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Special Mentions
Here, I've decided to collect some of my 'Special Mentions' - PSAs that everyone else seems to find terrifying, but which I don't, for one reason or another. It might be that they haven't aged well, it could be that I have a different threshold for horror, it could just be that I like it but I don't consider it as scary as the others! A lot of these will be Classic PSAs, which are very well known and still very enjoyable, but which I don't think are particularly scary, creepy, or disturbing - at least, not to me, or not anymore.
How Much Is That Doggie?, 1987
This PSA gets put on "Top 20 Scariest/Creepiest/Most Disturbing PSAs" lists all the time, but genuinely, I just find it absolutely hilarious. The sad accordion music. The cute little dog, sitting there, just minding his business. Then, out of nowhere, some guy points a gun at it and asks for money. I see where they were going, I understand the message, I just think that "Please give us a pound....or we'll have to pull the trigger." while the dog stares sadly into the camera is the funniest left turn this advert could have taken. Special Mention because while everyone else finds this scary, I genuinely can't understand why, and it makes me laugh every time.
Play Safe, 1978
Play Safe has both short PSA and longer PIF forms. Intended to educate children about the dangers of electricity and overhead power lines, the long-form version of this PIF features Bernard Cribbins voicing The Robin, and Brian Wilde as The Owl. The occasional cuts to a clip of wires with crackling electricity zapping along them gives a forboding tone, and it does involve several children being electrocuted, but for me this never quite crosses the threshold into scary, creepy, or truly unnerving. Probably, the animated cartoon birds offset it. A clip from the PIF was also played as a PSA; a young boy called Jimmy climbs into a substation to collect a frisbee which has landed on a pylon. He is electrocuted, and the girl accompanying him screams his name before a cut reveals that he has died. To be fair, this shorter version is a little higher in the creep factor, with its tense music, and a brief shot of Jimmy's unmoving legs caught on fire, but it still gets put on the Special Mentions list because for me, it just isn't impactful enough.
Powerful Stuff, 1988
Just like Play Safe, Powerful Stuff has both a short PSA and a full length PIF, again warning children about the dangers of electricity and substations. Apparently there was a full decade where UK kids were idiots and kept messing with electrical wires. This PIF features a group of kids - Andy, Darren, and Darren's little brother Tom - who see an abandoned football on top of a substation roof on their way to school. Initially, they ignore this, and continue on their way to school, where their science lesson is about electricity, the dangers of playing around with electrical wiring, and the importance of heeding the warnings. On their way home, Darren decides to enter the substation to get the ball and is electrocuted; Tom then enters to help him and also gets electrocuted, to the horror of Andy and their other onlooking friends. While the PIF is interesting, the full length of it isn't particularly intense or creepy thanks to the extended classroom scenes, and so gets listed here as a Special Mention. The shorter PSA version, Powerful Stuff: Football, however, does make the cut.
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