"What's going on? Do you understand what's going on in this world?"
"Yeah. Stupidity...has a habit of getting it's way."
As the story goes, THE DAY AFTER was a huge cultural TV event when it was
originally broadcast (on ABC) just a few days before Thanksgiving on November
20, 1983. It was reportedly watched by over 100 million Americans.
Which, considering there was only 233 million Americans around back then, is
pretty goddamn impressive!
Opening with some documentary style footage of American military guys talking
really super serious while onboard an Strategic Air Command aircraft, the story
then shifts to the lives of various simple Americans living their lives in the
towns along the border of Kansas and Missouri. You got Jason Robards as
doctor with a loving family; Steve Guttenberg as a student; JoBeth Williams as a
nurse; John Cullum as the head of a family that lives on a large farm and John
Lithgow as a professor. For 45 minutes or so, we're brought up to speed on
these people's lives. The whole time there's various news reports playing
in the background talking about the growing tensions with Russia. People
are scared, but they go about their normal lives and then...BOOM! Nuclear
missiles start flying out of the nearby silos and all Hell breaks loose.
People start rioting and trying to get out of town, but before you can say
"radioactive baboon testicles" the Russian missiles reach their targets and it's
"Goodbye, Kansas."
Everything blows the fuck up and the people that are left after the smoke clears
are all fucked up. Not as fucked up as the survivors in the next year's
THREADS, but still screwed all the same. Radiation sickness, lack of food,
lawlessness, no shelter from the elements, no more Netflix. It's Hell on
Earth, but unfortunately since this is a made-for-network-TV movie we never see
much more than a mass grave and unwashed people with their hair falling
out. The story is dark, but the events shown on-screen are tame.
Still, it's a good movie and a
very interesting glimpse into early 1980's
American culture.
Especially, if you go online and look for videos
of all of the original commercial breaks shown during the original broadcast and
then watch the ABC News special that showed immediately after the movie.
Hosted by Ted Koppel and featuring Carl Sagan, then current Secretary of State
George Shultz, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, William F.
Buckley, Jr., former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, General Brent
Scowcroft and Elie Wiesel. It's a fascinating watch and the one
female audience members question (around the 45 minute mark) is even more
important today than it was in 1983.
Above average acting (even by Steve Guttenberg), restrained script, mediocre
direction, an unwed woman arguing with her teenage sister about her diaphragm,
bland camerawork, cool explosion scenes (I loved the skeleton effects),
disappointing ending. THE DAY AFTER isn't the best nuclear war movie ever,
but it does play an interesting part in world history in that it helped bring
attention to the subjects of nuclear war and nuclear winter. Definitely
worth watching.
If you need me, I'll be in my fallout shelter wearing my Church of the Children
of Atom robes and praying to Atom that HBO will make a high-budget,
CHERNOBYL-level miniseries based on the Robert McCammon masterpiece, "
Swan Song".
Maybe I'm giving the filmmakers too much credit, but when the silo doors
opened up and the nuclear missiles started blasting off, they showed this
white horse and it brought to mind how in the Bible, Revelation 6:1-2 says:
"And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were
the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. And
I saw, and behold a white horse..."
