This is a short film from 1977 produced by the government's health and safety executive warning children about the dangers of playing on farms to be shown in schools . Strangely despite living on an Island dependent on farming for the local economy it's a film that was never broadcast at my school . If it was shown my peers and myself would have certainly remembered seeing it
The story involves a group of six children who innocently play at being Indians on a farm . Innocent days indeed where the spirit of young adventure involved children playing at soldiers or cowboys and Indians and appropriately the scenario here resembles Agatha Christie's TEN LITTLE INDIANS as the group of six Apaches get whittled away to zero
What strikes you about watching this is how graphic some of the scenes are , It's not on the level of video nasty or torture porn but at the same time it'd be impossible for the late John Mackenzie to get away with some of the scenes nowadays such as a small pool of blood being shown after a child falls under the wheels of a moving tractor or most chilling of all a young girl screaming out in agony after being poisoned . The film ends with a poignant list of names of children killed the previous year in farm accidents
One thing that perhaps doesn't work entirely successfully is an aspect of logic . The farmer seen is very friendly and doesn't mind young scamps playing on his farm and it's seems strange that none of the children learn there lesson that after their friends die on the farm they don't come to the conclusion that it's perhaps a bad idea playing on farms so become too obvious plot devices , but that's the whole point that if you don't learn from other people experiences you may very well end up dead
The story involves a group of six children who innocently play at being Indians on a farm . Innocent days indeed where the spirit of young adventure involved children playing at soldiers or cowboys and Indians and appropriately the scenario here resembles Agatha Christie's TEN LITTLE INDIANS as the group of six Apaches get whittled away to zero
What strikes you about watching this is how graphic some of the scenes are , It's not on the level of video nasty or torture porn but at the same time it'd be impossible for the late John Mackenzie to get away with some of the scenes nowadays such as a small pool of blood being shown after a child falls under the wheels of a moving tractor or most chilling of all a young girl screaming out in agony after being poisoned . The film ends with a poignant list of names of children killed the previous year in farm accidents
One thing that perhaps doesn't work entirely successfully is an aspect of logic . The farmer seen is very friendly and doesn't mind young scamps playing on his farm and it's seems strange that none of the children learn there lesson that after their friends die on the farm they don't come to the conclusion that it's perhaps a bad idea playing on farms so become too obvious plot devices , but that's the whole point that if you don't learn from other people experiences you may very well end up dead