To ask you which public information films (if any) freaked you out as a child?

[fishdishwish]

There's a few threads in this vein at the moment, but I though I'd start one dedicated to Charley Says... and its ilk.

Most public information films creeped me out as a child (I think it was the sense of something bad about to happen), to the point where I used to try and avoid times where they were often shown. However, one that haunted me for years was the 'Grain Drain' one (warning farmers of the dangers of children playing in grain silos), which shows a doll sinking into grain with the sound of a child crying over it. I saw just a snatch of it when I was 5 or so, and the image stalked my mind for 20-odd years...

I think they did show it on Nationwide, velocity, or at least part of it.

I'd totally blanked some of these from my memory - watched the Dark Water one and now understand why I will hate swimming outdoors if I can't see the bottom, and the Grain Silo - aaaagghhh why did I have to youtube that? I remember it clearly now.

madsadbad yes they just popped up during advert breaks on normal tv, though the stranger ones I think we were shown at school too.

All of the fireworks/Bonfire night ones. Still don't really like being out on 5th November.

Does anyone else who grew up in a rural area remember getting a terrible video at school in which several children go round to play with a friend on the friends farm, and most of them meet really sticky ends? I can't remember precise details but something like: one falls into the silage thing, another gets killed in the plough, another drowns in the pond. It was terrible, I prayed to god every night to keep our farmer friends safe as they were clearly dicing with death on a daily basis!

When I was about 5 or 6, we were shown a fire safety one at school which featured Donald Duck. For a few days afterwards, I was petrified that our house was going to burn down!

Viking Lady. I also remember Robbie. I saw it at school in 1980, age 9. I've never really forgotten it. There was one about safety on escalators, whose closing scene was a child's rag doll being mangled by the escalator mechanism. And one about a young father hanging around in a playground. His daughter had been killed in a road incident - "can I sit in the front where mummy sits ?"

That I can remember these and others so vividly forty-odd years later is testament to their power. The quango that produced these films was long ago disbanded.

Bumpsadaise, that's Apaches, which has been mentioned further upthread. It was directed by John Krish, who later went on to direct The Long Good Friday.

There are apparently a few different versions of Robbie, with him meeting different fates. The one I have on DVD (and the only one that seems to be online as well), is where his feet get sliced off by the train. The original was introduced and narrated by Peter Purves, but they later re-shot those bits with Cheggers doing it instead.

The drink-driving one with 'In the summer time' playing. Whenever I hear that song I think of it!

There as one about the danger of playing in an abandoned fridge.

Red wellies, escalator, shiver......

Omg.... just realized that vile despicable creature is on one of those films.

There as one about the danger of playing in an abandoned fridge

Chamade, the fridge one used to scare me to death!

I'd forgotten about the kite/pylon one. I refused to go kite flying the summer after is seen that, even though there were no power lines for miles! And I would never, ever consider fetching a football from a substation!

The sparkler one didn't bother me because we'd been using sparklers at home for years already and we're very careful, and I didn't worry about fireworks - I didn't know you could have fireworks at home so I assumed it only affected people doing displays. I did really worry about them though.

Velocity - that film gave me nightmares for years. I can't even bring myself to open your link!

Never mind the British Information programmes,
check out some of the
American Education programmes of the 40/50's and 60's on Youtube:
Some are hilarious and some are REALLY disturbing:
Here is one:

The one where the girls's soft toy was shredded in the escalator.

Poor Myrtle.

"Oh oh the one on the farm and a group of super unlucky children, totally horrifying!

One drank something from a bottle and could be heard down the street screaming that night, one fell in a silo, one was mangled by some machinery "

I still have occasional nightmares based on the kid who falls in the slurry pit and drowns.

If we saw any other films of this type, I don't remember them at all. Just the farm one.

Agh, we had to do this whole-day safety training thing with school called Crucial Crew - think we were about 12. There were SHITLOADS of terrifying films, including the train-slicing-off-feet one and all the rural horrors because we lived in the middle of the countryside. I well remember bumps' farm safety films - wasn't there one where someone drowns in a slurry pit as well? I definitely recall kids being run over by tractors, suffocating in grain silos and getting jammed down the gaps in straw bale stacks.

We used to climb on straw bale stacks all the time clearly the horror only had a temporary effect.

Yes! X-post skylark. The one with the slurry pit was the worst.

I was still at primary school when we saw the farm one, and not in the oldest year either (because we weren't allowed to see a second film which was considered too scary for us and they were). So I'd have only been 9 or 10.

A teacher had to be taken out of our film showing because she felt sick, skylark. So they were clearly pretty strong even for adults . . .

I don't know what they're like nowadays. I hope they're not that grim.