Fireworks Safety: Parents (found public information film; 1976)
This article has been tagged as Needing work due to its lack of references.
Fireworks Safety: Parents (or Fireworks Safety - Parents) was a British Public Information film made in 1976 that pointed out how easy it is for children and teenagers to get ahold of fireworks in the run-up to Guy Fawkes night. It accomplished this by notably having a graphic and disturbing close-up scene where a young child was severely injured by fireworks, and they were deemed so graphic, that it aired after 9 pm, and was removed after complaints. An edited, less offensive version is said to have aired around 1985-1986 without the controversial scene.[1]
Plot
In the short, a couple walks out of a Safeway returning home from a grocery run. Their son, who is out with his friends, gets involved in an accident involving fireworks going off, leaving visible scars and injuries on his face. An ambulance arrives on the scene, hauling the child into the back of it with a stretcher, his face now bandaged up. While most of his friends stick around to help, one child is seen running away from the incident the mother is then made aware of their son's activities, and calls out his name. A narrator then goes on to state that while it is easy to blame the parents of the other children involved, that their child is nonetheless their responsibility.
Availability
Not being particularly helped by being a short-lived ad aired only after 9pm at a time where VHS may not have been the most common media devices (such as DVDs, compact discs, or internet media) to consumers, the full version (as well as the cut version, more inexplicably) was considered missing from the internet, and it was a notable holy grail for PIF fans. One person (Reginald Molehusband) hoped that Film Images would let him see it for his PIF blog (The Public Needs to Know), but it wasn't meant to be, and it's unknown if British YouTube user Larry Bundy Jr. is planning to dig this up for his Films Yanks Can't Wank series like he is with the 1990s remake of Apaches, or if it will live up to its scary reputation and/or legendary money shot.
It wasn't until August 14, 2015 when the British Film Institute sent the Lost Media Wiki a rare PIF, which was uploaded to YouTube. In January of the following year, the original link was down, but was fortunately re-uploaded by YouTube user "Applemask."