Take an Easy Ride

One definition of surrealism is “the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table”

Based on this, Take an Easy Ride could almost be classed as an inadvertently surrealist film on account of the way in which it brings together two seemingly incongruous paracinematic genres.

The first is the public information or service film – i.e. a non-profit film, usually made by official bodies, with the goal of modifying behaviour for the good of individuals and/or the collective.

The second is the exploitation film – i.e. a film made by private entrepreneurs with the intention of making money.

How the two came to be incorporated into the one film is reminiscent of a scenario out of Eskimo Nell. It seems that producer, director and editor Kenneth Rowles initially set out to make a serious film about the dangers of hitch-hiking. Then notorious porn/sexploitation mogul David Hamilton Grant, encouraged Rowles to spice things up with some extra sex and violence so the film could also be played on his sex film circuit.

The serious side of things is most evident in the voice-off and on-camera interviews with what seem like genuine members of the public for the most part.

The exploitation side is more to the fore in the three vignettes that make up the bulk of the 40 or so minute running time, which include voyeuristic low angle shots of mini-skirted women climbing into lorries; footage of Soho sex shops, strip clubs and cinema clubs and a selection of mostly inappropriate stock music cues.


The camera actually moves to get a better view here


Probably illegal now...

One of vignette actually blurs the distinction by beginning as an interview and then segueing into a flashback based reconstruction in which a young woman relates how she was picked up by a couple who took her back to their house, plied her with drink, and ultimately forced her into a porno rape styled no-means-yes threesome...


“I decided to take a bath... I was very surprised when I was joined by Margaret...”

The other two vignettes are more straightforward. One presents a cut-down version of Last House on the Left as a couple of young women hitch-hiking to a rock festival are picked up by a black-glove wearing, porn-magazine reading maniac intent on rape and murder...


Black gloves


Some slow motion here

The other presents something of a reversal of this, as another two young women go on a miniature crime-spree that culminates in their turning on one of the men who gives them a lift, almost like a prototype for a Baise moi or Butterfly Kiss...

Crudely made, unpleasant in that way that it often seems only 1970s exploitation can be and absolutely fascinating in that what-the-hell-were-they-thinking way.

Stop, Look, Listen!

The PIF (Public Information Film) is one of my favourite types of paracinema. These were films made in the UK between the 1940s and the present, whose purpose is to inform and educate the public, or specific sections of it, on what to do and not do. Many PIF’s were made by the Central Office of Information (COI) although others were made by industrial and other bodies. They would be shown in classrooms, workplaces and on television. The approach was basically do what you are told or you will suffer and/or die.



This BFI collection focuses on safety-based COI productions. It includes some of the longer versions of the form, running to around 25-30 minutes, as well as some shorter examples in the 40 second or minute long range. What it lacks in numerical quantity compared to the two Charley Says volumes it thereby gains in focus. On balance the quality of the PIFs presented is probably higher as well. Certainly the quality of the presentations is an improvement, with the films having been extensively restored. It could also be said, however, that this might not reflect the way in which many will have experienced these films in the classroom, with a scratchy, beat-up 16mm print.

Besides their kitsch, camp and nostalgia values for those of a certain age – you know who you are – the films are of interest for the talent involved and, of course, as sources of socio-cultural insight into the past.

Three of the filmmakers stand out: John Mackenzie, Robert Young and John Krish. Interestingly they came at the PIF from opposite directions. Mackenzie and Young were fiction filmmakers in the first instance. Mackenzie, most famous for The Long Good Friday, had shot various television dramas, while Young helmed Vampire Circus. (A British-horror connection is also present on Never Go with Strangers, with Elizabeth Luytens scoring and Philip Martell conducting; whether coincidentally or otherwise Luytens also scored the similarly themed Hammer production Never Take Sweets from a Stranger) Krish, by contrast, was a veteran documentarian.

Mackenzie’s contribution is Apaches, a notorious 1977 entry about the dangers of playing on a farm. Six children play at being Apaches and die off one by one in an And Then There Were None crossed with the Gashleycrumb Tinies sort of way: One falls under the wheels of a tractor, another drowns in a slurry pit, a third unwisely drinks poison and so on. After the last child – the narrator – has died, the credits give a roll-call of real children who had died down on the farm in the past year – a device that is also used in another of the featured PIF’s, Building Sites Bite.










Horror film dynamics in Apaches

Sadly, however, the compilation doesn’t include Mackenzie’s early 1980s stranger danger PIF Say No to Strangers.

Young is represented via 20 Times More Likely, whose title comes from the fact that motorcyclists are 20 times more likely to be killed in an accident than a car driver. Aimed at young learner motorcyclists, the film features Gillian “Eastenders” Tayforth (she had earlier appeared in another PIF about the dangers of messing about with fireworks) and a with-it punk soundtrack.

Krish contributes another road safety entry with Drive Safely Darling, featuring a young Colin “Sixth Dr Who” Baker and a suitably disturbing ending that plays a bit like HAL’s death in 2001 (“Brain to eyes... brain to eyes!”) and the fire safety Searching, in which the camera disturbingly prowls through the remnants of a burnt-out house.

Krish’s masterpiece The Finishing Line is, however, not included, on account of its being a British Transport Films rather than COI production.

Other high points include the Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water, in which Donald Pleasance provides the voice of the titular spirit who drowns unaware and foolish children, and the self-explanatory and aforementioned and equally nightmare-inducing Never Go with Strangers.





Shock animation to convey some nonce-sense to children in Never Go with Strangers

Highly recommended