Plastic Skeletons (1965)

Redhill, Surrey. Man smoking a pipe walks towards the camera carrying a skeleton. We are at a factory that makes plastic bones and skeletons. They also make “lifelike rubbery brains and artificial livers and kidneys“ the narrator tells us. Various shots of rubber being pressed into moulds, bones being strung together to make hands, skulls being taken out of moulds and trimmed, bones being filed down (yeuch!) etc. It is all rather gruesome for some strange reason! Strange spooky music is used on the soundtrack and narration is full of puns and jokes. Hand and arm is tested for flexibility then attached to a life-sized full skeleton. A completed skeleton is hung up in a storeroom with other bony fellows. The bones and organs are used in hospitals and medical schools - film companies and theatres sometimes order the replicas too but narrator explains that they are too expensive to buy as “playthings“. Cuts exist - see other record. FILM ID: A VIDEO FROM BRITISH PATHÉ. EXPLORE OUR ONLINE