Directed by Kevin Rafferty, Jayne Loader and Pierce Rafferty, this film remixes newsreels, military training films and other footage made during the Cold War to ease peoples' minds about the inevitability of nuclear destruction and survivability. I'm so glad to report we no longer - oh, Putin said he's going to fire nuclear missiles at us, never mind - look, if you grew up in the 80s, you faced nuclear terror and movies like The Day After and Threads every day.
"Viewed from a safe distance, the atomic bomb is one of the most beautiful sights ever seen by man." Those words are horrifying but this movie is hilarious. Released as Reagan was leading the largest military increases since the Korean War, this is a movie that shows nuclear clouds "harmlessly" blowing over innocent people and soldiers testing themselves to see how much radiation that had been exposed to. Mutually assured destruction was the aim in 1982; the U. S. had so many nukes that they could inflict end of the world damage on the Soviet Union even after absorbing everything they had, even if no one would survive. And who would want to? Again, have you seen Threads?
Directed by Jayne Loader and Kevin and Pierce Rafferty, this film has no narration, just music from the era and seemingly bombards you with continually more insane and ridiculous notions. Surely, you can just duck and cover when a bomb goes off. All set to an amazing soundtrack, which hammers home just how pointless this nuclear war idea all was and is.
This movie also inspired Michael Moore, who said, "This is the movie that told me that a documentary about a deadly serious subject could be very funny. Then I asked the people who made it to teach me how to do it. They did. That movie became my first - Roger & Me."
This Bill Hailey and the Comets song on the soundtrack is absolutely deranged, by the way:
"Last night I was dreamin'
Dreamed about the H-Bomb
Well the bomb-a went off and I was caught
I was the only man on the ground
There was-a 13 women and only one man in town"
"Viewed from a safe distance, the atomic bomb is one of the most beautiful sights ever seen by man." Those words are horrifying but this movie is hilarious. Released as Reagan was leading the largest military increases since the Korean War, this is a movie that shows nuclear clouds "harmlessly" blowing over innocent people and soldiers testing themselves to see how much radiation that had been exposed to. Mutually assured destruction was the aim in 1982; the U. S. had so many nukes that they could inflict end of the world damage on the Soviet Union even after absorbing everything they had, even if no one would survive. And who would want to? Again, have you seen Threads?
Directed by Jayne Loader and Kevin and Pierce Rafferty, this film has no narration, just music from the era and seemingly bombards you with continually more insane and ridiculous notions. Surely, you can just duck and cover when a bomb goes off. All set to an amazing soundtrack, which hammers home just how pointless this nuclear war idea all was and is.
This movie also inspired Michael Moore, who said, "This is the movie that told me that a documentary about a deadly serious subject could be very funny. Then I asked the people who made it to teach me how to do it. They did. That movie became my first - Roger & Me."
This Bill Hailey and the Comets song on the soundtrack is absolutely deranged, by the way:
"Last night I was dreamin'
Dreamed about the H-Bomb
Well the bomb-a went off and I was caught
I was the only man on the ground
There was-a 13 women and only one man in town"