Britain’s unintentionally terrifying PSAs 

Canadian PSAs: Ridiculously goofy. American PSAs: Overly dramatic. English PSAs: True horror.

Apaches needs a laugh track when a kid gets fucking rekt and dies

I saw all of these at school. I am still alive. Must have worked.

I lived in England for 4 years, and the commercials we heard on the radio were pretty gruesome "This is the sound of a child being hit by a car at 15 mph *crash and kid screams* This is the sound of a child being hit by a car at 30 mph *crash but no scream*" pretty scary for a 7 year old me to be hearing

Apaches was not 'unintentionally terrifying' - it was completely intentionally terrifying!

I find this strange, being British. These just seem so normal to me. Also, 'unintentionally terrifying'? I don't think so. They may have given us nightmares, but they sure did the trick. I sure as anything wouldn't play on train tracks now!

How bad is that that I watched this and kept thinking "Oh yeah. I remember that one". 1980s UK, it was a bloody weird time. Great tea though. *siiip*

'Unintentionally'? Intentionally, and their still being made. UK drink-driving ads are still terrifying!

Holy shit Britain had horror movies...Canada had house hippos.

If you found those interesting, you should check out "Protect and Survive" and "Threads"; they're both public safety films from the UK, but attempted to deal with Nuclear War. Both arwe genuinely terrifying, and gave me nightmares as a child.

Tea>coffee

What's that skippy? Johnny fell in the mud? What good news! What's that skippy? Jimmy fell in front of the tractor? What good news! What's that skippy? Timmy fell in the well? Are you having a lark? There is no Timmy!

"Oy! Umbody's in the wa'er!" Was that seriously what british accents used to be like?

In Northern Ireland, we have these shorts put out by DOE (look them up) that fucking terrified me growing up. There was one of a couple on a wall and a car crashes into it, killing the guy and squashing the girls legs, and another where it just showed a pint, a blackboard and several voice-overs saying "Every drink increases your risk of crashing" then the pint explodes and the screen fades to a pint shaped like a coffin, with the main voice over saying "Hit home yet? Never, ever drink and drive" They're worth watching and they really get the message across

They weren't unintentionally terrifying, they were supposed to scare people into the horrors of train tracks/water/electricity/fire that most people and kids hadn't considered.

4:48 someone sample dat shit

They weren't all terrifying - one of the most famous ones was about a talking cat called Charley. There was also one about always asking your mummy to go to the ice cream van with you, which is unintentionally hilarious.

I once convinced my science teacher to show the "JIMMEHHHHHHHH!" PIF in class lmao I remember people saying "I'm going to have nightmares now"

I'm from the UK and there was one they used to show when i was a kid that warned you not to play around electrical sub stations. It scared the living piss out of me so i guess it worked.

Jimmy nooooo!

JIMMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEE3EEEEEEEEEEEEH

Just to clarify to those who are are of the stupid persuasion, the wording was a bit off, no the British government did not kill kids for adverts

I literally just watched a compilation of these yesterday so it's pretty awesome you've done an episode on them. Sweet Wilhelm Scream t-shirt btw

First rule of the under 301 club Don't talk about under 301 club

1:10 That falling fence would definitely knock you for a whirl or whatever the phrase is, but does not look like it would kill you.

To this day, the Northern Ireland Department of Environment make road safety ad's where whole classes of preschool kids are crushed by somersaulting cars.

We were shown one of these at school when I was about 6 or 7. It was truly relentless with one child dying after another in increasingly gruesome ways. I can still remember at least 4 of the death scenes over 30 years later.

It has to be said, some of our PSAs in the uk are f****** up

I grew up on a farm in the UK and saw Apaches as a kid. The thought of drowning in a slurry pit still chills me to the bone to this day, horrifying.

Some ones been watching larry bundy jr

I had to watch a bunch of British PSAs in my driver's ed course. Needless to say, any confidence I had in my skills before going in melted away at the thought of causing a 16 car pileup, orphaning a 3 month old child cause I was too dumb to slow down, or just generally maiming anyone who ever steps outside ever.

Came back to see where this channel went. I used to watch This Exists religiously when I was 15-16, and it was probably one of my favorite web shows at the time. It’s been somewhat nostalgic rewatching these.

As a Brit, I can say... that those were hilarious.

I fully support Cameron using my taxes to make more of these. Dave, if you're watching....

Yeah, I grew up in Northwest England in the late 80's / early 90's and these are the tip of the iceberg. I remember in junior school ( for americans that is aged 7-11 ) they used to take us all into the assembly hall and show us these kinds of things every few weeks. I remember the one they showed us about fire safety absolutely terrified me and there were other ones about not playing near trains or motorways that were just as horrific as these! There was also a super creepy one about not going anywhere with strangers that I'm surprised hasn't surfaced again.

IM SO GLAD YOU INCLUDED DONT PUT IT IN YOUR MOUTH thank you fellow Canadian

watch some of the road safety ones. a few of those are better than insidious

JIMMYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!

Omg that essex accent tho “ah luk thes sumwan in the woah ah”

They made a 90's version of Apaches called Never Rest and I lived near the North Yorkshire Moors and we watched that one rainy day and it scared the fookin shite out of everycunt in years 3 - 6

scarring kids was the point! it worked!

Haha.. Don't put it in your mouth, don't stuff it in your face....LMAO haha

Once in middle school they showed us a PSA for not texting and driving and it felt like something that we weren't supposed to watch, it was scary but also a little depressing too

wait, other countries don't have these? I remember watching that final one with my entire class when I was 8, I always assumed everyone got terrified into not doing stupid stuff o.O We also had a woman come in and describe in graphic detail how her sister had died on the train tracks in that same class o_o

just going to point out again. britain does not = english. english comprises a 1/4 of the uk. theres scottish, irish, welsh and then english :P

These... they're crossing the line into cringe humor.

I remember seeing some of these in a documentary about British TV in the 70s. I was really freaked out by them, but not as much as I was when I realised my parents grew up watching stuff like that.

That moment when you're first place in Kahoot but you get the last question wrong so you go Kashoot up the school.

there are still some. i remember a really eerie advert about crossing the street. it was a cartoon that trumped Tim Burton, probably late noughties. england is weird

Rather than producing a film about how fucking dangerous a substance that makes up about 70% of our planet is, how about teaching kids to swim in it? Also, am I missing something? Was there a period of time where modern farms had quicksand pits?

I remember a set belt advert (would have been in the 2000s). wherein one version 4/5 guys get in a car with a pizza put on seat belts, crash the car, and the pizza hits the windshield. but in the second version, 4/5 guys get in a car with a pizza and don't put on seat belts then crash the car, and two of them crack their heads on the windshield and the pizza hits the windshield. also in the last few years, there was an (I think Irish) advert that starts with soft music and kids playing and ends with 20 kids getting crushed by a car. I could not stop laughing when i first watched it.

This channel make me want to strive for this quality of content. It never let's me down. I hope once I get a RU-vid show started it'll be nearly as entertaining.

I know it's probably an incredibly stupid question but did those kids actually die??

god save the queen

That Canadian robot PSA brought me back to a dark, dark place. I used to be terrified of that robot as a young child - believe me, it's scary as fuck when you're 3.

my god, i completely forgot about this! we were called down from our classrooms to watch them in primary school, and i remember i could not stop shivering while i watched them. i guess i unintentionally crushed these memories into the back of my mind. thanks for reminding me!

I remember requesting this topic a while back. Nice to see it made

oh boi, you've never seen USSR safety posters for factories? those are gruesome truly, and terribly effective

I love this.. I love love love this! I'm British, and i can spend many an hour on the BFI or youtube looking up these old public info films. Its somehow extremely comforting to me, so i can stay safe. Whilst being terrified at the same time. Now, when i meet a man in a macintosh coat.. I run from them. I stay away from grain pits without grids. I never trust an unsturdy log to support my weight over a swamp or fast moving river. BUT! The exception to this is definitely Charlie Says. They're... Just peculiar. And now watching the POI films during the cold war, "Protect and Survive" are just f**king terrifying! WE NEVER STOOD A CHANCE! And at the end, as always, you get a really strange chord progression for the Protect and Survive ident. Its just spooky.

I don't remember watching any PSA films in school, but I remember ads like "Don't You Put it in Your Mouth" and the one about the North American House Hippo. I also remember one about drugs where a shady dude offers a handful of covered syringes to a kid and I always thought they were felt markers because they were all different colours, and one about a mouse who sees a mousetrap with cheese and asks his dad if it's okay to eat. Anyway, Strong episode guys.

I live in the US, and we've seen some mentally scarring videos. One time our entire school had an assembly were we watched a train safety video. The whole thing was a flashback of a nine year old in the hospital next to his dead sister who had been crushed between two trains. I still sprint across train track when I need to cross, even at the crossings.

omg have you seen the modern british road safety ads like they are haunting and terrified me as a kid and still do now like they havent got much better over the years like we are shown this type of thing in school

Nice shirt. Wilhelm Scream are deadly. Also, have you heard Brutal Youth? They're buds of mine from Newfoundland that moved to Toronto together.

When I was about 12 the school used to invite the British Transport Police to give a talk. The talk always ended with a gruesome film showing someone getting killed on the railway and photographs of someone's severed torso and melted guts. It was always really disturbing...

Great episode! Those films were terrifying as a kid, especially that one with the frisbee on the pylons. But they worked! I don't know if you saw the ads the government ran for AIDS prevention in the 80s where death bowls down human pins (I shit you not). That legacy carries on today in drink driving or anti-smoking ads that the government runs (There is one where tumorous tissue drips out on people from their lit cigarettes). And Australia takes up that tact with their PSAs on skin cancer. I definitely fear and respect the sun after seeing those!

Thank you for reminding me about those weird robot commercials and my god "dont you put it in your mouth" will be in my head till I die.

The Smokey the Bear PSA with the matches scared the hell out of me to the point where I ran out of my room every time it came on.

thank you for keeping me up all night

Great episode my friend!

I watched one at school about electrical dangers and the bit where he stops listening to the teacher and day dreams about motorbikes was so cool it didn't make me want to be any safer

I thought most commonwealth countries would use British Public Information Films. You forgot to mention Protect And Survive, which was only intended to be broadcast if an attack was likely in 72 hours.

The"Don't Leave Your Children Alone" title has a Hammer Horror Films feel to it. All it needed for perfection were for the letters to be blood-red and dripping.

Was hoping you'd mention 'Protect and Survive' It's a British PSA series advising what to do in the event of a nuclear war, and it's delivered in a really deadpan and matter-of-fact way. It's bloody terrifying.

Glad my country made content for your great channel :) good vid. Btw the Australians PSA's are quite nasty as well. I remember seeing one about kids missing school, going to a beach and getting blown up by land mines as they didn't read the signs lol.

I was in Ireland some years ago while a seat belt commercial was playing on tv. It was horrific, pizza flying, people dying, someone crying... coulda written a whole rap song about it.

This reminds me of something... let me do a back story for you. As a teenager I went to this church, and it was one of those churches, you couldn't dance, girls couldn't wear makeup or pants, and we weren't allowed to watch movies or television. Someone had asked the minister if we could watch videos from the library, if they were educational, he said yes we could. So These were videos no longer watched, because they were fucking horrible, and they were made to be shown in driver's education classes. There were all about automobile safety. So we watched these films during our youth activities, we'd have a film night (and we never would call them "movie night", because we weren't allowed to watch movies.) While they didn't show anything, they basically asked EMTs and police officers to talk about the worst accidents they had ever witnessed, involving high speeds, distracted driving, driving under the influence, involving teenagers, and they would tell you, in excruciating detail, about finding kids decapitated, or kids who were all tore up, ripped to pieces, half of their bodies crushed. And their last words, such as "Please don't tell my mom I was drinking, I promised her we weren't going to." Some of the these grown adults, understandably would weep as they told the stories. I was, and still am, traumatized whenever I think about them. This was the 80's, but they were clearly 10 to 20 years old. It had its desired effect on me, I didn't even to go driver's training until I was much older, and also because I couldn't get a ride, and it would've taken me 3 hours to walk home after the classes, at night, through the countryside.

My favourites are "don't put a rug on a polished floor" and "don't mix crossply with radial tyres". Not as gruesome as the ones in the video but still excellent.

ONTARIO?! Oh man, I just found this channel and I'm already loving it. Where abouts? :D

The Not Even Once anti-meth PSA's used to freak me out so much. There was a one 15-second clip of a kid with sores all over his face screaming "this wasn't supposed to be your life!!" to the past version of himself, which gave me nightmares.

i hate it when people say drowning is a peaceful death. they obviously haven't drowned before. its horrible. you cant breathe as you violently struggle to go up to try to breathe and then you cant so you fall down lifelessly. LOVELY!

new drinking game, every time a child dies take a shot

Ha! Was about to comment you missed the power one that got me as a kid, but you snuck it in at the end :)

so after seeing the train clip, i gotta ask why are there two banks on either side of the train track? is this common in england?

A more recent one I remember for level crossings, certainly shocked me, even though it has nothing on these. It's a family cycling through the woods like in an ad for a nature park, as if to lure you into a false sense of security. They are playing eye spy and it's T. So they say tractor, tree, train, but it's none of these. The girl says it has to be a train, and then stops a few feet ahead of everyone else and says, "I know, is it tracks?" Then cut to the point of view of the family, she's standing on a level crossing, looks to the left, screen goes blank, but you can hear the BANG, and the scream. Bloody Terrified me when I first saw it. Not to mention ones about not wearing your seatbelt where they show their hearts being crushed against their ribs as they fly through the windscreen leaving only one alive covered in blood. Or the ones about electricity, where a kid goes for a football in a sub station and is reduced to a blackened crisp. That one was pretty bad. The whole idea is to terrify people into not doing stupid things. It works. That robot was weak. If you missed the bit at the end about humans not being able to just get their arms reattached, you could very easily get the wrong message. If you don't see the end of the level crossing one, you won't get the message, but you won't get the wrong message either.

When I moved to ireland, that year our class was shown some PSAs on various things I will never go near a river again

Out of the ones shown in this video, I have always remembered the final one where Jimmy gets zapped while trying to retrieve his Frisbee from a power station. Another one I distinctly remember being made to watch when I was 7 involved a child being crushed between two train carriages. Entertaining stuff.

They used to reuse them even in the 90s. I still remember a few of these being broadcast on television at that time.

Hey guys, being a child of the seventies and eighties a lot of these pifs were syndicated to local television stations in the United States, so I have seen a lot of these as a kid. Dark and lonely water, kept me away from construction ponds, I never played kick ball, or frisbee or flew a kite around power stations, and I was terrified of my uncle's farm after having to watch Apaches in school.

When I was in school, the scariest thing I ever saw(probably to this day) was called "never rest in peace" and it was about farm safety. It was ridiculous. Especially the very end. It makes me shudder just thinking about it

where do you get your shirts at?

I am so glad I missed out on all these as a kid. I was already a nervous kid to start with. If I would have had to deal with these as a kid I would have never left my house. Ever.

"Oi look, da someone in da water" never gets old.

So many times I watch your videos and think, damn I really want his shirt lol.

New Zealand ones weren't too bad, but there was one about the effects of children where a guy got drunk at a party and decided to start swinging the child around (playing basically) until he accidentally let's go and the kid smacks into something and either KO or died. He's there drunkenly saying he'll be fine (but obviously uncertain and drunk). One that scared me as a kid was these two adds about basically cleaning up where a lady looks like she's doing an ad and she slips on a toy truck and falls onto a glass table, similar of one breaking their leg Down the stairs (leg realistically looked broken too) and a guy painting his roof and falls backwards. The train ads scared my sister to the point where she has a fear of crossing train tracks.

'I am the spirit of dark and lonely water' - God that brought back memories, what a chilling voice :)

I remember these from when I was a kid, trust me, they worked.

That one at the end with the frisbee was shown to me by my school when I was 12. I've never been the same since.

That one with the Frisbee always stuck with me as a child

Holy shit, I remember seeing that farm safety video at Crucial Crew and it scarred me for life... I also remember seeing one about electricity where a guy got electrocuted by a transformer which was recent (early 2000s maybe) and it was kinda creepy too...

I remember when I was 11 our class went out to this "safety field trip" and we saw a bunch of those videos including one where a guy gets his hat thrown into an electrical box and he goes and gets it and you can probably tell what happened next. That Apaches video really disturbed me at the time and the image of the guy drowning in slurry and the guy getting literally impaled by a combine harvester really stuck with me xD Anyway great video! :D