Hi NIM,

We have had cell phones in the UK since the early 1980's and the iPod was designed in Scotland. I guess they must have been early adopters of the technology . Apparently even the Governator got his one liner originally from the PIF 'Dark and Lonely Water'. Scary indeed !!


Here is the original from 1968
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RAhfVqzVWw&mode=related&search=

I found "when the wind blows" a bit more frightening. Just me I suppose. Do you or anyone else have a link to "the War Game" This one was done in the 50's or 60's set in and around one of the Thames estuary towns.

Jesus H. Christ, those Brits really know how to make a point. I'm happy I didn't have to watch those movies when I was a kid.

Just curious, but were those in fact officially sponsored public information films? Hard to imagine any government would openly support broadcasting that kind of stuff.

I found "When the Wind Blows" to be a LOT more SAD.
I found myself becoming mad at how the public information pamphlets disagreed with each other, and gave very strange advice without explanation.

They had a cellar and used a door-lean-to instead!!!
I thought some older Americans were a bit 'slow', but if this is what the British think of their older people, I feel sad for them... And if older British people are really LIKE that, then I think they need to find out what is wrong with their food/water supply!!!!!

Words excape me, on what I think about everything in this movie.
Great movie though...

Hi Tom_L

The short films were in fact officially sponsored by the UK Government. During the 1970's there was only three TV channels on TV. Two of the Channels were BBC1 and BBC2, both being funded by the government and there was a commercial TV channel called ITV (ITV being funded from commercial advertising). There was no TV broadcasting until around 9:00 AM and the TV closed down around 12:00 - 12:30 midnight. Most of the films were actually broadcast by ITV during the commercial breaks. The longer films were shown to children at school.

The Charley series of PIFs were some of the most memorable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nF9T7dcelKM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B90HxLOpes&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUMcqfd8NLg&mode=related&search=

The films such as Threads and When the Winds Blow and The War Game were not sponsored by the Government. The film 'The War Game' was first shown in the mid 1990's thirty years after it was first filmed.

Hello and thanks for the feedback! Fascinating stuff from the Cold War era. Though some of the clips are, for lack of a better word, a bit bizarre. Not quite what one would expect from the times of Michael Caine and swinging London...

Back when I was growing up in Yugoslavia we had similar public information programs, too. Mostly related to disaster preparedness, earthquakes, fire, floods, also military conflicts and nuclear war. There were short films aired on TV and booklets handed out to every household. It was part of a major public education/disaster preparedness plan run by the civil defense department. Most of the information was actually very good but it wasn't presented nearly as dramatically as in some of the British PIFs.

Again, thanks for the info and posting all the links and have a good day (just don't play around farms )!