Davis' work is consistently about a relatively small group of themes: that strangers must be treated with caution, that the world itself is an unfriendly place, regardless of the presence of strangers, and that children must think before acting. His films typically feature monotonous narration suffused with what "" author Ken Smith calls a "sledgehammer morality." His work is anecdotal and unsupported by evidence, and is notorious among social guidance films because Davis covered topics that scholarly film producers such as Coronet Films and Encyclopædia Britannica did not address. Coronet, Centron Corporation, and Britannica typically had teams of scholars with PhDs in sociology who guided development of their films. Davis, when he used consultants, rarely used anyone with a degree in a relevant field, instead he used policemen and detectives for their anecdotal advice.