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I was shown this at school aged 9 in 1984. I remembered it being grim. I decided to rewatch it last year and it's the bleakest thing I've ever seen in my entir

I was shown this at school aged 9 in 1984. I remembered it being grim. I decided to rewatch it last year and it's the bleakest thing I've ever seen in my entire life (and I've seen Salo) and in no way suitable to be shown to nine year olds. It gradually increases the bleakness to be so bleak that by the end of it your first thought is "If there's a nuclear strike I'm standing up somewhere high to be vaporised" as the alternative that's suggested in Threads is a living hell. What I also realised is that just how many of my teachers must have been members of CND and activist teachers who were wanting to scare us into becoming like them.

Affric 3y ago
I think you need to revisit the period more fully before judging your teachers quite so harshly. There was a massive campaign to terrify the public by the UK government be it in relation to Protect and Survive or the IRA.
- arethuza 3y ago
  I don't think the UK government has ever wanted to terrify the population about the real effects of a nuclear war - quite the opposite. Protect and Survive was supposed to be a practical guide - the fact that it was actually quite terrifying was unintended.
  - darrenf 3y ago
    AIUI the Protect and Survive films were only ever meant to be broadcast if a nuclear attack was imminent. They were classified but leaked to the BBC. It's not like anyone was showing them alongside the Green Cross Code man, "old fridges can kill", or Charly telling you to keep away from strangers and chip pan fires (separately...). (I'm reasonably sure the pamphlet didn't get published for the general public either, but again its existence was reported by the media) EDITED TO ADD: aha, Wikipedia says that the pamphlet did get published, basically because of the reportage generating so much public interest.
    - andyjohnson0 3y ago
      The pamphlet was published in 1980. I remember my parents had a copy, but not where they got it from. I was in my very early teens then, and I remember it being a frightening time.
    - Gordonjcp 3y ago
      The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service got slated for having a series of ads run in the early 2000s telling people to just get a takeaway on their way home from the pub instead of trying to cook when they got in. The big complaint was that it was encouraging people to eat unhealthily, when presumably a drunk person getting in would be whipping up a nice wee quinoa, avocado and pak choi salad or something. It cut fire deaths from chip pan fires to basically fuck all, within a month.
  - philwelch 3y ago
    The UK government routinely terrified the population about a number of different dangers via their public safety films, many of which were made by aspiring horror filmmakers: https://youtu.be/lUgTH9Lnvv0 https://youtu.be/lUgTH9Lnvv0
    - helsinkiandrew 3y ago
      I have vivid memories of watching Apache and The Finishing Line when I was in primary school (under 12 years old) over 40 years ago. I'm still terrified of farm machinery and railway lines. After the end of the The Finishing Line, where the bodies of dead children are carried out of a railway tunnel I remember the railway safety officer who had presented the film telling us that the ending wasn't realistic - usually bodies hit by trains are carried out in pieces in bags because the damage is too bad.
  - darkclouds 3y ago
    > the fact that it was actually quite terrifying was unintended. LOL Do you understand psychology, in particular reverse psychology? I spent some time in Germany as a kid when the IRA were bombing things and leaving car bombs for people to find, so you had to look under your car before getting into it whatever the weather and you had to have british number plates on your car to match the steering wheel on the right hand side. One Xmas New Year period we got cleared out of the accommodation block which was just a block of flats in a town or city in Germany, and this bomb disposal squad got called with a mini tank with an arm on its top to investigate this plastic bag. Thing is the plastic bag was tied to a street light beyond the reach of the mini tank contraption arm so someone had to go and untie it and place it on the ground for the tank to inspect. The person untying it wasnt allowed to look in the plastic bag in case it was booby trapped! Turned out it was just a bag of rubbish, a take away box in a plastic bag because someone couldnt find a bin! What a frigging waste of time that was! And I dont think the German police were called either, it was entirely handled by the british army, which made me wonder if it was an exercise! Course the IRA bombing also meant many bins were removed from the streets in the UK as these were handy place to hide a bomb in plain site apparently, much like many ponds and lakes were filled in during WW2 because the Luftwaffe could navigate at night using the moon reflecting off these bodies of water, and many of them haven't been reinstated either to this day. Still I learnt about OMO washing powder on display in a window, Old Man Out, and got to watch the stag patrols, slipping into the apartments for 10-20mins and saw how married women dressed, in order to entice the stag patrols into their humble abodes. I think that was more shocking for me, seeing what such good liars women are. If you want to become a swinger join the military!
poulpy123 3y ago
To be fair, standing next to a primary target is probably the best thing to do in a global thermonuclear war
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  "the living will envy the dead"
drcongo 3y ago
At about age 6 I saw something even worse [0] - and because it was so disturbing that it was never shown again, I spent decades thinking I'd dreamt or imagined the whole thing, regularly asking new people I met if they remembered it. Threads and Salo have nothing on The Finishing Line. edit: corrected my age [0] http://www.weirdretro.org.uk/the-finishing-line-the-banned-public-information-film.html http://www.weirdretro.org.uk/the-finishing-line-the-banned-p...
- darrenf 3y ago
  Oh, that's interesting. I recall seeing Robbie at school (at least once, possibly all three version) but hadn't heard of The Finishing Line. You can stream it online for free from the BFI now, I'll be giving this a watch: https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-the-finishing-line-1977-online https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-the-finishing-line...
  - drcongo 3y ago
    You will never unsee it.
atchoo 3y ago
Weird that you take your ire out on teachers instead of the world they are teaching you about.
- richliss 3y ago
  It was unsuitable content for children which is why it was shown after 9 PM on TV.
rsynnott 3y ago
Eh, it was the 80s; they showed all sorts of things to kids in the 80s. Mid-80s was more or less Peak Horrible Death-Based Public Safety Ad, wasn't it?
- teh_klev 3y ago
  > Mid-80s was more or less Peak Horrible Death-Based Public Safety Ad, wasn't it? And also the 1970's. I remember we were treated to a steak and mince horror safety show designed to discourage us tearaways from playing on the new bypass being built around our village circa 1977. It was a proper video nasty, especially for 10-11 year olds. "Scarred for Life" is a great book exploring these themes, many of which continued into the early 80's: https://www.lulu.com/shop/stephen-brotherstone-dave-lawrence/scarred-for-life-volume-one/paperback/product-23116461.html https://www.lulu.com/shop/stephen-brotherstone-dave-lawrence... There's a second volume covering 1980's TV: https://www.lulu.com/shop/dave-lawrence-and-stephen-brotherstone/scarred-for-life-volume-two-television-in-the-1980s/paperback/product-gz5kgg.html https://www.lulu.com/shop/dave-lawrence-and-stephen-brothers...
pessimizer 3y ago
If you don't scare kids about nuclear war, you're going to get a nuclear war. Kids after 1989 didn't get any warnings, and now we're moronically running headlong into direct conflict with a nuclear power..
- lobf 3y ago
  Are you saying we shouldn’t oppose the Russian invasion of a democratic country?
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    I can't speak for what the OP intended, but I would consider that having aging nuclear weapons in a country with a possibly unhinged dictator who has an expansionist agenda is the result of not taking nuclear armageddon seriously.
    - lobf 3y ago
      …how so?
      - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
        A country going through turmoil is less likely to assign a high priority in keeping weapons safely maintained and under control. If we took nuclear armageddon seriously as an existential threat to humanity, then this issue would have been dealt with much earlier - most likely when the wall came down.
        zen928 3y ago
        This is such an insanely retrospective analysis that you either alienate or lose anyone who would want to agree to your message. Yeah, 30 years later we can see the effect of a slightly "lax" global nuclear policy after isolating a single point in time that catalyzed several historical invasions from then to present day, but "just taking it seriously" isnt a discussion. Any pathway we could have taken from that moment could have easily escalated any numerous amount of tensions, plenty of which have completely lost any hint of understanding their contexts. Pretending that taking the path you can justify as the solution to our problems NOW is a few steps away from prompting others to write historical fanfiction, but I'd probably rather you spent time with chatgpt amusing those curiosities.
naasking 3y ago
> and in no way suitable to be shown to nine year olds I'm always puzzled by statements like this. Human beings are not so fragile, even when they're 9.
- richliss 3y ago
  It was shown after the watershed in the UK and that's commonly understood to be "not suitable for children after this time" and it's a 15 certificate on DVD. Teachers aren't the people to decide to show that kind of content to 9-yeard olds without parental warning/approval.

Affric 3y ago

I think you need to revisit the period more fully before judging your teachers quite so harshly. There was a massive campaign to terrify the public by the UK government be it in relation to Protect and Survive or the IRA.

arethuza 3y ago
I don't think the UK government has ever wanted to terrify the population about the real effects of a nuclear war - quite the opposite. Protect and Survive was supposed to be a practical guide - the fact that it was actually quite terrifying was unintended.
- darrenf 3y ago
  AIUI the Protect and Survive films were only ever meant to be broadcast if a nuclear attack was imminent. They were classified but leaked to the BBC. It's not like anyone was showing them alongside the Green Cross Code man, "old fridges can kill", or Charly telling you to keep away from strangers and chip pan fires (separately...). (I'm reasonably sure the pamphlet didn't get published for the general public either, but again its existence was reported by the media) EDITED TO ADD: aha, Wikipedia says that the pamphlet did get published, basically because of the reportage generating so much public interest.
  - andyjohnson0 3y ago
    The pamphlet was published in 1980. I remember my parents had a copy, but not where they got it from. I was in my very early teens then, and I remember it being a frightening time.
  - Gordonjcp 3y ago
    The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service got slated for having a series of ads run in the early 2000s telling people to just get a takeaway on their way home from the pub instead of trying to cook when they got in. The big complaint was that it was encouraging people to eat unhealthily, when presumably a drunk person getting in would be whipping up a nice wee quinoa, avocado and pak choi salad or something. It cut fire deaths from chip pan fires to basically fuck all, within a month.
- philwelch 3y ago
  The UK government routinely terrified the population about a number of different dangers via their public safety films, many of which were made by aspiring horror filmmakers: https://youtu.be/lUgTH9Lnvv0 https://youtu.be/lUgTH9Lnvv0
  - helsinkiandrew 3y ago
    I have vivid memories of watching Apache and The Finishing Line when I was in primary school (under 12 years old) over 40 years ago. I'm still terrified of farm machinery and railway lines. After the end of the The Finishing Line, where the bodies of dead children are carried out of a railway tunnel I remember the railway safety officer who had presented the film telling us that the ending wasn't realistic - usually bodies hit by trains are carried out in pieces in bags because the damage is too bad.
- darkclouds 3y ago
  > the fact that it was actually quite terrifying was unintended. LOL Do you understand psychology, in particular reverse psychology? I spent some time in Germany as a kid when the IRA were bombing things and leaving car bombs for people to find, so you had to look under your car before getting into it whatever the weather and you had to have british number plates on your car to match the steering wheel on the right hand side. One Xmas New Year period we got cleared out of the accommodation block which was just a block of flats in a town or city in Germany, and this bomb disposal squad got called with a mini tank with an arm on its top to investigate this plastic bag. Thing is the plastic bag was tied to a street light beyond the reach of the mini tank contraption arm so someone had to go and untie it and place it on the ground for the tank to inspect. The person untying it wasnt allowed to look in the plastic bag in case it was booby trapped! Turned out it was just a bag of rubbish, a take away box in a plastic bag because someone couldnt find a bin! What a frigging waste of time that was! And I dont think the German police were called either, it was entirely handled by the british army, which made me wonder if it was an exercise! Course the IRA bombing also meant many bins were removed from the streets in the UK as these were handy place to hide a bomb in plain site apparently, much like many ponds and lakes were filled in during WW2 because the Luftwaffe could navigate at night using the moon reflecting off these bodies of water, and many of them haven't been reinstated either to this day. Still I learnt about OMO washing powder on display in a window, Old Man Out, and got to watch the stag patrols, slipping into the apartments for 10-20mins and saw how married women dressed, in order to entice the stag patrols into their humble abodes. I think that was more shocking for me, seeing what such good liars women are. If you want to become a swinger join the military!

poulpy123 3y ago

To be fair, standing next to a primary target is probably the best thing to do in a global thermonuclear war

red-iron-pine 3y ago
"the living will envy the dead"

drcongo 3y ago

At about age 6 I saw something even worse [0] - and because it was so disturbing that it was never shown again, I spent decades thinking I'd dreamt or imagined the whole thing, regularly asking new people I met if they remembered it. Threads and Salo have nothing on The Finishing Line. edit: corrected my age [0] http://www.weirdretro.org.uk/the-finishing-line-the-banned-public-information-film.html http://www.weirdretro.org.uk/the-finishing-line-the-banned-p...

darrenf 3y ago
Oh, that's interesting. I recall seeing Robbie at school (at least once, possibly all three version) but hadn't heard of The Finishing Line. You can stream it online for free from the BFI now, I'll be giving this a watch: https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-the-finishing-line-1977-online https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-the-finishing-line...
- drcongo 3y ago
  You will never unsee it.

atchoo 3y ago

Weird that you take your ire out on teachers instead of the world they are teaching you about.

richliss 3y ago
It was unsuitable content for children which is why it was shown after 9 PM on TV.

rsynnott 3y ago

Eh, it was the 80s; they showed all sorts of things to kids in the 80s. Mid-80s was more or less Peak Horrible Death-Based Public Safety Ad, wasn't it?

teh_klev 3y ago
> Mid-80s was more or less Peak Horrible Death-Based Public Safety Ad, wasn't it? And also the 1970's. I remember we were treated to a steak and mince horror safety show designed to discourage us tearaways from playing on the new bypass being built around our village circa 1977. It was a proper video nasty, especially for 10-11 year olds. "Scarred for Life" is a great book exploring these themes, many of which continued into the early 80's: https://www.lulu.com/shop/stephen-brotherstone-dave-lawrence/scarred-for-life-volume-one/paperback/product-23116461.html https://www.lulu.com/shop/stephen-brotherstone-dave-lawrence... There's a second volume covering 1980's TV: https://www.lulu.com/shop/dave-lawrence-and-stephen-brotherstone/scarred-for-life-volume-two-television-in-the-1980s/paperback/product-gz5kgg.html https://www.lulu.com/shop/dave-lawrence-and-stephen-brothers...

pessimizer 3y ago

If you don't scare kids about nuclear war, you're going to get a nuclear war. Kids after 1989 didn't get any warnings, and now we're moronically running headlong into direct conflict with a nuclear power..

lobf 3y ago
Are you saying we shouldn’t oppose the Russian invasion of a democratic country?
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  I can't speak for what the OP intended, but I would consider that having aging nuclear weapons in a country with a possibly unhinged dictator who has an expansionist agenda is the result of not taking nuclear armageddon seriously.
  - lobf 3y ago
    …how so?
    - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
      A country going through turmoil is less likely to assign a high priority in keeping weapons safely maintained and under control. If we took nuclear armageddon seriously as an existential threat to humanity, then this issue would have been dealt with much earlier - most likely when the wall came down.
      - zen928 3y ago
        This is such an insanely retrospective analysis that you either alienate or lose anyone who would want to agree to your message. Yeah, 30 years later we can see the effect of a slightly "lax" global nuclear policy after isolating a single point in time that catalyzed several historical invasions from then to present day, but "just taking it seriously" isnt a discussion. Any pathway we could have taken from that moment could have easily escalated any numerous amount of tensions, plenty of which have completely lost any hint of understanding their contexts. Pretending that taking the path you can justify as the solution to our problems NOW is a few steps away from prompting others to write historical fanfiction, but I'd probably rather you spent time with chatgpt amusing those curiosities.

naasking 3y ago

> and in no way suitable to be shown to nine year olds I'm always puzzled by statements like this. Human beings are not so fragile, even when they're 9.

richliss 3y ago
It was shown after the watershed in the UK and that's commonly understood to be "not suitable for children after this time" and it's a 15 certificate on DVD. Teachers aren't the people to decide to show that kind of content to 9-yeard olds without parental warning/approval.