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Threads (1984 BBC post-nuclear film set in Sheffield)

M

mancboy

deadbeat descending
I'm looking for a place I can download this masterpiece of Cold War shit-uppery, or watch it online... For research purposes mainly but also I'd love to see it again... Could anyone recommend anywhere on the net that has a good TV archive cos I'm drawing blanks all round.

Sorry if this has been done before. I did search the threads for 'threads' but... well you see the problem.
 
mancboy said:
I'm looking for a place I can download this masterpiece of Cold War shit-uppery, or watch it online... For research purposes mainly but also I'd love to see it again... Could anyone recommend anywhere on the net that has a good TV archive cos I'm drawing blanks all round.

Sorry if this has been done before. I did search the threads for 'threads' but... well you see the problem.
Click to expand...

It's out on DVD to buy and to rent.
 
thread025.jpg


That was a bleak, disturbing and moving film, although anyone watching it now is not going to get even a quarter of the desperation and despair of its post-nuclear Cold War setting .
thread014.jpg

There's a good article on the film here: http://www.ashleypomeroy.com/threads.html
After the initial strikes on military bases, cities are next, and Sheffield doesn't fare very well. The aforementioned local officials are trapped in their bunker, with no-one to dig them out, the emergency services are immediately overwhelmed, whilst people on the surface are burned to a crisp (the character we expected to be the 'hero' runs off to get help and is never seen again). One hour and twenty-five minutes later, the fallout settles, and people start to breathe in radioactive dust, which is filtered from the blood by the liver and lymph nodes, where it remains, killing nearby cells.
Click to expand...
Anyone remember the US version, The Day After?
What a crock of shite that was!
 
editor said:
...although anyone watching it now is not going to get even a quarter of the desperation and despair of its post-nuclear Cold War setting .
Click to expand...


It's so true.
I couldn't sleep properly for weeks after watching it.
At that point in history nuclear annihilation was a very real fear.
I still consider "Threads" the most disturbing thing I have ever watched. Ever.
And I still remember it vividly, years after.
 
editor said:
thread025.jpg


That was a bleak, disturbing and moving film, although anyone watching it now is not going to get even a quarter of the desperation and despair of its post-nuclear Cold War setting .

There's a good article on the film here: http://www.ashleypomeroy.com/threads.html

Anyone remember the US version, The Day After?
What a crock of shite that was!
Click to expand...

Read the Ashley Pomeroy article this afternoon. Really good, yeah. I like the way he contextualises it against real life events at the time. One of the reasons I want to watch it is to see if the sense of dread it sparked the first time is still there. I suspect it wouldn't be, but give it a year or two and you never know...

And I don't remember The Day After but I LOVE Red Dawn for sheer Cold War crapness.
 
Threads is the darkest thing I think I've seen.

I never saw this when I was younger but I watched it last year and it scared the living shit out of me,don't think I've ever been so freaked out by a film/tv program before.

Can't even begin to think what watching at school would of done to me.
 
editor said:
The bit where they looked back and saw the bomb going off over Sheffield will stay with me all my life.
<shudder>
Click to expand...
The men running to hide under the trucks, the kitten rolling over and over, the mike bottles melting. That montage never leaves.
<shudder>
 
We saw that at school in an English lesson iirc (although I'd already watched it once) 1985/6ish when I was 14 or 15. Everyone was chatting, pissing about, not paying attention during the scene setting. When the bomb dropped, there was deathly silence, you could have heard a pin drop. Scared the shit out of everyone.
 
Blagsta said:
We saw that at school in an English lesson iirc (although I'd already watched it once) 1985/6ish when I was 14 or 15. Everyone was chatting, pissing about, not paying attention during the scene setting. When the bomb dropped, there was deathly silence, you could have heard a pin drop. Scared the shit out of everyone.
Click to expand...

Exactly the same happened to me in English class, this was in the early 90's though.

If ever there was a film that had such a frightening affect on such an age group it was this one. The effect was exacerbated by the set text for the year being a book on a similar subject :eek: :(
 
What a class film i used to sniff glue in the old Infermary where much of it was shot now empty and Tesco now stands there with a car park over the road was kelvin flats and then further was don joinery closed down 95 along with the old triamph bike shop that i sqauted 96 there now stands a meca bingo hall.

I lived on Kelvin Flats http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkley where other parts was filmed and here is another nostelga fact for you all the opening shot for come feel the noise film with slade was also filmed on Kelvin Flats wtach you see my ant Val and her front door.. http://s19.photobucket.com/albums/b171/sheffieldarchives/kelvin flats/ are some images from a mate..
 
editor said:
Anyone remember the US version, The Day After?
What a crock of shite that was!
Click to expand...

Yes, it came out a couple of years before Threads and all I remember was that Jason Robards shirt stayed a pristine white throughout the whole thing. There was another American TV movie which came out around the same time called Testament, which was better but for me Threads was also the most depressing (fictional) film I'd seen up to then and one of the few films that gave me nightmares. I haven't seen it since it was shown on television and wonder if it would still have the same effect on me now.
 
i first saw threads when bbc4 screened it, it still works, i remember i went to bed after watching it all disturbed:eek:
 
I remember seeing it when I was kid and it terrified me

Immediately after seeing it I decided that I didn't want to have kids because I didn't want them to suffer an experience like that portrayed in the film
 
I saw it as a kid and it terrified me, then I saw it again on BBC4 20 odd years later and it still terrifies me.

IMO we werre very fortunate the Cold War ended with a whimper and not a bang, the events protrayed in Threads could have very easily happened. I remember as a kid thinkling it was only a matter of time :(

I wish they'd show the War Game as well, another scary depiction of a nuclear attack on the UK
 
We watched Threads in our History lessons at school. We also watched several episodes of the World at War about the Holocaust.

I think every school child should be given the opportunity to watch those kinds of films and programmes - if they wish to as they're obviously disturbing, although therein lies the lesson - because those lessons taught us far more about history than any of the rest we'd had.
 
Saw this when I was a kid, I couldn't of been older than 7 or 8. Scared the shit out of me. Threads and Plague Dogs are NOT FILMS FOR CHILDREN.
 
agree- threads scared the buggery out of me.

Since then, ive seen the War game - horrible in its own BBC psdeudo-documentary bleakness.
 
Pete said:
Kicked off over Iran as well!
Click to expand...
I thought it started in South Africa to be honest, ground troops in Iran was the second stage but Russia was the threat and we can't be said to live in fear of the bomb. The loss of this populace living under fear control used by western governments since the end of WW2, the building up of the Terrorist threat and repeated high profile raids but still currently without the political will to turn it into a proper fit up which I expect to be the next stage.
 
I saw it again a couple months ago - chilling as fuck, especially the ending that makes it clear humanity hasn't got a hope!

I don't know why people are talking about the threat of nuclear annihilation like it was a thing of the past because there's a lot more spare nukes floating around the world now than there ever were in the Cold War. With the Americans and Russians facing off, there was the hope that neither side would be insane enough to use them. With there being every chance of a nuclear weapon being in the hand of some randoms, you never know what the fuck's going to happen...
 
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