Pastfinders

An engaging blend of sci-fi, education and unintentional humour aids this anti-smoking diatribe aimed at 1970s teenagers.

Science fiction sugars the educational pill in this engaging - and unintentionally humorous - anti-smoking horror story for a 1970s teenage audience. When a pair of clean-living 22nd century youths discover a mystery object (in that staple location of British sci-fi, a quarry), they learn with horror, courtesy of a futuristic museum and some handy time travel, about the foolishness of sticking tobacco products in one's mouth. A lesson for us all there.

The film being projected in the museum and the 1970s classroom is the 1963 anti-smoking educational film Smoking and You. The exteriors of the museum were filmed around the Royal Festival Hall on London's South Bank.