Rediscovering: The Day After (1983)
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- Опубліковано 2 сер 2024
- A few months ago we looked at the British BBC released nuclear bomb drama, Threads. Tonight, it is the turn of the Americans with quite a similar depiction of events on a community in Kansas.
Like Threads, this too was originally broadcast on TV and was directed by Nicholas Meyer and stars Jason Robards, Jobeth Williams, Steve Guttenberg and John Lithgow.
How does it compare and is it as terrifying as Threads was?!
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I remember watching this as a teenager and like "Threads" it was quite disturbing, there is a scene that haunts me to this day and it's when the missiles are launching and a lady is making the bed and refuses to stop until her husband carries her away screaming,, that scene upset me so much at the time.
It does have some powerful stuff in there.
Probably the most effective scene in the film. Just a simple small moment but says a lot.
Alot of people laugh and make fun of that scene and I'm like, "WTF is so funny??" This woman's entire world has just been turned upside down and has no idea just what kind of hell the world is doomed to. One minute, she's planning her daughter's wedding and the next, she's being dragged down into a basement while a rain of missiles come down upon them. It's wild.
She was also in the movie, "Steel Magnolias." Her famous line was "calories, calories!"
I remember watching The Day After that night in 1983. Freaked me out as a 12 year old ! Watched it again last year . Still haunting and grim . We came very close to this happening in 1983 . Relations with the Soviet Union were at the worse they had been .
Nice job on the review, guys. Modern viewers might not appreciate how solid the special effects were for the early 80s.
The story works in spite of the effects because the story was about the people, not the nuclear war.
Threads was similar in that regard, but Threads extinguished any hint of hope whereas The Day After doesn't show all the continuing death.
I seen The Day After when it first aired in 1983. I was 6 years old, and watched it on "accident" my folks were busy and I had the TV to myself and I SWEAR I got P.T.S.D. from that movie, it scared me SO BAD
The Day After is a fine film, well made with good effects, but it always felt like a, well, like a film! Whereas Threads felt like a documentary, and a very bleak and gritty one at that. I saw it on TV back in '84 and frankly, it scared the crap out of this 16 year old! TDA was just never as frightening, but it is worth watching, definitely, although it does drag a little towards the end.
Absolutely relivent with the events happening today.
This is directed by the man who made the best Star Trek movie ever
I actually watched The day after last night and this video was in the recommendation.👍
You make an interesting point betwwen the rection of people in Day after compared to Threads.I'd suggest this situtation presented is quite different between the two films and that might make quite a big difference to characters' reactions. -
In Threads, the conflict is in Iran (I think, it's some time since I watched the movie). If not Iran, certainly Middlem East. For many people that would downplay the seriousness; theyr would veiw that as "out there somewhere" *waves arm generally*. In comparison, in The Day After, the conflict is in West Germany; a much more immediate and worrisome location. Thta ll being said, we now know that the Soviet Union had no intention of invading Western Europe and were in fact convinced that the US was determiend to destroy them
I did enjoy The Day After but I do think it suffered for being on American television. I don't think they could take it as far and as grim as they wanted, still though, enjoyable watch.
I haven't seen Threads yet, kicking myself in the butt to get around to seeing it, heard such great things about it.
If The Day After isn't bleak enough for you then definitely check out Threads when you can!
LOL I didn't mean to sound like a psychopath, but I do love a good downbeat film from time to time.
The full film of the day after is on you tube
Yeah, completely forgot to mention that in the video! It's a 3 hour cut too, it's a shame that wasn't on the blu-ray, although the picture quality for some of it isn't great.
I got The Day After on DVD and Blr ray but I can't play my The Day After Blr ray on my Blr ray player in New Zealand.
I remember seeing “The Day After” In November 1983 and “Threads” in January 1985. BOTH seem RATHER bleak and gritty to me. SO HARD TO BELIEVE THAT IT HAS BEEN ALMOST FORTY YEARS since I saw the respective movies for the first time.
Threads traumatised me, it's the only film to give me nightmares, which I still sometimes have 31 years later
Well if anyone wants to talk. I personally know the missile launch officer in the day after.
That's pretty cool. I'm sure he has a lot of inside information about what was accurate and what was scary accurate!
I live near the silos mentioned in this film,I pass one everyday
I first saw TDA on home video in the 90’s. But I’ve never seen Threads.
I think your count was off a bit. Over 100 million people viewed the movie when it first aired. A bit more than 8 million.
You're absolutely right, Zach. Not sure where we got the 8 million from, and Simon actually then goes on to say that at the time it was the most watched TV movie ever, and 8 million viewers for that claim in America is practically nothing! Thanks for the observation ~ J.
Shock and horror. This is usually the reaction when viewing when seeing The Day After. Even after repeated viewings. It is especially ominous for Americans. That dread of karma. That fear of what comes around will go around. it was the US that first exploded an Atomic Bomb. And it was the US that dropped Atomic Bombs on Japan. The aftermath of both The Day After and Threads, gives us a glimpse of what people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki went through 75 years ago.
acá se estrenó en los cines las noche del estreno las salas se llenaron en una ciudad a pedido del público se quedó dos semanas y al año fue pedida por el público argentino que bueno no tenemos arte ni parte ni jamás la tendremos en ese asunto pero igual nos afectará a largo plazo si ocurriera una guerra mundial termonuclear .
The three-hour work-print version of TDA is now on UA-cam.
I need the link can't find it?! Please
@@tonydavis2173 Sadly it's been taken down.
@@EddieGaster dayum is it available anywhere?
@@tonydavis2173 it's available to watch on the internet archive.
I saw TDA before Threads as I was lucky enough to be spared Threads when in school, unlike plenty of friends who couldn't sleep for the next six months...It's an interesting piece and certainly not without merit but for sheer realism and scientific accuracy it doesn't really come close to Threads. In part that's probably due to the constraints of American TV at the time and I didn't realize Meyer had had the project taken away from him for a while. It's bleak and doesn't exactly have a happy ending but at the same time it also had a kinda 'soap opera' vibe to it. It wasn't as believable as Threads which sucked you into its unremitting nightmare world, piling on the misery with dispassionate observations about disease, population reduction, death tolls, effects of radiation in pregnancy etc right up until the chilling final frame. TDA felt sanitised in comparison although in its defence practically every other film of its nature would in relation to Threads. There's a couple of clips on you tube where Threads was being aired in America and announcers were giving a warning about the content and one stated that TDA had been likened to a walk in the park in comparison. Might be a bit unfair on TDA as it certainly ain't date night viewing and it's certainly an interesting piece, but Threads is the 'daddy' of Nuclear war movies.
Threads definitely wins in the bleakness stakes! Despite the soap opera tendencies I think TDA maybe handles the pre-attack parts better, as the characters in Threads just seem completely unaware or not too worried about what's going on, whereas there's palpable panic in TDA, which is probably more realistic if the threat of nuclear war is that imminent.
Well, possibly but I'm not so sure. It's probably more subtle in Threads but there's certainly elements of people trying to flee from cities and radio reports of panic buying with a useless reassurance that such measures are unnecessary. People trying to stockpile on supplies etc. One of the few 'funny' bits is where a local shopkeeper has upped his prices and when a guy rushes in to announce that fighting has started the customers all barge out with trolleys of stuff without paying...Then there's people trying to get out of the city only to be blocked by essential services only routes...even in TDA there's loads of people still in the city trying to find shelter when the alarms go off so not that much difference I don't think. Also, where exactly would there be to escape to in terms of safer ground?
I.have.,not.seen.threads...The.Day,After.I.have.seen..Actually,I.was.impressed.with.how.relentless.The.DAy.After.is..I.thought.it.was.very.clear.that.weare.all.dead.and.there.is.no.hopefor.life.on.Earth...In.that.sense,Threads.is.more.happy.in.that.there.is.still.life.and.arebuilding.civilization.
I saw The Day After when it aired on TV. I was 20 years old. I thought the story was great, visuals were amazing and the acting was below mediocre. And in fact, a decade later, when the TV show "Northern Exposure" aired, I immediately remembered John Cullum from this film, because I thought he was better than Jason Robards. BTW, are you guys saying "nucular" on purpose?
Hey, thanks for the comment, someone else picked up on this when we did Threads, all I can say is I assure you we're not saying 'nucular' but occasionally it does sound like that, possibly because we ad-lib everything and sometimes we talk a little fast.
so did millions.
My recollection was they purposely chose actors who were obscure at the time so the characters would seem like everyday people. They chose Jason Robards as a strong actor to "carry" the heavy role in the story.
How.could.you.not.have.seen.On.the.Beaach?..It.is.fantasic!!!..Also,Failsafe.and.the.Bedford.Incident.are.all.great.'oops,it's.nuclear.armaggeddon...Also,By,Dawn's.Early.Light...A.final.film.in.the.nuclear.war.genre.is.A.Boy.and.Hi.Dog..PLEASE.review.that.
I have never seen Threads. You should have titled this Threads
It was 100 million viewers, not 8 million. Good review otherwise
Yeah, not sure where I got that number from. Have since seen a figure of 76.7 million too, so not sure what the true number was, certainly considerably more than 8m though!
I doubt you will see this since I am writing so long after you posted this video, but here are my thoughts on your commentary. And looking first at "Threads", I confess did not see it. I did, however, see a clip of the blast scene, but I found it so unimpressive that I have very little interest in seeing any more of the movie. The constant interruptions by the teletype, for instance, were extremely distracting. It really seemed to diminish the dramatic impact of the scene. And was it really necessary to show some man sitting on the pot in the middle of it, or worse yes, some lady peeing herself while the bombs were going off?
It's understandable, I guess, that they may have shot those scenes. But that they made it past the final edit is kind of unconscionable to me. Is this an example of the unrelenting grittiness you were speaking of that American TV wasn't allowed to show? If so, what point did it serve in the film? Did the director include it to tell the audience (in case they weren't already aware) that a nuclear bomb exploding in their city was a bad thing? As if to say, you see, she's peeing down her leg, time to get serious! To me, it suggests rather an adolescent mind in charge of an amateurish, low-budget production and not the sort of thing I'd expect from a supposedly seasoned director, nor something I'd want to invest any further time in.
That's not to say a large budget is absolutely necessary to produce an entertaining drama. It's not. But when you combine it with bad directing and/or bad editing the resulting movie (like it subject matter) should be a bomb. So, however good this director may otherwise be when filming a documentary, he seems to me, at first glance, to be severely lacking in the instincts necessary to film a compelling action sequence. Nevertheless, this movie was apparently not the bomb its blast scene predicts. So on the basis of all the accolades this film has gotten, here and elsewhere, I will eventually give it another chance and watch it in its entirety. I'm not looking forward to it though. But when I do and find that I have been wrong in my initial reaction I'll come back to correct it.
As to "The Day After", this movie (start to finish) mesmerized me when it first aired back in 1983 (as it did the over 100,00 million who also saw its premier). It had been hyped up for weeks prior to its airing that we might want to prepare ourselves to be terrified. And as it turned out they weren't overstating the case. We were. In fact I recall that it was so impactful that when the spring came (which was the time they normally always reran the movies they premiered in the fall) they did not rerun it. In Detroit (where I lived) that first TV airing is all we got (the network, and/or the station managers apparently feeling it was just too powerful to show again). And it wasn't until I found it on UA-cam a few years ago that I'd see it again. I've seen it several times since and the insanity of it (so convincingly depicted) always gets to me.
So I obviously feel "The Day After" is the superior production, in budget, in star power, in production values, in general, and in the blast scene, particularly. And the part in that scene which gets me most is when the missiles are launching from the cornfields. That scene is so ominous, so prescient of impending doom it always gives me pause. And that is also how a good director shows his audience when it's time to start taking things seriously.
And as to your criticism of the TDA blast scene, you might want to consider that in the cold war, people had maybe a much better understanding of the immediate effects of an atomic explosion than those who weren't part of that era. We knew, for instance, that such an explosion is commonly divided by physicists into 4 kill zones. At the epicenter everything organic is simply vaporized by the intense heat. Further out a very large percentage of living things are killed by fires ignited by the high temperatures generated by the blast, further out still and beyond the point of spontaneous combustion people and animals are still getting killed from structures toppled by the resulting shock wave. And beyond that there are, of course, the adverse and often deadly effects of radioactive fallout from the bomb.
Well unlike "Threads", "The "Day After" depicted the deaths that would have occured in all four killing zones. Showing people being turned into x-rays and then disappearing, therefore, was not hokey or weird, as you'd complained. They were merely showing how people at the epicenter would have died in such a way that the audience would recognize which killing zone they died in. And although it was apparently lost on you, I assure you it was not lost on anyone living in the US in 1983.
OK so I have now seen the movie "Threads" in it's entirety and i admit that the blast scene is better in context than it was as a stand-alone video. The issues i had with it are still there, however. They're just not as noticeable. And TDA remains for me superior movie and largely because it seems just the right balance between tragedy and restraint.
"Threads" just went on and on about the horrors of nuclear war and long past the point where i said, OK, I get it, nukes are bad! "The Day After" however made the same exact point with just one scene. When the farmer came home to squatters on his property and got shot for his trouble when he confronted them on it, that was the moment that made it very clear that civilization was over and survival of the fittest had taken over as the law of the land.
More than that, the audience fully understood that TDA depicted only a limited nuclear war and that said a great deal to. It left us realizing with no ambiguity that if that is limited, an all out war would leave virtually no chance of survival. It would also make for a very short movie, one where everyone just vaporized. The producers of TDA in showing restraint in their production understood something that the "Threads" producers missed. Less is more.
And one final criticism I'll mention is that I had a hard time empathizing with any of the lead characters "Threads". In contrast, I found myself caring a great deal more over the plight of the hospital staff, their patients, the students and the farm families than I did any of the characters in "Threads" This may have been a cultural thing, but when the writer doesn't give us characters who show evidence of actually having a lot of character (characters you can root for throughout the movie) it's hard to get all that emotional when their inevitable deaths arrive. "Threads as a result is not so much an effective social commentary as it is a carnival of gore that I'd guess provoked a lot more switching of the channel than it's director would have liked.
In summary, some may have found it rivetting. I'm not one of them.
@@itt23r No, The Day After actually depicts a full scale nuclear war. Actor, John Cullum indicated this in the film's intro on ABC and the disclaimer at the film's end says this also. Look it up.
@@timothyhayden I don't know what you are reading. But I do recall that they made it very clear prior to the movie airing that it was a a limited nuclear exchange. And they also explained the reason they did it. It was because if they had depicted a full scale nuclear war there would have been virtually nothing left of the midwest to make a movie about.
The very fact therefore that there were stories to tell after the exchange proves that it was a depiction of limited nuclear warfare.