The peculiar world of disturbing British ‘Public Information Films’
Most British people born before the early 2000s will have certain British public service announcements burnt into their memories. These short films, often broadcast during advert breaks, inspired fears of rivers, trees, litter, electricity, frisbees – you name it – into children across the nation.
Also known as public information films (PIFs), these short clips terrified children due to their emphasis on staying out of danger, suggesting, for instance, that littering can kill. Many extreme examples were used to hammer home the importance of staying safe, such as a child receiving a fatal electric shock after retrieving his frisbee. While these PIFs were made with the British public’s best interests at heart, looking back today, it is hard to see how some of them were taken seriously due to their sheer bizarreness and over-the-top nature.
As Britons started to get televisions in their homes, PIFs became a popular phenomenon in the 1950s, although they first appeared in cinemas during the 1940s. They continued to fill advert spaces on television into the 2000s, although these days, PIFs are more or less obsolete, and those that do exist are much less dramatic and unnecessarily terrifying. This is due to the Central Office of Information dissolving in 2011, who produced them.
The worst offenders emerged in the 1970s, a period when PIFs were needlessly scary and even graphic. One of the worst is Apaches, which clocked in at 26 minutes and was typically screened in schools. Released in 1977, it terrified children across the country, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a generation of kids refused to step foot near farms after watching it.
The film follows a group of young children, with almost all of them dying as they disregard safeguarding advice and play recklessly. In one clip, a child is seen falling off a moving tractor and into the turning wheels of the vehicle, leaving blood splattered on the ground. In another sequence, a child falls and drowns in a massive pool of muddy water before another drives a tractor off steep, uneven terrain and dies.
Another iconic public information film is Lonely Water, directed by Jeff Grant. Donald Pleasance voices death in this terrifying clip, which features children playing by a river. Unfortunately, the Grim Reaper is there to take irresponsible children away, with Pleasance menacingly saying, “The show-offs are easy. But the unwary ones are easier still.” As a child with the most prominent Cockney accent you will ever hear goes, “Oi look, there’s someone in the water!” Pleasance says, “Sensible children. I have no power over them.”
The odd nature of PIFs has led to many people sharing their favourites online, making compilations of the most terrifying moments and even buying DVD collections of the most unforgettable. There are countless PIFs we could mention, from the Play Safe videos, Clunk Click Every Trip, which starred Jimmy Saville (the scariest part), or the animated series of PIFs, Charley Says. While some were considerably more horrifying than others, PIFs will always be remembered as a strange aspect of British television, making for great unintentional entertainment.
