As a TV-obsessed kid in the 1970s and 1980s, I saw my fair share of Public Service Announcements, or PSAs for short. In between episodes of Captain Caveman and Thundarr the Barbarian, Dick Van Dyke was there to tell me how to get out of my house when (not if!) it caught on fire…
G.I. Joe, when not fighting the Cobra insurrection, was there fend off would-be “stranger danger”…
And Mr. T was there to shake some sense into me whether I did something bad or not…
In America, teaching kids right from wrong was often heavy-handed, but usually entertaining. While the Mr. Yuk PSAs of the 1970s were a creepy reminder not to chug bleach or whatever other chemicals I found under the kitchen sink, things didn’t really get dark until the anti-drugs ads of the 1980s kicked into full gear.
Mr. Yuk’s Grinch-inspired psychedelia and the idea of serving my grey matter sunny-side up are light-hearted forays into social engineering when compared to the nightmare world of the English Public Information Film (PIF). Moving from Dick Van Dyke humorously explaining why he’s crawling around in his pajamas to Donald Pleasence giving voice to a water demon is like the “moving from the sunlight to shadow” segment in the Tales from the Darkside opening credits. Terrifying and haunting.
British PIFs are in a class by themselves, horror-wise. The tropes and images from countless British folk horror films of the period – The Wicker Man (1973), The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), Psychomania (1973) – seem to saturate every frame. It’s not enough for the Central Office of Information (COI) – even the banality of that name is scary! – to merely tell you not to mess about near murky water. No, they have to up the ante and create a horrifying, cloaked apparition speaking in Donald Pleasence’s voice to deliver their message. On top of that, the cinematography is dripping (pun intended) with dreary atmosphere and oppressive dread. Fog and mist, seemingly imported from the House of Usher’s backyard, skulks about the scenery.
The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water (1973) – and who the heck
came up with that title? did H.P. Lovecraft work at the COI? – is a masterpiece
of TV folk horror. But it wasn’t a one-off artifact. Throughout the 1970s, the
COI made a series of spooky PIFs to remind their viewers that the world is a
dangerous place that would do its best to kill them. “Keep Calm and Carry On” may be the British national mantra,
but for a while there “Be Paranoid and Stay Home” gave it a run for its money
if these other PIFs are anything to go by…
The Sewing Machine (1971)
Apaches (1977)
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