Nuclear War films

Actually they see it happen from orbit and get some communications from their loved ones but yeah other than that it is post apocalyptic.
 
Wes R said:
Defcon 4 is an okay one.
Click to expand...

Yeah I rented that back in the late 80s.

I do not remember it being a good film. :lol


And yeah the point of this thread is films that actually attempt to show a nuclear exchange: not post-apocalyptic. There are plenty of those.

Don't get me wrong though- I appreciate all the suggestions. :thumbsup


"Miracle Mile" sounds good! I watched a 5 minute review online. Too bad it is soooooo dated. At one point Anthony Edwards goes into a gym (trying to find anyone who can fly a helicopter) and everyone is wearing neon spandex, sweatbands, and high white socks (pulled up over their spandex tights). :lol


And "Threads" was gritty. Where "The Day After" covered events maybe up to a month after the exchange, "Threads" covers events as much as ten years after the war.

"The Day After" had better special effects, but "Threads" had more realistic acting and was definitely much more bleak.


Kevin
 
SSgt Burton said:
Yeah I rented that back in the late 80s.

I do not remember it being a good film. :lol

Kevin
Click to expand...

I remember that one. The first five minutes, pretty good. And then they return to Earth. Gads.

Anyone remember that tv miniseries World War Three? It leads up to nuclear annihilation, but I think it ends with pictures of people going about their business just before the bombs drop.
 
dbuck said:
Anyone remember that tv miniseries World War Three? It leads up to nuclear annihilation, but I think it ends with pictures of people going about their business just before the bombs drop.
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Yup- but only a couple of bits and pieces.

I remember the US troops defending the (Alaskan?) border- by setting themselves up in large metal tubes pointed in various directions.

The Soviet commander and the US commander about to shake hands on an impromptu cease fire... only to both be killed when someone (Soviet soldier I think) throws a grenade at them.

That's about it.

Kevin
 
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I never heard of that one. I've been looking all these up to see if they're available online or on dvd. I didn't even know about The Day After until the 90s. It was on way after my bedtime back in the 80s lol
 
HBO did one of those news broadcast-type nuclear war flicks called "Countdown to Looking Glass" back in the '80s. I don't remember entirely who all was in it but Scott Glenn played a TV reporter broadcasting from aboard the aircraft carrier Nimitz. HBO was all over the nuclear genre under the Reagan years. It was HBO that produced "From Dawn's Early Light".
 
"The Day After" scared the crap out of me as a kid when I saw it on TV the first time it aired.

Did I miss anyone mentioning "War Games" with Matthew Broderick?
 
Actually countdown to looking glass is on googlevideo just like that one mentioned earlier. Most of the ones you guys mentioned are all available on google video.
 
You could check out The War Game, a docudrama made by the BBC in 1965. It gained a lot of notoriety in the UK after it was banned from TV for many years for being too horrifc.

All seems pretty tame nowadays, but is an interesting period look at the escalation and aftermath of a nuclear attack in the UK. You can watch the whole thing on Youtube YouTube - The War Game 1/5

Threads scared the crap out of me when I was a kid, made The Day After look like an episode of Happy Days.
 
Yeah I caught the war game on google video. The problem is that they won't make anything like this now and if they did it would just be a reason to show off fancy special effects.
 
I have a really crappy copy of it I have to try and convert into a better format, it came off a vhs tape it seems.
 
here's a couple from the 'new' twilight zone episodes from the late 80's

Quarantine (The Twilight Zone) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
quarantine
-- cryogenic terminally ill man thawed into a future run by a psychically charged race of post-nuclear mutant hippies because he can stop a nuclear holocaust from happening again...


A Little Peace and Quiet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Little Peace and Quiet
-- lady discovers a 'time stop' device and stops time right at the moment nuclear missles are about to obliterate the earth... what to do?
 
Those are actually the two episodes of that version of the show that stick with me even to today. That and the one with the giant spider (yuck) and the guy delivering souls to hell.

There are a few episodes in the original series in the 60s. Of course the one with Burgess meredith as the guy who breaks his glasses once he has all the time in the world. There is one with the girl from bewitched and charles bronsan where they're the only two survivors of a war, there is the one with James coburn as a bad guy with a computer in a cave. There is an episode of the 80s one i saw recently that was sort of in this genre. It featured 2 guys who were survivalists and a nuke goes off at the local military base. They hide in the basement bunker and eventually go out and roam in what they think is a wasteland but is actually a dome built over the radioactive debris so they're trapped in their own kind of hell (it may have been Tales From the Dark Side now that I think of it).
 
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I suggest 1993's "MATINEE" from Joe Dante, with John Goodman, i always loved this movie! It is a comedy story into the atomic terror background (with some action at the end!).

From IMDB:

"A showman introduces a small coastal town to a unique movie experience and capitalises on the Cuban Missile crisis hysteria with a kitschy horror extravaganza combining film effects, stage props and actors in rubber suits in this salute to the B-movie."

MOVIE TRAILER FROM IMDB
 
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Birdie said:
Threads scared the crap out of me when I was a kid, made The Day After look like an episode of Happy Days.
Click to expand...

Another vote for Threads, I bought the DVD from eBay a couple of years ago having not seen it since I was a kid - only watched it twice since and it still makes me shudder...:eek
 
While it doesn't show a nuclear exchange, I picked up a movie with Paul Newman and John Cussak in the $3 bin called Fat Man and Little Boy which documents the Manhattan project. It was a pretty good movie.
 
Snowflake said:
I suggest 1993's "MATINEE" from Joe Dante, with John Goodman, i always loved this movie! It is a comedy story into the atomic terror background (with some action at the end!).

From IMDB:

"A showman introduces a small coastal town to a unique movie experience and capitalises on the Cuban Missile crisis hysteria with a kitschy horror extravaganza combining film effects, stage props and actors in rubber suits in this salute to the B-movie."

MOVIE TRAILER FROM IMDB
Click to expand...

I remember hearing about it back then. Joe Dante is a good director. I love his commentary on original war of the worlds movie and he's in my book on 50s sci fi movies alot as he's buddy with the author. I'll have to dig through there and find a few of the ones i know of that take place during a nuclear war.
 
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