"The Day After", "Testament", "World War III"

THREE FILMS ABOUT NUCLEAR ARMAGEDDON FROM THE 80S

MARCH 16, 2016 JBOUSHKA@AOL.COM 1 COMMENT

A few films in the 1980s, the Reagan years, do recall the horror we used to feel at nuclear war.

In November 1983, ABC aired a two-part The Day After on a Sunday and Monday night. It was directed by Nicholas Meyer and written by Edward Hume.

The US has maintained an underground SAC base near Lawrence, Kansas and the University of Kansas (where I went to graduate school). After international tensions, the US launches them within sight og the campus, and the Soviets nuke Kansas City. People are shown turning to skeletons in the blast downtown, as the first part ends. In the second half, people search through rubble. Jason Robards, JoeBeth Wiliams, and John Lithgow star.

People were told not to watch this alone. I watched in my apartment in Harvey's Raquet in Dallas with a medical resident next door I had befriended. He had gotten used to treating PWA's already.

Another film in 1983 was Testament, directed by Lynne Litman (Paramount). A mom (Jane Alexander) in a suburb in Marin County and her kids learn that San Francisco has been nuked from an emergency news broadcast, and they await the end of their lives from radiation sickness. (It is a little hard to believe the broadcast could have gone off in the first place.) The film is available to rent on Amazon.

In 1982, NBC aired a 3-hour, 2-part , by David Greene and Boris Sagal, written by Robert L. Joseph. In retaliation for a grain embargo, the Soviets attack the US oil pipeline in Alaska. This was a big deal in the years after the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973. Rock Hudson, to die of AIDS five years later, plays the president.

Given events in 2022 with Ukraine, this doesn't sound so improbable now.

(Originally published: Wednesday, March 16, 2016 at 1:30 PM EDT)