When my grandmother was little, all the grown-ups in her town would terrify children with stories of the giant catfish who lived in the lake, and Blackbeard the monster who lived in the village well. They were both just waiting to pull in unwary children who got too close! (The stories *totally* worked on her, BTW. She was an adventuresome kid in many ways, but she was not getting anywhere near that darn lake.)
British people of my generation and a little younger had our childhoods scarred by hundreds of those sorts of films. If you were watching BBC and something came on that looked like it should be an advert, you knew instantly it was going to be a nightmare fuel PSA.
They really mis-identified the most dangerous element in that one. I'm pretty sure I saw that at school, plus the sub-station one that comes after it (naturally I continue to be twitchy when safely walking past sub-stations).
The line "And it's going to happen to a lot of you ladies ... the face you start off with in the morning won't be the face you end up with at night" would have been inherently pretty creepy, even if they hadn't inadvertantly managed to put it into the mouth of (probably) Britain's most prolific serial rapist and necrophiliac.
I'm fond of the The Finishing Line, which contains a wide variety of shots of singlet-clad 1970s children getting mown down by trains as they participate in a railway-line themed sportsday.
I remember when I was five we had a road safety themed Rose Queen presentation, including dressing up as road signs (I was a Level Crossing With Gate) and singing songs with lyrics like "Never Try To Steal A Ride/Hanging on Behind" with graphic details about what happened to children who did.
Can you imagine? However, it meant every time I saw the sign for a level crossing with gate I insisted on dragging the family over it because that was "my" sign.
When I was a kid in the 70s the fear of small creatures getting up my nose and eating my brains if I swam in unsafe water was vivid and real. I definitely didn't need any men in black cowls to scare me about drowning.
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mme_hardy
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Date: 2017-01-28 09:52 am (UTC)I'm fond of the The Finishing Line, which contains a wide variety of shots of singlet-clad 1970s children getting mown down by trains as they participate in a railway-line themed sportsday.
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Date: 2017-01-29 11:36 pm (UTC)(Men in black cowls were there to scare me from having unprotected sex when I was teenager in the 80s.)
I am a 37-year-old American; I shouldn't know about this
Date: 2017-01-27 10:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-28 10:29 pm (UTC)