This thread got me to thinking what are some of your favorite public service advertisements? This is one of my favorites. It is for the federal Equal Pay Act and has Batman and Robin tied up in a room with a bomb and Batgirl swinging in to save them. Although it does reunite Burt Ward as Robin and Yvonne Craig as Batgirl, (and William Dozier as the narrator) Adam West felt he was typecast in the Batman role and declined to participate. Instead, actor Dick Gautier, who was famous as Hymie the robot from “Get Smart” answered the casting call. He fit in the suit, and in addition, did a passable Adam West impression.
If I may ask, I’d like to see legitimate public service ads. While they may have humor in them, I’d like to see real ads rather than parodies.
Of course, I realize that Dopers are free to post what they want and are not restricted by the OP’s wishes.
One Got Fat - It is your typical little PSA about bicycle safety (If you live in a David Lynch type universe). I made my daughters watch it last weekend because they were being wreckless on their bikes.
Nothing beats The Finishing Line (British PSA with a message about train safety and something…). It is the most disturbing video I have seen outside of Sunday’s Game (and that is fiction).
In the UK we call them PIFs - Public Information Films. They are truly bizarre. Typically they came on in the middle of the day without warning, with truly odd admonishments about ways the countryside could kill you. They tended to be animated (famed cartoonists Cosgrove Hall did many) or featured football stars or actors of the day (David Prouse, who played Darth Vader in Star Wars, was the Green Cross Code Man; and 70s glam singer Alvin Stardust was in a memorable one).
The odd edits, creepy music, and harrowing deaths and injuries suffered from people in PIFs seared them into your memory. When I meet someone from the UK around my age the conversation invariably turns to PIFs at some point… and we all have a favorite.
My top five:
- Ghost of Troubled Water (voiced by Donald Pleasance) - warning kids to not play by quarries or rivers, lest the ghost kill them.
- Malaria Kills - telling you to make sure to take anti-malarial pills when you return from “a hot country,” interspliced with a gasping malaria victim.
- Rabies - uses hand shapes to show a dog, washing hands, then telling you to go to a hospital if you’ve been bitten, which turns the hands into a cross, and then the narrator says “if you have symptoms, you’ve left it too late,” and the cross turns into a tombstone with the words “RABIES KILLS”
- Alvin Stardust - Cheesy 70s singer with sideburns from hell admonishing kids, “You must be out of your tiny minds!”
- One where a woman is walking down a busy high street, then turns a corner and runs into two blokes carrying a pane of sheet glass.
I have a great 2-DVD set called “Charley Says” with most of the ones from the 1960s to 1980s. I watch it and my wife and kids wonder what’s wrong with me.
You know the joke about the little boy who wanted to use a tampon, because the commercials made it look like you got to play volleyball, go swimming, and go horseback riding with tampons?
As a child in the 70’s, I had the same sort of confusion over this surreal little PSA. It made the subject matter look sort of appealing. After all, VD is for everybody.