| One Got Fat, has got to be one of the most nightmarishly creepy PSAs ever made. A testament to this is the number of times the film has been used in various music videos in recent years. The monkey masks on the kids are just so creepy, they have been a goldmine for cool music artists to accompany their tracks. And is often how most of the masses were introduced to this weird bicycle road safety film from the United States. The original PSA was irreverently narrated by prolific actor and voice artist Edward Everett Horton, with his catchphrase, "Right? Right!" |
In the film ten "monkey faced" children take a trip. (Watching it, it feels like you have taken a "trip".) They are all heading to a picnic, nine blocks away. (Nine blocks, ten children, that's important!) They're all riding bikes, and over the course of their trip, one at a time they commit road-safety faux pas. Resulting in a terrible fate, but hey the rest just carry on regardless. In the end the mysterious and faceless tenth goody-two-shoes is revealed. It's Orville, the "one [who] got fat" as he eats all the others picnic. The heartless twisted fuck that he obviously is, still having his picnic after nine of his friends have been slaughtered.
| Actually not al of them end up dead, at the end of the film, three of the road accident victims are seen in a hospital. But still, why didn't they all just stop after the first kid was mown down? What's wrong with them? Never mind the picnic hungry Orville. Who likely died of obesity, and appeared in a later PSA about over-eating. No! Hang-on, this is America we are talking about. Where over-eating is lauded with a pride unseen in most parts of the world. I guess Orville's ten picnics was the equivalent of ordering a pancake stack at Denny's. |
| | Anyway, One Got Fat goes down as one of the creepiest PSAs ever, apart from Dark And Lonely Water in the UK, but that's for another post. But One Got Fat certainly stands out as one of the trippiest PSAs, along with yesterday's post the awesomely weird Curious Alice from 1971. Thinking about it now, I should do a top ten list of weird PSAs, I have a whole bunch of them on a hard-drive somewhere. *Goes off to find that hard-drive* |
