The 10 Most Disturbing PSA's From Around the World
What better way to raise awareness of an issue than through a nice Public Service Announcement? And what better way to get people to pay attention than to make your PSA batshit insane?
Here are 10 that will probably haunt your dreams.
Masturbation and Your Pet
The people at TakeTheAction.com are out to stop masturbation. The website lets us know that if we agree with the following statement, "I see successful people and want to become like them. I understand that I spend most of my time in masturbation and that they don't," then they can help us. If that didn't convince you, perhaps their "animated with magic marker and typing paper" PSA will:
Most Unsettling Moment:
No question, it's the moment 30 seconds in when we realize the subject's masturbation has killed his dog, in some unthinkable way. So we can make fun of TakeTheAction and their quest, but seriously, if masturbation is preventing you from leaving the house and has killed even one animal, please do seek professional help.
Workplace Safety is Terrifying
Canadians love themselves some safety. It's right up there with beavers and mounties as things they can't get enough of. But as any beaver rustler will tell you, sometimes things get out of hand and the shit hits the fan. Luckily the Workplace Safety and Insurance board is here to watch out for workers by scaring the living shit out of TV viewers on a regular basis.
This series of 5 commercials run any old time on Canadian TV, scarring young and old alike with their quick and frank depictions of horrible atrocities befalling random workers.
The message? Everything is somebody's fault, dammit. Probably YOURS.
Most Unsettling Moment:
Nothing tops the lady's melted face in the first spot, implying that the restaurant was boiling a soup pot full of that toxic waste from Robocop.
AIDS and Gay Porn Cartoons
French people apparently live on an entirely different plane of reality than those of us in North America, as evidenced by this PSA for preventing AIDS that makes just short of absolutely no sense whatsoever in any language.
Though the meaning may be lost, it's clear that horrifying things occur in France. The idyllic Sims world of our hero is shattered by witnessing a knife fight which apparently turns him irrevocably gay. From there it's on to a string of man-love encounters, cartoon-like violence, a man fighting a dog and then a full body cast brought on by an intense round of our hero being hate-crimed before his doctor molests him.
Most Unsettling Moment:
The animated anal boner-spin (at 1:30) almost takes the top spot, but we're probably going to have to go with the two young lovers riding the Bonercoaster (one of the penis-themed amusement park rides that we heard are common in France) one minute in. At one point the car is covered in an enormous condom, which implies that somewhere down the tracks they're going to be riding right into a gigantic, possibly diseased, orifice.
VD is for Everybody
Educating the world about the dangers of venereal disease is serious business. We can hardly have a functioning society if half of us have to stay home washing and rewashing our ass beards with crab shampoo while the rest of us are running all akimbo through the streets in a syphilis-induced state of dementia. We'd be no better than France. On the other hand, setting the concept of every bright, smiling person in your neighborhood being riddled with disease to a lazy waltz with catchy lyrics may not be the best way to let everyone know of potential dangers.
By showing the pregnant lady, your child's teacher, the guy handling your food at the store, the librarian and a baby as filthy, pox-laden cesspools, the Ad Council may have just managed to make any impressionable viewers deathly afraid of any and all human contact.
Most Unsettling Moment:
We thought this ad had hit the bad taste apex 40 seconds in when the diseased man emerged from the water with his seven-year-old lover. Then, it tops itself just six seconds later when "VD is for Everybody" plays over the face of a smiling infant. In our opinion, no sex is safe at that age.
The Homosexual Scourge
The '50s were an enlightened time when film really took off as a tool to educate and inform. One of the most important topics that needed to be covered for the benefit of all young men was, of course, the danger of the homosexual. The homosexual, like Bigfoot, is apparently a singular, mythical beast only seen by lone travelers who have strayed from the pack. Also like Bigfoot, the homosexual will give young athletes rides and be incredibly friendly the entire time before taking them back to his den and infecting them with homosexuality.
Most Unsettling Moment:
A minute in, after the homosexual has lured innocent young Jimmy into his den of sickness, we see the homosexual driving away. Alone. We cannot see into the car to see if the homosexual has killed Jimmy and made a suit out of his skin, but we must presume that he has.
Seat Belts Trap Souls
Most of us are aware that wearing a seat belt is going to protect us in the event we find ourselves on a slippery road skidding under a milk truck. That shit can be dangerous. But the word obviously hasn't made it to everyone, so people need to be shown the error of their ways ...
... And that means showing how, in the event of an accident, your friends who didn't wear seat belts will be whisked away by pleasant music to the peace and eternity of Heaven while you will briefly die, be tied down by your seatbelt, and then come to in a wrecked car, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, surrounded by the soulless corpses of your friends.
Most Unsettling Moment:
Thirty seconds in, the look of anguished longing on the spirit's face as it tries desperately to unclasp the seatbelt and to find its eternal reward, like a desperate man trying to swim out of a submerged car before drowning.
Stop Smoking, Says Deformed Woman
Our good friends down under want people to stop smoking with a vengeance and, despite having things like Yahoo Serious and koalas at their disposal with which to make commercials, instead they chose to employ the Mouth of Sauron to creep the ever loving shit out of people.
Most Unsettling Moment:
It starts four seconds in, the moment the disgusting image on the cigarette pack starts moving, as if the next time we reach for a smoke we'll get our finger bitten off. That moment continues for the next 26 seconds and occupies the entire ad.
Smokey the Bear Face-Off
Most of you remember Smokey the Bear telling us to stop burning shit, at least in the woods, and for the most part we obliged him because he wore a hat and made a decent argument. And he was a bear.
At some point in the '70s, however, the feeling must have been that Smokey might not have been doing all he could, so they switched over to the star power of Joanna Cassidy (if you don't know who she is, watching the clip will make it clear she was a heavily medicated and somewhat off-putting redhead from back in the day). Then, horror happened:
Gah! What the fuck?
It turns out that during Cassidy's whole career, she was actually as scary-as-shit, sentient Smokey the Bear in hyper realistic Mission: Impossible-style drag.
Most Unsettling Moment:
Right when she leans forward, and the skin on her face starts to distort, we know all bets are off. Insanity reigns. Nothing good can happen after that, and when that furry monster emerges and lets loose a sinister Wilford Brimley-possessed-by-satan-sounding laugh, we're proven right.
Teen Pregnancy
Proving that cynicism isn't a dead art form, the Idaho government gives us Teen Mommy Darci:
The ad's bleak depiction of all teen parents as welfare moms living in trailers with mangy dogs, no job and an absentee baby-daddy with a disconnected phone, is sure to make all the non-white trash teen mothers feel somewhat under appreciated.
Most Unsettling Moment:
It's got to be the black screen over the ominous horror movie trailer sound effect, superimposed over the sound of a baby crying. That's right, viewer: a baby is a menacing, screeching parasite that, if allowed to exist, will destroy your world.
Oh, wait, were the kids still in the room? Sorry!
Suicide Bombing
The fact that a PSA about suicide bombings was conceived and actually produced boggles the mind in ways even a talking beaver robbing you at gunpoint couldn't.
Produced for Iraqi TV, this obviously big-budget PSA is just to let anyone know that blowing themselves and an entire street full of others to kingdom come is a bad idea, in case that prospect hadn't previously crossed their minds while they were strapping their own body with dynamite.
Most Unsettling Moment:
We're going to skip the obvious "shoe landing on the car with the child's foot obviously still inside" and say we were most disturbed by the words in Arabic over the black screen at the end. This is where they presumably display the catchy slogan for their "Don't Explode Yourself" campaign just prior to the web address. What possible combination of words there wouldn't be in astonishingly bad taste? "Don't Blow It?"
Then, there's the realization that hits moments after the ad has ended, when it dawns on you that a pro suicide bombing PSA would look exactly the same. After all, are the people who are considering it going to be discouraged by the site of infidels flying through the air and screaming?
If you liked that, you'll probably enjoy our look at The 7 Most Terrifying Corporate Mascots of All-Time. Or, learn who the world's baddest man is endorsing in 08.
