Fear factory

Edward Lawrenson celebrates 60 years of the Central Office of Information's terrifying little films.

Sep  6 2006

Later this month, the NFT offers a series of films that viewers of a nervous disposition should approach with caution. Road death, drowning, electrocution, child abuse, Aids, even nuclear apocalypse are among the subjects honestly, unflinchingly, often graphically dealt with. You have been warned. But this isn't a programme of new extreme horror from Korea or a David Cronenberg retrospective. Rather, it's a season of films from the Central Office of Information, the government agency that this year celebrates 60 years of handling Whitehall's many and varied public-information campaigns.

The COI's output is most closely associated with its short TV adverts from the 1970s. Indeed, there are few people around the age of 30 who won't experience a comforting Proustian moment at the sight of Alvin Stardust admonishing children for failing to follow road safety ('Hey kids. You must be out of your tiny minds!') or Rolf Harris urging parents to teach their little ones to swim. But what's remarkable about many of the familiar COI 'fillers' in this superb season is how they ever became objects of nostalgia. They are frankly terrifying, as undeserving of warm remembrance as a childhood trauma. As a kid I vividly recall, for instance, a filler in which in a young boy was killed retrieving his frisbee from an electrical sub-station, a film that kept me clear of pylons for years.

This tendency to unearth danger in mundane domestic circumstances runs through many of the COI films. Take the 'Charley Says...' cartoons, in which the eponymous cat teaches its young owner safety lessons. Routinely recalled as artefacts of a more innocent age – and voted best public information campaign in a recent BBC poll – the films are still unsettling. One in which Charley warns against going off with a stranger – a dark figure looming over the sickly-coloured landscape – is especially creepy in its mix of childlike naivety (the commentary is spoken by a young boy) and unspoken adult horror.

Another terrifically spooky filler cautioning against playing near deep water is a two-minute distillation of the Gothic unease of 'Don't Look Now' (whose director, Nic Roeg, made the COI's infamous 'tip-of-the-iceberg' Aids campaign in the '80s).

Most frightening of all is the 'Protect and Survive' series, a set of informational shorts to be broadcast in the event of nuclear war. Their presentation of the unthinkable in unadorned, DIY-manual-style graphics and plain, Janet-and-John language ('If anyone dies while you are in your fallout room...') remains eerie.

As well as these recognisable shorts, the season also presents rarely-seen material from the COI's early years. Having grown out of the wartime Ministry of Information, it continued that department's rich documentary tradition. Charged with overseeing big public information campaigns like improving the nation's health and creating better awareness of the legal system, COI films have over the years offered revealing snapshots of many aspects of British life.

Take the shorts and compilation films from the '50s and '60s portraying British institutions for overseas use. 'The British Policeman', a 1959 account of a Leicester bobby on the beat, may offer an idealised view of British law enforcement, but its footage of ordinary provincial life is wonderfully fresh and vivid. And in 'Persona Non Grata' (1961), an unlikely foray into the spy thriller genre, a mild-mannered MoD clerk is befriended by a Soviet diplomat and lured into spying. Part espionage fiction movie, part corporate training film, the hour-long production was aimed at those working in the civil service and blames the national security lapse on bad management and poor office communication.

The NFT season isn't showing any of the COI's current output, but you'll probably be aware of its public-information TV commercials: the award-winning environmental campaign in which CO2 emissions are portrayed as deadly-looking vapours, for instance, or the shocking road safety advert in which a mobile phone camera records a teenager being run over by a car.

Although the COI uses a huge range of outlets to get government departments' messages across – including new media like moving-image advertising screens in doctors' surgeries – the production of short-information TV films is still a core activity. Its staff, many with backgrounds in private-sector companies like advertising agencies, develop their campaigns from briefs emanating from Whitehall. As well as running in airtime donated by broadcasters – about £30 million worth last year – keeping production in-house reduces costs: 'As a rule of thumb, fillers will be less expensive than equivalent commercials,' notes Head of Broadcast David Seers. The fact that its campaigns are demonstrably in the public good allows the COI to negotiate a good price on production facilities and helps attract talent.

'People come here because of the additional interest in the kind of projects that they're working on,' says Board Director Sally Whetton. 'It feels good if you're trying to battle down the price on something to say you're doing it for blood donation.' Seers concurs: 'You can't underestimate that. These are worthwhile things we're doing.' Quite right – even if it involves making young viewers shudder whenever they see electric pylons.

'Stop! Look! Listen! – The COI & 60 Years of Public Information Film-making in Britain' runs at the NFT from Sept 21. 'Charley Says Vols 1 & 2' (Network) is out now on DVD, £14.99.

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