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

[DotCommunist]

still today it is probably one of the most disturbing dramas you are ever likely to see

I started watching it as 'lol, the 70s' but as it got grimmer and grimmer I was gripped

 

[Mr.Bishie]

Not seen it for years, though can remember it vividly, such a powerful film. Growing up during the cold war years we were made to watch 'When the wind blows' during a school assembly - an animated film of an elderly couple, Jim & Hilda Bloggs preparing themselves for imminent nuclear attack, & then confronting the slow death of radiation poisoning. Unforgettable.

 

[_angel_]

The full film is now on YouTube. It's a fucking fantastically bleak anti war movie, set in a time when nuclear annihilation was a very real possibility. It should be made compulsory viewing for world leaders and warmongers.

Why would they care, they're mostly insane and know them and their families will be safe in a bunker somewhere.

 

[isvicthere?]

I started watching it as 'lol, the 70s' but as it got grimmer and grimmer I was gripped

Plus it was made in the 80s.

 

[smmudge]

Not seen it for years, though can remember it vividly, such a powerful film. Growing up during the cold war years we were made to watch 'When the wind blows' during a school assembly - an animated film of an elderly couple, Jim & Hilda Bloggs preparing themselves for imminent nuclear attack, & then confronting the slow death of radiation poisoning. Unforgettable.

I watched a lot of cold war films and documentaries last year, including Threads, the War Game, a couple about the immediate effects of a bomb, one over St Pauls....and When the Wind Blows is still the one that sends shivers up my spine, really chilling. Just thinking about it makes me shudder!

 

[19sixtysix]

I started watching it as 'lol, the 70s' but as it got grimmer and grimmer I was gripped

A lol is the last thing this film ever managed. It scared the shit out of my teenage self. I stupidly watched it on my own when my parents were out.

 

[DotCommunist]

Plus it was made in the 80s.

even before the bombs fell it wasn't a uk I recognized old man.

the steady deterioration was horrible

 

[editor]

Why would they care, they're mostly insane and know them and their families will be safe in a bunker somewhere.

If you watch the film you'll see that those in the underground shelter don't survive either. And there's not much point being safe in a bunker if there's nothing left above ground.

 

[jakethesnake]

The American Version was rubbish(only good bit was their missiles flying).

The American one - The Day After - was rubbish but it got loads more hype than Threads. It was shown on the ITV network. They were so concerned about people's reactions that they broadcast some sort of discussion programme immediately afterwards designed to reassure people... except here in the South West where the local ITV (TSW as was) put out Pink Floyd Live at Pompei instead.

 

[smmudge]

Yeah The Day After was just shite.

 

[19sixtysix]

If you watch the film you'll see that those in the underground shelter don't survive either. And there's not much point being safe in a bunker if there's nothing left above ground.

To be honest most of the folks in town hall bunkers would have been buried alive as the rubble would have blocked their exits.

 

[smmudge]

Even if they did get out there'd be no country left to lead. Soon they would have wished they'd have stayed above ground and died with the plebs.

 

[Brixton Hatter]

We saw it at school too - aged about 12 in the late 80s. I reckon every kid at my secondary school got to watch it. It was chilling and people took it really seriously.

The context today is a bit different. Back then the anti-nuclear movement was massive and we all wore our CND badges to school. Today, nuclear nervousness seems more about the 'terrorist threat' whilst the US actually uses depleted uranium weapons and bunker busting mini-nukes

 

[danny la rouge]

fucking hell. that was grim. If i'd been alive to watch it during the cold war I'd have shit bricks

I remember it well.

Cheers for the YouTube link Ed, will watch it later.

 

[laptop]

the US actually uses depleted uranium weapons and bunker busting mini-nukes

It does? I missed the headline?

 

[Mr.Bishie]

...the War Game

Not seen that one.

We saw it at school too - aged about 12 in the late 80s. I reckon every kid at my secondary school got to watch it.

Thinking back, we were made to watch Threads too, & that would have been when i first saw it. 12 years old in '84 & a film that i've never forgotten.

 

[Mr.Bishie]

The War Game - £44 on play, £49-£85 on Amazon! Unavailable to rent with Lovefilm.

Found it here - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2864871032688882557

 

[isvicthere?]

even before the bombs fell it wasn't a uk I recognized old man.

the steady deterioration was horrible

Roman Britain isn't "a UK I recognise", but I know when it was.

 

[Roadkill]

still today it is probably one of the most disturbing dramas you are ever likely to see

Yup - but also one of the best IMO. It's a brilliant film, and all too plausible in its depiction of what a nuclear war would be like.

 

[editor]

Just watching the cheery War Game now. Ouch.

 

[Roadkill]

Just watching the cheery War Game now. Ouch.

For a similar dose of cheerfulness, here's something else I saw recently:



World War III - not as good as Threads or The War Game, but an interesting film even so. It uses archive footage and interviews to tell an alternative story of how the Cold War ended - with Gorbachev overthrown in a coup in 1989 and replaced by military hardliners. Tension rises between the US and the USSR, fighting breaks out in Germany, out come the nukes and, as the narrator's final line puts it, over a shot of a cruise missile, 'There is no further historical record of what happened next.'

 

[Mr.Bishie]

Just watching the cheery War Game now. Ouch.

I was about to, but Frozen Planet's on repeat. Save the depression for later.

 

[killer b]

i enjoyed threads, but thought it lost it's was a bit once it moved beyond the immediate aftermath of the bombing.

 

[Mr.Bishie]

For anyone who hasn't seen it -

 

[killer b]

i found a copy of the comic book of when the wind blows in the kids section of the local charity bookshop.

 

[dylanredefined]

We saw it at school too - aged about 12 in the late 80s. I reckon every kid at my secondary school got to watch it. It was chilling and people took it really seriously.

The context today is a bit different. Back then the anti-nuclear movement was massive and we all wore our CND badges to school. Today, nuclear nervousness seems more about the 'terrorist threat' whilst the US actually uses depleted uranium weapons and bunker busting mini-nukes

Mini nuclear Bunker busters don't actually exist.Depleted uranium ammo though nasty is not a nuclear weapon.You probably stand a greater chance of dying in a nuclear blast than during the cold war.What with rogue states and terrorists and other excuses.Though a full scale Nuclear exchange is probably less likely.Not sure that makes the world safer or less safe.

 

[Mr.Bishie]

Not sure that makes the world safer or less safe.

2 Billion recently spent on Trident. The power of nuclear retaliation is still very much on the agenda from the cunts that be. The existence of 'dirty bombs' is surely on the paranoid radar in the West ?

 

[Roadkill]

The existence of 'dirty bombs' is surely on the paranoid radar in the West ?

Yes, it is. A friend in the know tells me that the other thing exercising the security services' minds is the possibility of a nuclear bomb being secreted onto an aeroplane and detonated over a major city. The consequences of even a relatively small nuke going off on a plane over, say, London don't bear thinking about...

 

[dylanredefined]

Fortunately getting hold of a nuclear bomb is a lot harder than Hollywood would lead you to believe.Even if you detonated it they could find out where it came from and then missiles fly.Building a dirty bomb that contaminates a wide area again is lot harder than stealing a container load of old x ray machines and wiring it with explosives.Though that would work really won't contaminate that large an area.
Nuclear Deterrence works .Nothing else seems too stop humanities interest in war.

 

[Roadkill]

Fortunately getting hold of a nuclear bomb is a lot harder than Hollywood would lead you to believe.

Harder, but apparently not impossible, although as you say a dirty bomb is more likely.