Old creepy scary PSA's?PIF's?

What do the PSA and the PIF possess?

OP, did you grow up in Argentina?

The PSA’s what, OP?

Oh dear! Typo, I wrote it in a hurry. And yes I did R2, well partly.

Thank you, Your Holiness.

Do you think you'll ever get back to Buenos Aires?

That’s not a typo; it’s an illiterate mistake made twice.

R5 I am in BA now.

Smoky the Bear scared the shit out of me as a child. He did not look friendly and had a booming voice as he pointed directly at me from the screen and said, "Only YOU can prevent forest fires." I was terrified.

Whoa OP- that was intense. I loved it. Thank you. I love creepy scary PSAs.

Huh?

R8 do you mean this one, with the horrific plastic face? Don't pause at 0:21 if you want to sleep tonight.

I don't know if this counts but when I was a kid, I was frightened at the end of Dragnet, when the sweaty hand would pound the metal stake for "Mark VII Productions" - gave me chills.

I thought that was David Spade for a minute.

Was that Joanna Cassidy at r11?

R14 Good call. Is it her?

Ok so the PBS logo and music used to scare the shit out of me when I was little. The P looked like a face and it just terrified me.

R11 Close enough -- In fact, that Smoky is worse than I remember!

I was also weirder out by the Mark VII end logo as a kid R12 Partly because it was so short you weren’t sure exactly what you saw, then there was the loud clanging sound effect and the big, sweaty man components as well. I also briefly caught the Rank muscle-man gong ringer a few times and really didn’t know wtf was going on (that logo was rare in America.) I’m sure there was also some gayling unconscious attraction / repulsion component as well.

Those are logos, another facet of nostalgia trauma for many kids from the 60s-80s...there are a tons of videos dedicated to them. The one that always spooked me was the PBS one, the music sounded like it was trying to brainwash me.

R16 R19

OP, I don't know if you're getting what you're looking for but this is turning into a great thread!

I’m a lot younger than you all, but this PSA scared me so much when I was younger (and I was 14-15 then).

I wonder if they stopped airing this PSA at one point because there were a lot of complaints towards networks with how frightening this commercial was. I’m 29 and a grown man and even this PSA makes me want to hide under a chair as it plays.

Jesus christ, R22!!!

KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!

R22 Is that Susan Sarandon narrating?

There is this one that would automatically have me running to the next room on those first creepy piano notes alone, from the infamous Partnership for a Drug Free America PSAs...I'd feel icy dread on the back of my neck just hearing it.

R22 Fuck! Where did that play? And do you remember the year...you wrote you were about 14 or 15.

This wasn’t creepy - just very confusing to a 6 year old.

R24 That’s right. That is her.

I read this article online once, talking about her doing the voiceover at the end of one of the two PSAs (there were two believe it or not).

R25 If I remember correctly, it played on HLN, CNN, etc. It was 2008. I would have been 14 then.

Thanks, R27. It's interesting that it ran on news channels, to scare adults into thinking about their adult friends as opposed to the PSA's geared to kids. It's so fucking scary, maybe it should be run again now.

r14 r15 It is Joanna Cassidy. She was hot as hell.

"This is your brain on drugs"

The "I want to be a ballerina" anti-drug PSA

R25 R28 You’re welcome. I remember it played a number of times during the summer before I started high school. It scared me how cheery the PSA started, only to turn into something daunting and ominous like a horror movie twenty seconds later. You feel emotionally traumatized thirty seconds later. Thankfully, I didn’t have any nightmares from it.

I agree. In the wake of the recent child sex abuse scandals from Boy Scouts, Catholic Church (not that that’s new), etc., unfortunately these two PSAs feel relevant again.

"Coach Sanders" sexual abuse PSA

This AIDS one from the UK, I thought was really well effective, creepy as hell but in a more subtle way, not on the nose or scare monger-y as others....the sound effects give me chills.

we're so dangerous

"I learned it from watching you!"

This one. Seriously.

Fallout during The Cuban Missile Crisis.

There IS one that used to scare the shit out of me but I’ve looked and looked and can’t find it.

It had to have aired between 1976-1979 or so…I think it was for UNICEF or Save the Children. It had this very ominous bell tolling. I think it was also black and white.

Do any of the elders remember this one?

Anyone remember the anti-drug PSA with a toy monkey beating a drum and at the end of the commercial it turns into a screaming monkey in close up, and the narrator says something about getting the monkey off your back? It probably aired in the early 70s. Scared the shit out of me every time.

Found it. You’re welcome.

That single tear

This anti-drug one

Will bring back bad memories for anyone who had hateful parents

"It'll all go awaayyy..."

Jan Brewer looks fresh and dewy there, OP.

This one used to scare the hell out of me; they always seemed to air it really late at night.

Sharon Stone making a stroke sound oddly alluring.

By the way, Sharon Stone suffered a stroke (pre PSA) and survived; Michael Clarke Duncan suffered one (post- PSA) and sadly did not.

The British PIFs of the 70s were next-level; these were mini horror films. I supposed they served their purpose, which was putting the fear of God into reckless Gen X brats and their oblivious parents.

"they always seemed to air it really late at night."

That tended to happen with the scariest psa's, either late at night or very early in the morning, anyway it was always during a time that my parents were asleep and I couldnt rush to their side for comfort and protection.

R49 ugh I've seen some...I think one of the worst was some rabies one where they show footage of an actual kid dying of rabies set to screeching music...thankfully saw it as an adult on yt and not as child, I'd still be curled into a fetal position otherwise.

I don't know WHAT this was was about:

Anything with puppets giving advice is terrifying.

Speaking of creepy logos, this is as good compilation of some nice nostalgic terrors, as well as some terrifying international ones I never knew existed.

R52, I'll never boil a kettle on a boat ever again!

R50 it's no coincidence that they aired at those times, PSAs usually aired much more during cheaper air times so as not to cut in to the primetime ads (the networks were obligated to spend a certain amount of hours airing ads that were "in the public interest", so they chose those airtimes)

Big Pharma and their scare scaremongering were already a big thing back in the 70's.

"Helps children understand and cope with feelings of fear of the unknown, particularly fear of the dark."

Yeah, no. No one learned anything, it's just terrifying. No one needed this. Nothing was gained. All was lost.

I prefer the Rifftrax version of Creeps Machine. It's hilarious!

1-800-RUN-AWAY

This one haunted me; I think I've only seen it on tv maybe twice? One of those "too disturbing to air" situations, I guess.

r61, that's as scary as the "faces of meth"

Domestic violence

Okay, this wins:

Those Canadian ones are hilarious...I don't care, I dont find the subject matter comic but the canadians really need to learn that going over the top makes them intentionally hilarious. The rape whistle one is another example:

"It's a rape whistle"

Thanks, Debbie Downer!

Australian domestic violence

Playdate With a Predator:

Just ran into a door.

School shooting PSA

As an aside, it bothers me how women are 100% the victims in all the abuse ads...I get they are the majority but male victims exist (and I knew one personally) so they could throw in the ocassional female abuser.

This one wasnt too bad, until the end in that creepy song.

OMG, R71, that's a very adorable young John Michael Higgins playing "Cocaine-Addicted Exec #2"!

Think of the children...

[quote] "The one that always spooked me was the PBS one, the music sounded like it was trying to brainwash me."

I GUESS I can see why a very small child would be weirded out, but I always understood the PBS logo as it was associated with learning, hence the head-shaped letter P. But we only had two channels, and one of them played that logo bumper all the time.

This one haunted me, especially as I had a fear of swimming pools.

Those "Do you know where your children are" PSAs always spooked me, especially one I havent been able to find since then that was of an eery empty playground at night with a swing sort of swaying in the breeze while a deep ominous voice said the whole DYKWYCA thing...creeped the fuck out of me.

I'm anti-gun, but this is horrific.

^ Does Susan Sarandon make a good living narrating all these creepy PSAs?

This one is really powerful! Wow.

R49 Those PSAs are so creepy! WTF??

R64 / R65 Who - except a fucking misogynist - would think those PSAs are "hilarious"?

You dont have to be a misogynist to have a sense of the ridiculous. They are badly made and too exagerrated which makes it bizzare, ergo, funny. And yes, a random grannie spoiling an entire baby shower by randomly gifting a woman a rape whistle is ridiculous and funny. Go unclench.

R82 I agree. I'm overthinking.

Mother and daughter stalked….

The Operation Lifesaver's "Highways or Dieways" ads from the late 80s-mid 90s.

Cyndi...demanding, not creepy

Short fun recent news segment on the history of the DYKWYCA phenomenon....the people they got to do it is crazy, my fave being Andy Warhol. They even show a party they had at Studio 54 for the 10th anniversary of it's birth, with many glamourous guests.

Inexplicable. Can you imaging someone singing this jingle about HIV?

*

[quote] Smoky the Bear scared the shit out of me as a child. He did not look friendly and had a booming voice as he pointed directly at me from the screen and said, "Only YOU can prevent forest fires." I was terrified.

r8 Slightly off the main topic but my little brother was scared shitless of Mr Clean when he was a little kid and I used to chase him around the house with a bottle.

Back in the late 90's/early 2000's Univision aired some dark and creepy PSA. This one really scared me as a child. The ad is to encourage pre-natal care.

R88 That PSA gets alot of flack now but as you said, this was before AIDS, the worst VD there was out there was syphilis and even that wasnt a terminal disease as AIDS was back in the 80s/90s (well, it still is without treatment). I like the approach that they were going for, basically saying VD wasn't just be something prostitutes and johns get as had been previously thought.

Going through youtube, I found this one from 1970 which I thought was both incredibly before it's time and the most chilling american PSA I've seen to date. I refuse to watch it again but apparently it was about starving children in the Nigerian Civil war and set to a very creepy discordant "Brahm's Lullaby"...anyway, you all must share my pain now.

Anti-cable (?) PSA

Long have I waited for an old animated PSA, a one minute spot, to resurface. It seems to have been part of a series of PSAs sharing the same animation values as 'Keep America Beautiful - Sparkle City' (1971), linked below.

It begins with a house on a hilltop. From point-of-view perspective, we enter the house, where a man is seated in a comfy chair, reading a newspaper. A narrator begins, 'If you take away books and printed materials...' There's a weird noise as the books on the man's bookshelf vanish, and the newspaper shrinks and vanishes from his hands. 'If you take away his photographs, paintings and sculpture...' Examples of these shrink and vanish from the room. 'If you take away his music...' (the phonograph playing a record vanishes) 'his television, and his radio...' (these vanish with music fading after). Vaguely menacing ambient sound replaces it. 'If you take away crafts' (the shelves, tables, lamps, the rug, his eyeglasses, all disappear) 'weaving and textiles...' (the curtains vanish, followed by the house and the chair). The man adopts a crouched position with his head buried in his folded arms atop his knees as his clothing vanishes. 'If you take away Man's art...' (He is now seated amidst leaves at the top of a palm tree. It is nighttime, with a crescent moon in the sky. A wolf howls at the base of the tree)... 'you just might find Man up a tree.'

'Support the Arts.'

I wanna say it aired from 1970 to about 1975 on local affiliate stations, but not on the three network stations. In 1983, PBS began airing an educational series called 'Faces of Culture', narrated by David Carradine, featuring a dozen or so thirty-minute episodes. One of them, titled 'The Arts', began with this PSA. After that, it disappeared off the face of the earth, and I've never been able to find it again.

Does anyone remember it?

^^ The tagline was 'Art is for Man's Sake. Support the Arts.'

Here's an anti-smoking ad from the same period of time.

"Don't take the car ... YOU'LL KILL YOURSELF!!!"

It even inspired a New Wave song:

The freeze frame at the end R96!

Here's another from the UK, because they made the best (as in most mentally scaring) ones.

R98 That was both scaring and scarring. Some of these PSAs couldn't be shown today without trigger warnings. Unfortunately.

Janie died.

Love this thread. Unbelievable how creepy some of these ads were. Maybe we need more of them now.