Apaches (public information film)

"Apaches" is the title of a full-length Public Information Film (PIF) made in the UK in 1977. It was produced by Southern TV and shown extensively in the Southern, Anglia and Westward areas, before being shown either on film or videocassette in primary schools. The 26-minute long film deals with the subject of the dangers to children on farms, and has been broadcast in schools all over the country. The time frame of the film is somewhat confusing, giving a surreal feeling to the events portrayed. "Apaches" is now one of the most notorious public information films of all time.

It was written by Neville Smith and directed by John Mackenzie.

Plot

The film, which details the narrative conventions of the western with public information films, follows the misadventures of a group of six young children in a rural British village, who go to stay on a nearby farm for the week. Several scenes show the children playing at being "cowboys and Indians" (Native Americans), hence the film title. All but one die in various shocking accidents, and the deaths are all through carelessness on the children's part, suggesting that the children would still be alive if they had known what dangers lay ahead.

At the start of the film we see the children playing while, back at the farm buildings, a tea party is being prepared for them. As the farmer opens a gate and drives his tractor through the field where the children are playing, one of the two girls in the party jump up onto the trailer part, shouting to her friends. She falls off and is run over by the tractor, and the camera focuses on the horrified expressions of the other children, followed by close ups of a large pool of blood on the ground and a broken toy gun. We then see the class teacher back at the children's school, removing the name tag from the victim's storage peg in the changeroom.

In the next scene the children are playing in the fields again as their parents prepare to go to the tea party. They decide to play kick the can, and while searching for the remaining children, a boy walks along the top of the fence surrounding the slurry pit, but falls in. As he calls out for his friends, he is shown to slowly sink into the slurry and drown. We see that the children at the village school have been given a day off because of his death, and the class teacher is shown removing the books from this child's desk.

Back at the farm, the table is being set for the children's party, and the children are again playing at "cowboys and Indians." When the game finishes, the children wander into an equipment shed, and one of the boys picks up a bottle of chemicals, suggesting they "drink the white man's fire water to celebrate." (The design of the bottle suggests that it is weedkiller, possibly Paraquat.) The children discuss whether or not the contents might be poisonous, and pass the bottle around to sniff. A little girl takes the bottle and accidentally swallows a considerable amount. She spits it out and seems to be fine, but as the children go home after the party, she is seen coughing and looks unwell. We then see the exterior of her house at night, and hear her screaming for her mother as the lights go on inside. The next shot is of the girl's parents clearing out what had been their daughter's bedroom, with a close up of the now empty bed.

Later, the remaining children are again playing in the fields, and one of them narrowly avoids being run over by a tractor like the first victim. They are chasing each other, pretending to be characters from the television series "Starsky and Hutch", when one of the boys accidentally pulls down a heavy iron gate and is crushed beneath it. The camera focuses on the shocked expressions of the other two children as they watch the lifeless body, a trickle of blood coming from the ear, as the child's parents pull up to the farm in their car.

There are now only two children left, and even though they have been told to play together, one of them decides to go off on his own. He walks through the cemetery where his friends are buried, and meets some farmworkers at the top of the hill going for their break. He asks if he can sit on the tractor, and the driver says yes - but to be careful. He plays behind the wheel pretending to be driving a racing car but accidentally releases the handbrake, and it careers down the slope as the farmer rushes to help him. The exterior of the tractor is shown as the camera focuses on the body of the boy in the tractor (it is assumed that the boy may have snapped his neck when the tractor crashed). His parents are then shown in his empty bedroom, the mother sits miserably in the room shaken by the events.

There are funeral scenes of the latest victim's coffin being buried as the vicar commits him to the ground, before the mourners move on to the funeral breakfast. Only one child is still alive, and looks miserable as he thinks about what has happened to his friends. The child who has been narrating the film all along talks calmly about his grandparents as the images fade, and we realize this child was the last one to die, and his was the funeral we have just seen on the screen. Closing credits show a long list of real children who had died in real farm accidents in the year before the film was made.

ee also

*Building Sites Bite

External links

* [http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/Safety/films.htm University of Bristol Safety Office]
* [http://ftvdb.bfi.org.uk/sift/title/5313 Production details of Apaches]