of it, but watching it today I found myself wondering why the bossy mare couldn't go and get it herself instead of sending him to his death (and posthumous ingominy, since it's all over the radio that he broke into the power station).