Public Information Films (PIFS)

[staffslad]

Re: Public Information Films (PIFS)

Thank you for the information, Marc, I didn't know about the parachute packer's liability for 'chutes that failed to open. The example of the girl in the PIF packing the parachute seemed to be rather an odd one to choose and relevant to a fairly small proportion of the population, and I was at the time a bit puzzled by it. I wonder if it was initially made for the armed forces and subsequently released more widely.

Darren, I remember them being shown very frequently on TV back in the 70s and 80s. Yes, many of them made uncomfortable viewing, the rationale being, I suppose, if you scare them enough, they won't do it. A prime example, I think, would be the 'Don't die of ignorance' AIDS PIF in the mid-80s. Anyone who remembers that time will also remember the lack of information and understanding of AIDS, allied to the fact that at that time an AIDS diagnosis meant certain death, so I think those hard-hitting PIFs were specifically made to scare people into taking their health seriously, because at the time that's all the authorities could do to combat the disease. Even 30 years later, and with effective treatment for HIV, that PIF is still scary.

[darren]

Re: Public Information Films (PIFS)

Ive never seen any of these films.


But they seem pretty good some rather frightening and they cover a variety of different subjects.

[marc]

Re: Public Information Films (PIFS)

Staffslad, that PIF about the parachute, was also shown on TV. Yes, it was a warning about drug use, and to inform on anybody you suspected of using drugs. A bit of historical information here, the packing of parachutes was recorded during WW2. If a parachute did not open, or did not open correctly, there would be an inquest. The person who packed the parachute could be charged with manslaughter if the person using the parachute was killed. This was on a programme I watched many years ago.

[staffslad]

Re: Public Information Films (PIFS)

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this one yet. It was a PIF about fork-lift truck safety. Man driving a fork-lift truck with forks raised. Distracted person hurries around a corner and smacks into the raised forks. Only a scream is heard and the message is not to drive with forks raised.

One other, but I only saw this one once in the cinema. A girl, obviously suffering from a need for a drug fix is packing a parachute and a voiceover says something like "Would you want her to be packing your parachute?" and urging viewers to inform on those suspected of drug abuse. I think the girl may have been a soldier so possibly this one was aimed at members of the armed forces. Probably dates from early/mid 1980s.

[agfagaevart]

Re: Public Information Films (PIFS)

I don't think there's ever been a scarier PIF than the Spirit Of Dark And Lonely Water...

This one scared the **** outa me as a kid:

[marc]

Re: Public Information Films (PIFS)

Hi everybody, I found this site by pure chance. I remember most of the PIF mentioned here. Does any body remember the Imperial War Museum PIF?

[agfagaevart]

Re: Public Information Films (PIFS)

Polish a floor, and put a rug on it..... you might as well set a man trap.

can't help laughing whenever i see that one!

And I dig that groovy music too!

[80sChav]

Re: Public Information Films (PIFS)

Remember these? i loved them, wish they would get airtime again!My favs were the one where a man who was tired while driving would be thinking of can can girls and birds would fly in a caption over his head!early 70s that one. Also the one with petunia and her husband who had spotted Dave who could swim like a fish, but the husband said"He's not waving he's drowning!"And Petunia said "learn to swim young man, learn to swim!"Also Charley says!!,oh it's all coming back now!

Indeed I can recall watching these very wel! A lot of these films were good and educational too (though I never liked film or cartoon showings we had at School), I was always child instantly intrigued in things like these films that represented educational matters ... so yeah I did prefer these I guess (in a way)

Though regardless of not being keen on Cartoons etc - either the thrill of the TV and Video Recorder being rolled out beat any lessons for an hour or so that afternoon .... what memories!!

80sChav

[Jasonm25870]

Re: Public Information Films (PIFS)

Remember these? i loved them, wish they would get airtime again!My favs were the one where a man who was tired while driving would be thinking of can can girls and birds would fly in a caption over his head!early 70s that one. Also the one with petunia and her husband who had spotted Dave who could swim like a fish, but the husband said"He's not waving he's drowning!"And Petunia said "learn to swim young man, learn to swim!"Also Charley says!!,oh it's all coming back now!

I remember the one with the CanCan Girls and Seagulls too....I keep telling people about it but they all wonder what I'm on about

[Chris-T]

Re: Public Information Films (PIFS)

There was one where a lady was on the phone to a friend and the husband is sitting staring out of the living room window and recollecting the images of a child walking out from behind an ice cream van, he shows a painful tearful expression at the memory of hitting the child as his wife says on the phone something like 'he still can't face driving the car yet'.

[culnara]

Re: Public Information Films (PIFS)

Polish a floor, and put a rug on it..... you might as well set a man trap.

[akb48fan]

Re: Public Information Films (PIFS)

I don't think there's ever been a scarier PIF than the Spirit Of Dark And Lonely Water. The one in which a kid is frazzled in a substation trying to retrieve his frizbee also scared me as a child. There was one which had The Who's Teenage Wasteland as its soundtrack but I can't remember what it was all about - something in the back of my mind tells me it was to do with motorbikes?

[BlitzKid]

Re: Public Information Films (PIFS)

a few more off the top of my head:

- A woman has broken down on a motorway, and as she's waiting on the hard shoulder, a lorry comes along and shears off the opposite side of the car. The message was that you must get out of the car and stay away until help arrives

- A boy and his dad are in a van that is hit by a speeding driver and flips over, the boy, now a ghost, screams at the driver for speeding and cries as he's left alone when his dad goes away in the ambulance.

- A woman arriving home switches on a heater and goes to sleep, then you see that in the morning she's died from carbon monoxide poisoning. That one used to freak me out.

- Anti-drugs PIF with a girl literally turning into a guinea pig to represent what drugs are doing to her

- An ad for some kind of Neighbourhood Watch scheme where a burglar breaks into a house and people gather round and do a slow handclap to let him know they're watching. This was parodied by Beadle's Hotshots with a version where they're silent until the guy comes out, then they burst into rapturous applause and give him a bunch of flowers and a getaway bike!

- Very vaguely remember a crime prevention film showing abandoned bicycles all over a hillside ... which suggests it was about bike theft but I can't remember any more

- A boy gets lost in a shopping centre but is helped by a talking cloud thing (yes it was weird) who tells him what to do

- Various celebrities transform into different races to make a point about racism e.g. a white Mel B from Spice Girls, an Indian Ken Livingstone, a Chinese Gail Porter ...

Wow, I don't think I remember any of those, but they sound interesting! I'll keep a look out for them. I co-run a PIFs group on Facebook and we're always posting videos of PIFs on there and looking out for new ones as well as searching for old ones, so feel free to join if you're interested: https://www.facebook.com/groups/159621560743446/

[screamqueen]

Re: Public Information Films (PIFS)

I remember nearly all of these. Some proper scary ones there! I've found some of these on YouTube but am still looking for the 'Kill Your Speed... Not A Child' ones.

I also liked the comedy TV license ones that had people doing very anti-social things like looking through someone else's window to watch their TV, and walking into a pub and stealing food off other people's plates, followed by a voiceover equating these situations to watching TV without a TV license.

Yes, I remember those! There was also a guy at a fairground getting into the dodgems with the person who's just paid, someone in a launderette putting their washing in with someone else's, and a guy on a train calling out the answers to a newspaper crossword. I recall another one where some women are gossiping in a bathroom about someone getting fined for license evasion, and realise it's one of their group. She awkwardly asks to borrow a lipstick and the other person says "here you go, Big Mouth!"

a few more off the top of my head:

- A woman has broken down on a motorway, and as she's waiting on the hard shoulder, a lorry comes along and shears off the opposite side of the car. The message was that you must get out of the car and stay away until help arrives

- A boy and his dad are in a van that is hit by a speeding driver and flips over, the boy, now a ghost, screams at the driver for speeding and cries as he's left alone when his dad goes away in the ambulance.

- A woman arriving home switches on a heater and goes to sleep, then you see that in the morning she's died from carbon monoxide poisoning. That one used to freak me out.

- Anti-drugs PIF with a girl literally turning into a guinea pig to represent what drugs are doing to her

- An ad for some kind of Neighbourhood Watch scheme where a burglar breaks into a house and people gather round and do a slow handclap to let him know they're watching. This was parodied by Beadle's Hotshots with a version where they're silent until the guy comes out, then they burst into rapturous applause and give him a bunch of flowers and a getaway bike!

- Very vaguely remember a crime prevention film showing abandoned bicycles all over a hillside ... which suggests it was about bike theft but I can't remember any more

- A boy gets lost in a shopping centre but is helped by a talking cloud thing (yes it was weird) who tells him what to do

- Various celebrities transform into different races to make a point about racism e.g. a white Mel B from Spice Girls, an Indian Ken Livingstone, a Chinese Gail Porter ...

[BlitzKid]

Re: Public Information Films (PIFS)

Public information films, I love 'em! Here's a few from the '90s that I remember as a kid:

- The "Kill Your Speed" ads where kids would be hit by road signs showing 20, 30 or 40mph with a voiceover explaining how many children would be killed at each speed. I remember one with a girl's toy pram flying across the road to spare you the actual impact on her.

- The car theft ads with the hyenas. My younger sister was about three years old when these were on the air and was terrified of the multi-storey car park in town because she believed that actual hyenas lived in it.

- A few fire safety ads: the one where a woman constantly rewinds the video of her now-dead daughter opening a Christmas present, another one showing paramedics removing a dead child's body from a house, and one with a demonstration of why you shouldn't pour water over a chip pan fire, followed by a close-up of a woman whose face melted off because she did just that.

- TV Licensing ads with people who have been inconvenienced in some way because they were fined for not paying the license, like a couple camping out next to a fume-belching factory because they couldn't afford the holiday they planned, or a country lord having to rent out his stately home to the public and then a child walks in while he's on the loo.

- Horrible global warming cartoon with surreal visuals of ice melting, rainforests on fire, animals crying over each other's corpses and so on. It was terrifying and I had to leave the room whenever it was on.

- Not really a public information film cos it was made by the NSPCC: A fairytale-style story about a girl called "Maria" whose parents left her at home alone, somehow she set the house on fire and couldn't get out and there were no adults to rescue her.

- The anti-solvent-abuse ones with a black screen and you hear kids' voices whispering "Go on, try it ..."

I remember nearly all of these. Some proper scary ones there! I've found some of these on YouTube but am still looking for the 'Kill Your Speed... Not A Child' ones.

I also liked the comedy TV license ones that had people doing very anti-social things like looking through someone else's window to watch their TV, and walking into a pub and stealing food off other people's plates, followed by a voiceover equating these situations to watching TV without a TV license.