Wednesday 24 February 2010

Son, Get Yourself up that Attic and Fix that Water Leakage, Then You'll Know How I Felt Working in the Loom Mills Boy!

Pipe Bursts (1969) - UK Public Information Film



Late-sixties Public Information Film addressing how a family should check up on any burst water pipes in their home. A rather feeble matter, but still awe-strikingly important in an age drinking stale milk could've become a Public Information Film. We first see a family having a spot of Breakfast to some nice, soothing Elevator music, when all of a sudden water pours from the ceiling onto the father's bespectacled face, and no, the Eric Morecombe similarity is not not lost on me. Although the film promotes public safety in a way, a more modern concoction wouldn't show the kid -despite looking the eldest- on his own, fixing a pipe in the attic! Lazy dad.

Just when you think this is quite genteel for a PIF, the well-spoken voiceover gives the family a verbal slapping of the wrist, for not checking water leakage beforehand, and the creepyness factor is restored, the usual and sometimes effective mood of PIF's of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, when the family are just staring and smiling at the camera in pure unadulterated silence, after the announcer's bitter tone of words!

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