My US school made all new students watch the Safety video as the first thing we did after walking into the flying school on day 1, complete with dead people, and an army video about mast bumping. This was before any discussion about flying at all. We then had to do an exam on it before finally discussing it with the instructor.
Scared the crap out of some us, and everyone had the same view - do I really want to do this?
The rather gruff CFI's response when I said it was fairly heavy stuff at 7:30am on the first day was simply to tell us we had better get serious if we wanted to fly.
It did have a very negative impact on me, and instilled a level of fear from before my first flight that has taken a long time to come to terms with.
BW