FYI: The true hor­ror of the pub­lic infor­ma­tion film

To this day, I can­not cross a one-way street with­out look­ing both ways first. Ratio­nal­ly, I know that I have nev­er encoun­tered a car speed­ing the wrong way down a one-way street in my own life. Still, evi­dence or log­ic hasn’t been enough across three decades to coun­ter­act the grue­some advice giv­en out at a pri­ma­ry school assem­bly. My entire year group was told to always look both ways when cross­ing the street, espe­cial­ly if it was one-way, as drunk dri­vers are known to speed down them the wrong way and kill children.

As an adult, I can see that this chill­ing mix of blunt and per­haps over­pro­tec­tive advice is born out of a mix­ture of care, fear, and maybe just a pinch of cov­er­ing your own back as a teacher. The long-term effect that this and oth­er pre­cau­tion­ary tales had on my psy­che have bur­rowed into my dai­ly adult life. Although ver­bal tales may have had an impact, the mov­ing image can be even more pow­er­ful. If you grew up in the Unit­ed King­dom, footage of water poured on a chip pan fire is prob­a­bly con­jured imme­di­ate­ly to mind, or the mem­o­ry of that one episode of 999 with the fool­ish kid with fire­works in his pocket.

Released in 2020, the BFI’s The Best of COI: Five Decades of Pub­lic Infor­ma­tion Films Blu-ray col­lec­tion was a gate­way drug into the world of some of the noto­ri­ous pub­lic infor­ma­tion films. Estab­lished in 1946, the COI (Cen­tral Office of Infor­ma­tion) pro­duced and dis­trib­uted thou­sands of infor­ma­tion­al shorts like Charley’s March of Time (1948), an ani­mat­ed expla­na­tion of the ben­e­fits of pay­ing Nation­al Insur­ance, and Design for Today (1965), a visu­al trib­ute to the ele­gance and inge­nu­ity of every­day design. That’s all well and good, but it’s the COI’s warn­ings about every­day per­il and dan­ger that tru­ly fascinate.

What­ev­er gen­er­a­tion you’re from, the COI films undoubt­ed­ly hold famil­iar char­ac­ters; Dave Prowse as the Green Cross Code Man, Joe and Petu­nia, Tufty the Squir­rel, or Charley the (bare­ly) talk­ing cat. These help­ful heroes and com­e­dy char­ac­ters pro­vid­ed help­ful advice on sub­jects includ­ing cross­ing the road, telling your Mum where you’re going, or call­ing the coast­guard. But why take a soft approach to safe­ty when you can scare the sen­si­ble into the next gen­er­a­tion with some of the most effec­tive hor­ror shorts of all time?

1973 may have been the year of The Exor­cist and Don’t Look Now, but it’s in the short form that some of the year’s most ter­ri­fy­ing hor­ror was pro­duced. 1973’s The Spir­it of Dark and Lone­ly Water (com­mon­ly known as Lone­ly Water) is a 90-sec­ond mas­ter­class of ter­ror. A Bergmanesque, face­less Grim Reaper voiced by Don­ald Pleas­ance delights in how easy it is for chil­dren to drown in nat­ur­al bod­ies of water.

A blunt and unflinch­ing approach to visu­alised cat­a­stro­phe along­side a hor­rif­ic vil­lain, this par­tic­u­lar film is used as a case study on the last­ing impres­sion left by the COI films in Andrés Rothschild’s Into Lone­ly Water. Talk­ing to lumi­nar­ies includ­ing hor­ror afi­ciona­do Kim New­man, it is obvi­ous that 50 years on, the clip is far from for­got­ten. Plac­ing in the top 75 of Chan­nel 4’s 100 Great­est Scary Moments in 2003, Lone­ly Water has found a new audi­ence in the inter­net age with 231,000 views on the BFI YouTube chan­nel at the time of writing.

If the intent of a pub­lic infor­ma­tion film is to imprint on the young mind in a short space of time, the COI film­mak­ers were par­tic­u­lar­ly inven­tive. Effi­cien­cy is key to the most chill­ing of the COI films, and 1973’s Sewing Machine employs an on-screen count­down of 60 sec­onds while a moth­er busies her­self with sewing. The reveal is that the timer is count­ing down the final minute of her daughter’s life, as anoth­er chill­ing voiceover reminds the audi­ence to keep watch over chil­dren when they’re near traf­fic. 1975’s Grain Drain is a per­fect exam­ple of the use of visu­al metaphor; a doll is used to demon­strate how easy it would be to suf­fo­cate in the quick­sand of a grain silo, fea­tur­ing a har­row­ing vision as the fake body disappears.

Per­haps the mas­ter of the COI hor­ror form was John Macken­zie, best known for lat­er direct­ing the bom­bas­tic Bob Hoskins gang­ster clas­sic, The Long Good Fri­day. A few years pri­or, Macken­zie direct­ed one of his mas­ter­works, 1977’s Apach­es. Hav­ing grown up near farm­land, it is a film that I thank­ful­ly saw for the first time as an adult, thanks to a curi­ous rec­om­men­da­tion in Edgar Wright’s 1000 Favourite Movies list. An expan­sion of the farm-hor­ror sub-genre, Apach­es is a ver­i­ta­ble Faces of Death of fatal farm­yard haz­ards to children.

An epic open­ing shot dis­plays a group of sil­hou­et­ted chil­dren emerg­ing over the hori­zon. The kids are out to play and choose to make the local farm the site of their games. Inspired by TV and films, the chil­dren play cops and rob­bers and the rather out­dat­ed ​‘Cow­boys and Indi­ans’ that inspires the title of the film. Aside from their lack of sen­si­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion, the chil­dren are used as a pre­cau­tion­ary tale of play­ing in and around the dan­ger­ous farm. Their pun­ish­ment is being dis­patched one by one in a string of death sequences wor­thy of any hor­ror classic.

The sur­pris­ing­ly grue­some child deaths include being crushed, a par­tic­u­lar­ly har­row­ing poi­son­ing, and per­haps the most infa­mous of all, a boy who slips and drowns in a pool of pig fae­ces. It is a relent­less­ly bleak pre­cur­sor to Final Des­ti­na­tion as the ten­sion and expec­ta­tion of how and when the next child is going to be killed builds, with Macken­zie even throw­ing in red her­rings like mov­ing vehi­cles and meat hooks. Tense, sus­pense­ful, shock­ing and macabre, in 21 min­utes, Apach­es achieves more than most hor­ror fea­ture films and most cer­tain­ly leaves a view­er unlike­ly to play in a barn.

Even after fea­ture film suc­cess with The Long Good Fri­day, Macken­zie would return to helm Say No to Strangers (1981), an entry into the Stranger Dan­ger sub-genre of leary men in cars offer­ing sweets and promis­es of kit­tens and pup­pies to chil­dren out­side of school grounds. It’s an impres­sive­ly star-stud­ded affair in ret­ro­spect fea­tur­ing Bren­da Blethyn, Bernard Hill, and even Tim­o­thy Spall as a Rubik’s Cube-jug­gling perv. It’s anoth­er psy­cho­log­i­cal chiller, albeit one less grue­some than Apaches.

TV’s Dun­can Pre­ston abducts a young girl, and as her dis­traught par­ents work with police to search for her, the film presents a series of sce­nar­ios in which chil­dren must decide whether the on-screen kid­dies are right or wrong. Should they accept mon­ey from a man in the park? Should they tell the police that Tim­o­thy Spall is way too old to be hang­ing around with young kids? Once these ques­tions are asked, thank­ful­ly the young girl is returned home safely.

How­ev­er, con­sid­er­ing the film is aimed direct­ly at chil­dren, it is the film’s final scene that goes full-tilt hor­ror. As Pre­ston dri­ves around look­ing for a new tar­get, the nar­ra­tor deliv­ers the chill­ing­ly blunt final line: ​“You don’t want to end up dead or in hos­pi­tal. You know what to do: say NO to strangers!” As the nar­ra­tor speaks, Pre­ston looks direct­ly into the cam­era, and the film freeze-frames cap­tur­ing his men­ac­ing stare. Pure night­mare fuel.

The clo­sure of the COI at the end of 2011 saw the offi­cial end to this filmic fac­to­ry of hor­rors. One can’t help but won­der how ter­ri­fy­ing they might have made pub­lic safe­ty films about COVID, vap­ing, or meet­ing strangers on Minecraft. It is rare these days for a mod­ern hor­ror film to keep me awake at night, yet Apach­es and the child­hood trau­ma of info-ter­ror con­tin­ue to live in my mind rent-free.