Apaches (1977)
This 27-minute, 16mm educational oddity cropped up through a YouTube video countdown of disturbing public information films from yesteryear, and relates to myself (and Devlin, most likely), as it made the rounds on VHS in primary schools throughout rural regions and dealt with the dangers of playing on farms. As kids, my mates and I would climb trees, roll hay bales, and squeeze through tiny crawl spaces; some even snuck into the quarry across from my house. You’d hear tales from adults about how dangerous it was, and how easily we could be sucked down and suffocated in a gravel pit, or meet our end messing around with the machinery. Apaches feels like my youth. Perhaps it’s the barbed wire and stiles, the game of “Kick the Can,” muddy fields, red phone boxes, the graveyard, or Danny’s Leeds (FC, I’m assuming) jumper.
Apaches’ surreal, dreamlike premise cleverly utilises a 6-kid game of Cowboys and Indians, and crosscuts it with a “party,” which turns out to be a post-funeral gathering for our doomed narrator, Danny aka “Geronimo.” One after another, each of Apaches’ reckless bairns are involved in unfortuitous farmyard accidents. First, 8-year-old “squaw”, Kim, tumbles from a tractor trailer and is ran over beneath its wheels. The following images show her name tag being removed from her cloakroom peg at school. This heartbreaking technique persists throughout with shots of a desk being cleaned out in a classroom, and possessions being removed from bedroom drawers. Next, young Tom drowns in a slurry pit, “squaw” Sharon, aged 9, ceremonially drinks a poison toast, the effects of which are left entirely to the imagination; all we are privy to is her pained, distressed cries of “mummy!” and a long shot of her lit-up house at night. Starsky and Hutch wannabe, Robert, follows suit and is crushed to death by a falling iron gate. Finally, the fifth child, 11-year-old Danny; the leader of the pack, dies when his runaway tractor barrels over a cliff, violently throwing his body around like a rag doll. His mother sits in his empty bedroom, awaiting their “party” guests. Michael, Danny’s “daft” cousin, lives to tell the tale, and is seen at both “the chief’s” funeral, and with his family around the dinner table at the end.
How Hallowe’en-appropriate Apaches is, I’m not sure. The little ‘uns do go from playing dead to being dead. If you’re a parent, you’ll be glad your kid’s at home staring zombified into a smartphone screen, and not ritualistically drinking poison on a farm somewhere. Different times, eh? The misadventures and eventual horrific deaths of each child feel like a very real prospect. The blunt, unflinching honesty of Apaches is where its power lies; its clever structure is as imaginative as the kids it portrays. The relentless, repetitive nature of the deaths is startlingly effective. Their recklessness, and the perils of the farm loom like a horror movie slasher, picking them off one by one; the tension and suspense naturally building with each ensuing accident. It becomes hypnotic in a similar way to Alan Clarke’s Elephant – without the political weight, but nevertheless. No one seems to mourn their fallen comrades. I’d also liken the foreboding to the opening scenes of UK hospital drama, Casualty, which would tease a horrendous accident of some kind, with a hedge trimmer or a big ladder or something, and viewers would hide behind their hands, squirming, waiting for the inevitable. Inject a little Lord of the Flies, and you get a sense of where Apaches is coming from. The end credit scroll displays a troubling number of kids killed that year in accidents on farms.
Apaches is currently available to stream for free on the BFI Player, and was written by Neville Smith, and directed by John Mackenzie, who subsequently went on to make The Long Good Friday in 1980.
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