Author: UnidentifiedWeirdTV

The Clown Whose Make-up Wouldn’t Wash Off… (Weird stop-motion short film) IDENTIFIED!

~ UnidentifiedWeirdTV ~ 7 Comments

(Above: Random public domain image of a scary clown – NOT a still from the film we’re looking for)

We’ve all seen a good deal of weird stop-motion animated films from the 70s-90s era, often screened on Channel 4 in between programs or films. Some were fairly innocent. Others were downright weird or disturbing and not really “kids’ stuff” at all even if some sadistic TV execs were insistent on screening them as that. Paul Berry’s The Sandman from 1991 is one of my personal favourites in the latter category… here it is for anyone who wants to relive that particular nightmare…

But I digress… onto the main purpose of this blog entry. Over at the Weird British TV Memories (70s-90s) Facebook group one of the members, David McCarthy, has brought our attention to this particularly disturbing-sounding stop motion film, apparently from the mid-80s, about a circus clown who finds his make-up won’t wash off, and later hangs himself…

As David recollects:

“Saw it on Irish TV but I think it was British. It was about a circus clown who after a performance is in his dressing room and finds that his clown makeup won’t wash off. He goes to a funeral with a scarf over his face, the scarf falls off and the (unseen) mourners laugh at him. He runs through the streets trying to hide his face and we hear people laughing at him. The final scene shows him in the circus ring having hanged himself. It’s been driving me mad for years trying to find out what it was. It was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen on TV…

“I’m not sure that it was aimed at kids. The whole tone of the thing was very bleak, I don’t think there was any music. Had almost no dialogue except for a bit where the clown (minus makeup) calls to a chemists. That was before the scene where he was unable to remove the makeup. It was about ten minutes long.

“I think he might have been smoking as well in the dressing room scenes. There was a sort of cynical world weary vibe to the character. The whole thing had this sort of existential vibe. Its possible it was European, there was some dialogue in English in the scene where he calls into the chemists though that could have been dubbed. I’m pretty certain there was no music at all and some of the sounds in it stood out, for instance where we see him having hanged himself his body is slowly spinning on the noose and you hear the rope loudly creaking.”

“Just another detail about the funeral scene. It was an open coffin and you see the corpse in it, the clown (think he was wearing an overcoat and hat) goes up to the coffin and starts weeping over it. Its then that the scarf over his face slips off and his clown make up can be seen. Unseen mourners then start laughing at him and he runs out. (It was just a dark room from what I remember)”

This sounds particularly disturbing, and something that very much belongs in the archive of weird and twisted TV that scarred the minds of The Haunted Generation. Definitely something that needs to be preserved on YouTube I think.

So this post is an appeal to identify exactly what this elusive piece of weird TV could have been… if you have any recollection of this short film or know what it was, please let us know by commenting here or emailing us… and feel free to share this post far and wide, ask your friends etc., in the hope it reaches someone who knows the answer!

UPDATE 28/08/25

Thanks to David McCarthy’s continued searching, this elusive production has finally been identified – it is a Czech production titled Con una sonrisa – S ÚSMEVEM. Thanks to the members over at the Cookd & Bombd forum for identifying it for David!

And here is the film itself:

Great to have another UWTV mystery solved!

The Doll on the Escalator: The Elusive PIF…

~ UnidentifiedWeirdTV ~ 5 Comments

We’re all familiar with the infamous ‘Escalator Safety’ Public Information Film from 1970, from which the image of the child’s welly boot being crushed down the sides of the escalator haunted the minds of just about every child subjected to it.

Here it is, to relive the trauma…

But there was another.

While the above PIF has been showcased many times online and led to much discussion and nostalgia among kids of the 70s and 80s, many times I have seen members of the Haunted Generation recall another Escalator PIF that they say scared them much more than the above infamous one.

And this one featured a doll.

It’s a well-known fact that the guaranteed way to make a PIF terrifying is to feature a doll in it. (Click for a case in point) But this particular Escalator PIF, in which a doll rather than a wellington boot is crushed by an escalator, has somehow remained elusive, even though many seem to recall it.

From the recollections of members of the Weird British TV Memories (70s-90s) Facebook group:

The PIF featured a little girl on an escalator, holding a rag doll. She dropped the doll and tried to pick it up, but the doll was hideously mangled and scalped underneath the bottom step, and the PIF ended with a shot of a man standing holding the doll’s hair.

It doesn’t seem to have run for as long as the ‘welly-boot’ PIF did, and the escalator might have been one of the old wooden escalators that were banned after the Kings’ Cross fire.

I’ve seen many people talk about their recollections of this PIF across various nostalgia sites and YouTube. But somehow, despite having scarred the minds of many, it remains elusive and has yet to show up online.

Either way, it seems to have inspired a more contemporary Canadian PSA…

The Canadian one above definitely seems to follow the same formula. But the original British PIF with the doll on the escalator seems to allude us.

Can you find this PIF for us?

If you have any more detailed recollections of this PIF, or better still, have a copy of it – comment here or drop us an email to let us know!

Unidentified Weird TV

~ UnidentifiedWeirdTV ~ Leave a comment

Any child who grew up in the UK between the 70s-90s will likely agree on one particular thing: the TV of the era was often downright weird.

From spooky paranormal, folk horror and sci-fi dramas, to kids’ shows so creepy it’s amazing they were ever approved for children’s TV, nightmarish Public Information Films (PIFs) and TV adverts that were downright surreal or unintentionally creepy (despite often advertizing the most mundane products!), the TV of the era has left three generations of kids traumatized – albeit fondly – who have come to be known as ‘The Haunted Generation’ following Bob Fischer’s Fortean Times article of that name in 2017. Since then, the Scarred For Life Twitter channel and its accompanying books have been doing an amazing job of chronicling and preserving for posterity the weird and disturbing TV of the era.

But while The Haunted Generation have been having endless fun reliving the memories of the TV that scarred us for life, and discovering the terrifying TV we (perhaps fortunately!) missed the first time round, there are those memories that remain elusive… strange scenes, adverts, clips, PIFs, TV episodes etc that disturbed the bejeezus out of us, yet despite our searching, we just have not been able to find… and thus we remain haunted by these unidentified memories, our adult minds plagued by the question of, Just what the heck was that exactly?

Cue the reason for this blog. Inspired by a whole host of unidentified weird TV memories on the Facebook group Weird British TV Memories (70s-90s), this blog exists to chronicle these mysterious and elusive memories still haunting the minds of the Haunted Generation decades on… and serve as an appeal to identify them! After all, these things were physically produced, by actors, writers, directors, camera crew etc., some of who must still be out there and must remember these things… so if you are still plagued by an unidentified weird TV (UWTV) memory from that era, drop us an email or comment and we will post a blog entry about it! And if you happen to be familiar with any of the UWTV posted here (or perhaps luckily worked on them) then please let us know and we will make an updated blog post – you’ll have set at least one traumatized child of the 70s-90s’ minds at rest!

Enjoy browsing and feel free to share or comment on any of the entries – The Haunted Generation stay haunted, but we wouldn’t have it any other way…

“Maybe the future of it is the fact that childhood itself is a bit weird, and there’s stuff lodged in people’s memories that troubles them, that they can’t quite explain… even in an era when they can look stuff up. Hopefully not all of the answers are there, and there’s still some mystery and a sense of wonder.”

– Jim Jupp