I saw this anti-drunk-driving P.S.A. when I was about five and spent a long sleepless night vowing that when I grew up, I would never so much as look at beer…
I found it on youtube a while back and decided to face my childhood fears, and discovered that between the MICHAEL JACKSON, the eighties hair, the ominous voiceover, and the rather regrettable acting, it was actually incredibly silly, but of course one does not notice these things when one is five. Perversely, this spot and the many other P.S.A.s that turned TV-watching into an unsettling adventure for me and no doubt many of my contemporaries also left me with a lifelong interest in public service and cause marketing, so that I can say for certain that it is a very lucky thing I didn't grow up in the U.K.; since their public-service ads make the drunk-driving skeletons look like Winnie-the-Pooh, and not even the creepy live-action Winnie-the-Pooh who talks about "not-okay touching", but the regular cute kind.
(It turns out, too, that Matt from X-Entertainment, who is about the same age as me, had a similar reaction to this classic. (Check that out HERE).
Anyway, I love your site; I was a pretty easily traumatized child and am now fascinated by the childhood nightmare-fuel phenomenon. Keep up the great work!
Oh my God, I remember this one. It is so creepy. PSA's are nothing like they used to be. I am trying to find one from when I was little with a little cartoon guy whose face gets red and he gets more and more mad until his head explodes and it had something to do with when you hate you only hate yourself. There is also one with a lady whose covering her face with a picture of herself and talking about smoking in bed and then she moves the picture and she is horribly burned. Those have scarred me for life. I still love all the old PSAs though. I need to find a collection of the old ones on DVD.
Is this what Vince and Larry looked like without their skin on?
The PSA that I remember most is the one with the drug dealer slowly turning into a snake-man.
http://www.x-entertainment.com/halloween/2004/september27/snakeman.wmv
I'm insanely jealous of Matt's collection of 80's commercials.