Say No to Strangers

When I was a child these type of government information would occasionally be played to us at primary school warning us about " bad men/ strangers " who would try o harm us . Of course we weren't given any direct details that some people have a sexual attraction to children and what they want to do is have forced sex with children . It also missed out a very important point and that is the majority of children who are murdered or sexually abused by adults are killed/abused by members of their own extended family and there's been a couple of recent high profile cases

This 1981 film to be broadcast in schools from 1981 continues in the footsteps of its predecessors and makes the same fundamental mistake , that there's adults you're supposed to trust and ones you can't . It draws attention to the fact that " you can trust your teachers " but this isn't correct because one of our religious education teachers at my school was sentenced to five years in jail in 1979 for fiddiling with young boys . Would it be too much of an anti-theist agenda on my part to say some people and some institutions are more likely to harbour base deviants than a random cross section of the public ? If I mentioned the Catholic church and the BBC would either of these institutions be trustworthy when it came to children being left to the care of adults ?

Regardless of this SAY NO TO STRANGERS directed by John Mackenzie straight from the success of Bob Hoskins gangster movie warns the nation about stranger danger . What struck me was the opening sequence where we get a clip of some slags doing a blag from THE SWEENEY followed by Doug McClure fighting off some rubber monsters and I thought for a moment I was watching the wrong film but it transpired this was an example of good and bad in the fictional world and the narrator then takes us in to the real world where every bloke is a potential paedo . Well meaning and there are people like that out there and you can never be too careful . You've got to hope however that as a child your parents don't split up and your mother doesn't shack up with a man of God or a BBC personality

One other thing noticeable is several well regarded character actors in the roles here before hey became famous . Again Mackenzie was able to spot talent before they became well known and this short film features Brenda Blethyn , Bernard Hill and Timothy Spall when they were utterly unknown so that alone makes it worthwhile for film fans

A cast that became stars in the 80's Brenda Blethyn as the Policewoman. Chrissie Cotterill as the Mother, seems the cast list lists Brenda as the Mum, this isn't correct. This film does the job, shown to UK school's in the 80's including mine.

My mum played Teresa in this just noticed that her name is not on the full cast list.