Title:YOU CAN'T KEEP AN OLD BLADE DOWN [Main Title]
Film Number:NPB 14071
Other titles:
Summary: Second World War British Ministry of Information newsreel trailer advising the public to be more careful about the waste that they put in their kitchen waste bin.
Description: The film opens with a middle aged couple waiting anxiously in a doctor's waiting room. A doctor joins them and explains that the problem with the patient is the result of a bad diet. The man assures the doctor that "they have always been very careful with his feeding". The doctor details the problem by showing an x-ray of the patient's stomach and alimentary canal. A brief animated cartoon sequence shows the several obstructions revealed by the x-ray, an open safety pin and length of string in the digestive system and an electric light bulb in the stomach. A nurse calls the doctor to the patient. The anxious couple and doctor stand around the patient's bed. The doctor moves away from the bed to reveal that the patient is a large pig. The doctor then pulls the sheet over the head of the now dead pig and the women cries out and collapses distraught over the dead body. The doctor turns to the camera (obviously reading from a script) and talks directly to the audience "Ladies and Gentlemen, if you really want to save your bacon, don't mix your kitchen waste with any of the following indigestible ingredients - lemon or orange peel, rhubarb leaves, sour or mouldy leaves, bones, soap, soda, salt, acids, disinfectant, glass and china, tin or metal objects of any kind", the doctor then reaches in to the breast pocket of his suit and pulls out a single edged razor blade "remember they can't keep an old blade down". The film ends with a static shot of a waste bin labelled 'Food For Pigs' and the end caption REMEMBER WHAT YOU PUT IN THIS BIN IS FED TO PIGS.
