Lee Merlin, Miss Atomic Bomb, 1957
If you grew up in the 1980s you were terrified of dying in a nuclear war. The reason was simple: horrifying made-for-TV movies.
Starting with the oddly prophetic China Syndrome in 1979 all the way up through the mid-1990s, a spate of films dealing with nuclear destruction weighed heavy in Hollywood. The danger was certainly something everyone could relate to. Generation X heard the tales told to them by their Baby Boomer parents about what their Greatest Generation parents told them about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But Generation X doesn’t need to relay those stories to their own kids, they can simply frighten them with one of the films from their childhood instead.
And no TV movies dealing with the horrors of nuclear holocaust were scarier than these three, all from the year 1983: The Day After, Special Bulletin, and Testament.
The Day After (1983), directed by Nicholas Meyer
Touted as a premiere television event, the highly publicized The Day After was must-see-TV over at ABC. It had an incredible cast that, besides Jason Robards, were relatively unknown at the time, including JoBeth Williams, Amy Madigan, John Lithgow, and Steve Guttenberg among others.
For those of us who grew up in the ‘80s the appearance of Guttenberg was especially traumatic. In 1983 Guttenberg was the wisecracking everyman who didn’t seem to take life that seriously. He would later go on to star in the enormously successful Police Academy franchise, Cocoon, and Three Men and a Baby. Watching him lose his hair from radiation sickness and try to wisecrack his way through a nuclear winter was upsetting to say the least. ABC knew the film would be triggering for some viewers and went so far as to set up 800-number suicide hotlines. They even aired a debate post-show between Carl Sagan and William F. Buckley where the two discussed the nature of nuclear war; Buckley was oddly for it.
To say this film was a success is putting it mildly. The Day After remains the highest rated made-for-TV movie of all time. It is a good film, especially as it covers all the basics of nuclear horror: going blind from the intense light of the blast, the electromagnetic pulse knocking out engines, radiation sickness from the fallout, panic, and it’s also the only one of the three films discussed that shows the mushroom cloud money shot. The teaser trailer even all these years later is still scary as hell.
Nicholas Meyer, fresh off his stint as director of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, fought the censors relentlessly over what content was appropriate for a TV audience. He even threatened to take his name off in protest at one point before finally settling on what eventually aired. The film was screened for then President Reagan at the White House, who was reportedly moved by the portrayal of nuclear destruction, although no word on his opinion of the voice actor clearly doing a Reagan impression as “President.” Interesting side note, the voice-over was subsequently changed for VHS and DVD releases of the film.
Reagan’s presence is heavily felt in all three of these films as none of them give us a fictional representation of the President of the United States.
Special Bulletin (1983), directed by Ed Zwick
Found footage horror films are commonplace now. Franchises like the Blair Witch Project and the Paranormal Activity films provide a voyeuristic approach to horrors unfolding before our very eyes while cleverly building suspense. Special Bulletin employs a similar tactic (albeit decades earlier) appearing as a breaking news story unfolding in real time. Unlike The Day After, which had a lot of press leading up to their epic television event, Special Bulletin used a “cinema verité meets Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio program” approach to drain the blood from our faces while we wondered whether or not this was really happening.
The writer/director team behind Special Bulletin, Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick (who would later go on to great successes with Thirtysomething, My So-Called Life, Once and Again, as well as the Tom Cruise feature The Last Samurai), put together an interesting morality play wrapped inside a pulse-pounding thriller. A reporter and his cameraman doing a story on striking dock workers in Charleston, South Carolina get the scoop of their careers when they happen upon a gunfight and become subsequently kidnapped by nuclear activists. The activists in this case are former defense contractors and nuclear physicists, not exactly your run-of-the-mill homegrown terrorists. They have built their own nuclear bomb, big enough to take out all of Charleston, and demand that the more than 950 nuclear triggers in the Charleston area be delivered to them to be brought out to sea and destroyed. Their hope is that the Soviets will then follow suit in what will be the beginning of a unilateral worldwide nuclear disarmament. The reporter’s unfettered access provides us a front row seat for the drama.
The biggest difference between Special Bulletin and The Day After is some people didn’t know they were watching a movie. Even though the word “dramatization” was flashed at the bottom of the screen sporadically, as well as the disclaimers shown during commercial breaks, it didn’t stop over two thousand scared phone calls asking if Charleston was really in danger by rogue nuclear bombs. Despite the warning, Herskovitz and Zwick do a masterful job making it seem very real. The movie itself begins mid-commercial for a game show and soap opera only to be interrupted by network news coverage that is stilted and filled with technical difficulties. The actors, including the marvelous David Clennon and David Rasche as the lead terrorists, often speak over one another while the video camera sometimes goes in and out of focus. All of this lends credibility to being a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-live-broadcast. The ending, which I will not divulge here, remains one of the most frightening ever on television.
Special Bulletin is a long-forgotten television film that’s hard to find and is often confused with a made for HBO film that came out the following year called Countdown to Looking Glass.
Countdown to Looking Glass was sort of an amalgamation of both Special Bulletin and The Day After. Countdown had the same pulse pounding imagery of Special Bulletin, utilizing the live news coverage of events unfolding in real time combined with the human interest of The Day After all while showing us the behind the scenes of the lives of reporters and Washington officials. It even took its authenticity a step further, casting veteran newsman Eric Sevareid as himself interviewing a young Republican Congressman from Georgia, also playing himself, Newt Gingrich. The title refers to the name of the president’s plane that will fly five miles above the country in the event of a nuclear war to maintain continuity of government while avoiding danger. The movie makes it known, when Looking Glass takes off, it’s over. Like Special Bulletin I won’t give away this movie’s ending, but will say it’s equally haunting. While Countdown to Looking Glass is well worth a look, I highly suggest seeking out Special Bulletin if you can. Both films are out of print and difficult to find.
Testament (1983), directed by Lynne Littman
Testament is a tragically beautiful film. It unfolds slowly in a Bay Area suburb after San Francisco and other major cities have been destroyed by nuclear explosions. The people of the tight knit neighborhood do their best to band together as a community while they slowly wait for radiation sickness to kill them all.
Originally set to air on PBS as a made for TV film, Testament received a brief theatrical release due to its highly engrossing story. Testament follows Carol Wetherly, played by the marvelous Jane Alexander, who must slowly come to terms with the fact her husband isn’t ever coming back from San Francisco. She does everything she can to keep her children safe from the invisible death that cannot be outrun. Jane Alexander’s work is so emotionally complex she garnered her fourth well-deserved Oscar nomination for Best Actress.
There are so many indelible images in Testament that even after all these years have never left me. For a movie with such a high concept it has an intimate indie feel that thankfully spares us many of those Lord of the Flies/roving biker gangs of the apocalypse tropes. There is desperation but, like the stages of death, there is ultimately acceptance. Besides the wonderful Alexander, Testament has early performances by Lukas Haas, Roxana Zal, Rebecca De Mornay, and Kevin Costner. De Mornay and Costner, both on the cusp of breaking out as stars, play a young married couple with a newborn. In one incredibly poignant scene, we see Costner’s despondent Phil carrying a dresser drawer. We realize one beat behind that it’s for his infant’s body. As the people of the town begin dying one by one, we watch Carol cope as she helps do the impossible, including burying her own children. Watching Alexander carefully hand stitch a bed sheet around her daughter’s body is perhaps one of the most heartbreakingly emotional images ever put on film.
Of all the films made about nuclear war this one emphasizes the human toll the most.
End-of-the-world movies of today have been seemingly replaced by zombies. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the constant threat of a giant mushroom cloud decimating our major cities seemed to fall away greatly, at least on TV. That’s not to say it went away entirely, especially in science fiction. The Mad Max, Planet of the Apes, and Terminator franchises were predicated on the world being destroyed in nuclear holocaust. As time went on the Terminator films had to explain why the world hadn’t in fact yet been destroyed and went into crazy time-shifting theories that even students of the franchise would have trouble explaining. But that’s a good thing. I don’t know if we will all die in a nuclear explosion one day or not, but I do know I’ve never been more afraid of the prospect than I was back in 1983.
In addition to these stellar television movies seek out these exceptional made for TV and theatrical films dealing with nuclear war/nuclear accidents:
- Dr. Strangelove 1964 (mistake in the system)
- War Games 1983 (mistake in the system)
- Crimson Tide 1995 (mistake in the system)
- Fail Safe 1964 (mistake in the system)
- The China Syndrome 1979 (mistake in the system/nuclear whistleblower)
- Silkwood 1983 (mistake in the system/nuclear whistleblower)
- The Terminator 1984 (mistake in the system/human toll in the aftermath)
- On the Beach 1959 (human toll in the aftermath)
- Mad Max 1979 (human toll in the aftermath)
- The Road Warrior 1981 (human toll in the aftermath)
- Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome 1985 (human toll in the aftermath)
- Mad Max: Fury Road 2015 (human toll in the aftermath)
- A Boy and His Dog 1975 (human toll in the aftermath)
- Planet of the Apes 1968 (human toll in the aftermath)
- Panic in Year Zero 1962 (human toll in the aftermath)
- Miracle Mile 1988 (societal breakdown before the bomb)
- Threads 1984 (societal breakdown before the bomb/human toll in the aftermath)
- Thirteen Days 2000 (docudrama)
- The Missiles of October 1974 (docudrama)
- Hiroshima 1995 (docudrama)
- Fat Man and Little Boy 1989 (docudrama)
- Chernobyl 2019 (docudrama/mistake in the system/nuclear whistleblower)
Fred Shahadi is an award-winning filmmaker, playwright, and TV writer living in Los Angeles.
He is the author of the sci-fi conspiracy novel Shoot the Moon.
