7 Safety PSAs (That Were Clearly Made By Serial Killers)
Safety -- it's not just a stupid dance from the '80s. It's also the thing that constantly keeps us from not dying. But since humanity is chock-full of dum-dums, the concept of safety is something that has to be sold to people. Sometimes, though, keeping the public from killing themselves gets communicated in batshit crazy ways that are as scarring as death itself.
"Never Rest" -- The British Farm Safety Video Full Of Murder And Ghosts
Farm safety isn't something you typically hear a lot about, but it's apparently a big fucking deal in the UK (where everyone is living inside of a Beatrix Potter story). So much so that they produced a farm safety video for kids titled "Never Rest: A Drama About Farm Safety For Children." The whole thing sounds sensible, but it plays out like it was written by R.L. Stine's meth head cousin.
After moving into their family's new farmhouse, two children immediately discover a grave with the word "Never" awkwardly scrawled above "Rest in Peace" -- because even rotting corpses aren't immune to sick burns. Luckily, the farmhand's kids are there to explain that the farm is haunted by the ghost of the old man who accidentally murdered his four kids via farm equipment almost a century ago. Which is probably what the realtor meant by "colorful."
"More people have died here than on Hershel's farm from Walking Dead."
Of course the kids start getting into accidents, just like the old-timey accidents that killed those other four kids. The kids in each timeline are played by the same actors, either implying that there's some sort of of curse at work here or the producers couldn't afford to hire more child actors after shelling out for those sweet sepia-toned shots.
"Are you sure we can't at least afford fake blood?"
One kid hits his head. Another falls off a wagon (a literal wagon; he doesn't start drinking or anything). And in one insanely graphic scene, a girl has her goddamn arm ripped off!
"NO, MY BUTTER-CHURNIN' ARM!"
There's no mistaking this for coincidence either, because the movie takes the time to show us the disembodied head of the father of the dead quartet watching these events with the same expression on his face as the audience.
Always order a homebuyer's report to check for mold or possession before signing any papers.
None of the contemporary kids actually die, though -- that is, until the end, when the older girl is hit by her dad's tractor.
Damn product placement.
While any sane person might expect this grisly shot to lead to some kind of discussion about farm safety, followed by a quick reveal of the little girl chilling at the hospital with a broken leg, this movie just cuts to the haunted gravestone and rolls credits.
The post-credit scene is a time-lapse shot of her decaying corpse.
So the big takeaway here is that there are no precautions you can take against farm-related accidents, because they're usually caused by angry ghosts? So sure, go ahead and dangle your limbs around large antiquated machinery. Unless you have an exorcist handy, you're pretty much fucked regardless.
Ireland's Road Safety Campaign Is Ridiculously Intense
There are a lot of shitty drivers out there, some of them one flamethrowing guitar player away from being Mad Max villains. So road safety is naturally an important issue for everyone. A commercial from Northern Ireland set out to rectify the epidemic of asshole drivers. The result? It was banned from playing before 9 p.m., because ... well, you'll see.
The commercial starts with a group of cute kids at school, one of whom is playing with a toy car -- setting up a cruelly ironic twist while also showing how much Pixar has brainwashed our kids into a future of fossil fuel reliance.
"Lightning McQueen likes you, kid. Your death shall be quick and painless."
We then see a douchebag who's in such a rush that he can't even be bothered to eat his toast off a plate. Goddamned monster.
Nothing he could ever do would be worse than this.
It cuts between the kids' nauseatingly idyllic playtime and toast guy driving his car. Also, this is all set to an acoustic cover of Sweet Child O' Mine, which some ad exec probably mistook for a nice song about kids, and not Axl Rose's ode to the woman he was abusing.
Prepare to witness much, much more than an ounce of pain.
The whole thing plays out like a run-of-the-mill car commercial -- that is, until the driver loses control of his car, possibly because the kid wielding the identical toy car is some kind of Omen-esque demon child.
So the moral isn't "Be a safe driver," so much as it's "Don't be the Antichrist."
The car flips over, crushing the kids before any of them get the chance to say "Zoom Zoom."
*splat splat*
Forget about how pants-shittingly terrifying it was for audiences to watch graphic child-killing between Irish game show segments, and think for a minute about the poor visual effects artists. Imagine spending years of education learning how to make kickass CG images, and instead of landing a job with ILM, you spend ten hours a day making a class of children look as realistically flattened as possible. Congratulations! You're keeping Ireland safe.
This 1950s Safety Manual Is Brimming With Nightmares
This "Official Safety Manual" from the 1950s had the cheery title "It's Great to be Alive!" Presumably because "Being Dead is a Motherfucker!" was too much of a downer.
On the other hand, none of those kids will have to worry about homework ever again.
Despite its upbeat title, the pamphlet is pretty grim. Not only do we get playful drawings of kids getting into accidents, but helpful captions explain how the accidents will ruin their lives.
"I swear, Phil. If you hit five or six more kids, we're going to have to seriously consider taking away your license."
Then there are the drawings of kids actually being killed. If any weirdos wondered what a cross between a snuff film and a Bazooka Joe comic would look like, here's a panel where a truck runs over a kid in a leaf pile.
The moral: Fuck raking.
Then there's the one in which someone is dragged underneath a train and "killed instantly" because his mind was "on the game" -- a reference to a sporting event, sadly not implying that the future author of those books about picking up women will be run over by a train.
If he was a Browns fan, this is actually a better fate.
The Rubbers Brothers -- The Sex Education Comic With No Sex Or Education
For some reason, someone thought that comic books were a good way to promote safe sex -- despite the fact that most people read comic books because sex isn't really on the table. One AIDS-related comic in the '80s was The Rubbers Brothers. If the phrase "AIDS-related comic" wasn't enough to make you shut down your browser, keep reading!
"Send five bucks and we'll mail you another book that might actually teach you something!"
In The Rubbers Brothers, two anthropomorphic condoms are big stars on some kind of prophylactic vaudeville circuit. Like Abbott and Costello, if Abbott and Costello left giant puddles of semen behind them everywhere they went.
"Who's In First?"
Bizarrely, a lot of the comic is devoted to the backstage bickering of the two showmen, like if Neil Simon wrote The Sunshine Boys, but for talking birth control devices.
Broken records sure are annoying. As are broken condoms -- not that this comic ever tells you that.
Then the more dickish (pun not intended) of the two condoms pushes the other into the toilet, because for some reason, there's a giant toilet backstage at the talking condom show.
Marking the first time someone requested a condom for hand stuff.
The comic even features an educational game -- but instead of teaching safe sex, it's all about nutrition, because why not? We might as well drink fully from the cup of madness at this point. And who better to teach your kids about a balanced diet than a condom with a goddamned face.
"Remember to always save a few carrots and bananas, in case your boyfriend forgot the Trojans."
The Rubbers Brothers end up taking a road trip, during which they bicker like an old married couple and get pulled over by a cop.
Also, you're sick if you use a condom, apparently. Lesson learned?
Then they're attacked by some kind of mutant testicle creature.
Wait, why does the testicle have an ass?
So ... take that, AIDS! Jesus, trying to win the war against sexual ignorance with this comic would be like storming the beaches of Normandy armed with a sofa cushion.
Of course they'd make a connect-the-dots that looks like this. OF COURSE.
This Chemistry Safety Video Will Make You Question Your Sanity
Teaching chemistry to high school kids is probably pretty tough. Odds are, most of the kids in class will melt their faces off trying to make LSD, crystal meth, or some kind of invisibility potion. So obviously, it's important to learn the proper safety protocols. But in one old safety video, seemingly from the '80s, things go off the rails fast.
First off, the video helpfully teaches us what to do if you accidentally set yourself on fire. With setting an actual kid on fire not an option (hopefully), the filmmakers decided to use a dummy -- and yup, things get creepy immediately. They light it on fire and roll it around the floor (a rare sight outside of a serial killer's Christmas Eve).
"Stop, drop, and ... no, slower ... slower ..."
Naturally, they have to put out the fire. And if a teenaged boy showering with a dead-eyed mannequin wasn't one of the images in the Ring video, it damn well should have been.
The same footage was recycled for Real Doll cleaning maintenance videos.
Even odder, when one of the boys spills a corrosive chemical on himself, things get surprisingly intimate.
"Are you sure you didn't get any your pants?"
The voiceover urges: "Take off ALL your clothes. Don't let modesty make your injury worse." Which is the kind of talk you usually have to pay $3.99 a minute for. The next part of the safety protocol seems to be an unwritten precaution: Stare at your friend's penis like you're going to be describing it to a police sketch artist later.
"Hey, uh, speaking of burning chemistry ..."
They even cut to a close-up of the kid, in case you hadn't noticed the surprising amount of leering going on.
They removed the steam from his goggles in post.
Seriously, if your safety video is one Barry White song away from being banned by the FBI, something got screwed up along the way.
The U.S. Government's Creepy Fireworks Safety Video
You might not think that a bunch of drunk people overseeing controlled explosions for the entertainment of children could ever possibly go awry, but you would be wrong. Fireworks are such a shitshow that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission regularly goes out of its way to teach people about their dangers. One year, they did so in a surprisingly odd fashion: They set up a bunch of mannequins, blew them up, and filmed it for the internet.
The whole thing seems more like a creepy art school project than a government-sanctioned safety video. For instance, there's the sight of two child-sized mannequins setting each other on fire with sparklers. It's the kind of thing you'd expect to see in Silent Hill, not on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Even Pyramid Head would throw up his hands and say, "I'm out."
Or kids shooting bottle rockets at each other -- with the aid of a zipline to make sure the bottle rocket hits one right in the eye.
This is Nick Fury's origin story in the Marvel movie universe.
Adding to the David-Lynch-like horror, the dummy has a man's head on a child's body.
Spoilers for the Twin Peaks reboot. Probably.
Things get more unnerving, as what are clearly department store mannequins lose limbs ...
... get fucking decapitated ...
... and have their desks blow up in their faces.
"If you're going to blow your head off, please do it outside. Desks get taken out of the school's budget for next year."
It makes you think less about fireworks safety and more about how much of your tax dollars are going toward the purchase of flammable mannequins.
Bike Safety Comics ... From The Depths Of Hell
Recently, the city of Phoenix, Arizona decided to spread bicycle safety awareness with two things kids love: comic books and graphic violence. Yup, instead of simply telling kids that they should slap on a helmet when they ride bikes, they're showing kids why with ridiculously gory images -- such as a kid cracking his head open in a torrent of blood, with big cartoon letters reading "GA-GUSH!"
Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na SKULL-CRUSH
Luckily, he's still alive. Unluckily, you can see his brain.
"Dude, gross! Let's poke it."
Other kids get impaled, or generally fucked up:
Helmets are shitty and useless. Good to know.
Is this the product of a city safety commission or a cartoonist whose wife left him for a bike courier? This isn't even the first bike safety comic to totally lose its shit. The 1970s comic Danny And The Demoncycle features an asshole kid literally using his bad bike riding to murder drivers.
Finally, a real safety lesson.
Danny is rewarded for his misdeeds with a trip to the hospital, where he's given a new bike by Satan himself.
Maniacal, psychotic, bloodthirsty laughter is the best medicine.
So things don't seem too bad. Danny gets a new bike and meets an international celebrity. However, the bike has a mind of its own, and drives crazy fast through dangerous terrain with Danny stuck helplessly to it like a peace frog.
"HOLY SHIT! THIS IS AWESOME! HAIL SATAN!"
The story is obviously meant to scare kids straight, but it kind of makes it seem like Danny is now invincible and has the world's fastest bike. That's not a cautionary tale; that's Ghost Rider's origin story. In the end, Danny renounces driving like a lunatic, and (we're told) lived happily ever after. Which is generally code for "the Devil ripped his payment from Danny's flesh."
Pictured: the face of happiness.
Zoroastrianism used to be one of the biggest religions in the world, but their idea of heaven had a slight twist on it: to get there you'd have to cross a bridge. Sometimes rickety, sometimes wide and sturdy, if you fell off you'd go to the House of Lies for eternity. Fun! Not terrifying at all! This month, Jack, Dan, and Michael along with comedians Casey Jane Ellison and Ramin Nazer as they discuss their favorite afterlife scenarios from movies, sci-fi and lesser-known religions. Get your tickets here and we'll see you on the other side of the bridge!
For more PSAs that clearly started out as horror movies, check out The 10 Most Disturbing PSAs From Around The World and 4 PSAs Scarier Than Any Hollywood Horror Film.
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