Naked emotional sincerity might have been the tactic favoured by the original batch of "Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives" films that began in 1987, but right from the beginning we were seeing teases of the bitter sardonicism that would come to characterise the campaign going into the 1990s.
"Pier" (or "Victim", depending on your source) deviates from the formula in that it was, of that early wave, the only film to put the victim of a drink driving accident at the centre, in this case a young man who has been wheelchair-bound since being caught up in a collision caused by a drunk driver going through a red light (the driver themselves is, again, nowhere to be seen, and there are no consequences explicitly handed to them). It follows the same format as the others of its era, in consisting of a monologue set against a nondescript backdrop that stands in stark contrast to the violent horrors to which the characters allude, but sticks out for having a dash more bite than its contemporaries. The heartfelt emotivity that dominated the initial output has been swapped out for something altogether more bitterly understated. It's an angry film, but that anger is never forwardly expressed as it was in "Fireman's Story", culminating instead with a couple of low-key visual cues that crackle with silent acidity. The colours here are as lustreless as in the rest of the early monologues - we have not stumbled upon this pier on a radiantly sunny day - but the background ambience of rushing waves and calling gulls seems deceptively lulling (compare it to "Jenny", where all we had to accompany the protagonist's words was an eerie numbness); there is a soothing calmness to this film (at odds with the speaker's recollections of the noise of the collision being the most overwhelming aspect of the experience), which makes the sting in the tail all the more subdued, and potent.
I would also rate "Pier" as the D&DWL entry that is most misrepresented by its Wikipedia synopsis, which, as of the time of writing, has this to say about the film:
"Victim (1987) showed a man in a wheelchair on a day out to the pier. He talks about a drink-driving accident he was in and says he is lucky to be alive. His friend accompanying him helps him drink a cup of coffee."
Not only does the Wikipedia synopsis fail to get across the twist of the film - it is, clearly, meant to be upsetting when the protagonist requires his friend to hold the styrofoam cup up to his mouth, as only then do we realise the full extent of his injuries - but the closing punchline has been totally misconstrued. Pay attention to the dialogue, and you'll notice that the protagonist never actually says that he is lucky to be alive. That is precisely what he does NOT say. He states that, "They reckon I'm lucky to be alive," in reference to the friends who have stood by him and supported him since that fateful accident. Once his companion has enabled him to sip his beverage, however, he flashes the camera a knowing look to indicate that he does not share the sentiment.
The extremity of the protagonist's injuries, and his final gesture of discontented resignation, disrupt the narrative we would prefer to ascribe to such a scenario - that of perpetual resilience and of soldiering on uncomplaining after life has dealt us the most appalling of blows. All of the early D&DWL do this to some degree, with the featured individuals giving off the guise of striving toward some form of normalcy when their lives have been shaken beyond repair, but none communicate their slogan-forming message with quite the same arrestingly passive-aggressive tone as "Pier".
"Pier" obviously goes for the body horror factor more than its contemporaries, however moderately, and this is where the film opens itself up to an additional level of scrutiny regarding its implicit narrative around the protagonist's wheelchair-bound existence. When it comes to making us rethink the consequences of our actions, there is great power to be had in emphasising the fundamental frailties of the human form (lest we forget how fragile we are), but the line that must be trodden is a fine one indeed, for there is a real risk that such tactics might end up inadvertently representing disability as grotesque and degrading. This is a charge we could potentially level at quite a few of the D&DWL films - all the way up until the final film to sport the campaign format, the astonishingly tone-deaf "Mirror" from 1996, in which a young woman laments how her disfiguring facial injury has precluded her from finding a loving relationship. I avoided explicitly commenting on this in my coverage of "Jenny", but I do wonder about the implications of that line, "After all, she is still my daughter..." Clearly, it's intended to encapsulate the protagonist's complex feelings on the state of her relationship with Jenny following her accident, but it also feeds into the narrative of invalidation surrounding the title character - Jenny's mother still recognises her as her daughter, but there is an air of reluctance about it. Compared to "Jenny", the injured crash victim in "Pier" has their own voice in the matter, and it's certainly not as witless about it as "Mirror" (the worst of the D&DWL films, bar none), with its refusal to romanticise its protagonist's near-death experience, however discreetly, being one of its strengths as a statement against the evils of drink driving. At the same time, it is hard to get around the fact that the payoff hinges on exploiting a distinctly negative impression of disability, and I could see this not playing so well to modern sensibilities. The one ostensible bright spot of the protagonist's life post-injury - the friends who have supported him - becomes the ultimate signifier of his entrapment, as his dependency on others is held up as the pinnacle of his wrecked being.
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