Topic: Threads

[rickl]

The Global Nuclear War between East and West began twenty-three years ago today, on Thursday, May 26, 1988, at 8:30 a.m. GMT. It started with a single Soviet nuclear missile detonated over the North Sea. The electromagnetic pulse from that blast blew out the phones and electrical power across northern Europe and brought Britain’s days as a technological society to an end.

The 210 megatons of nuclear warheads that fell upon the island seven minutes later finished off everything else.

And it was the same all over the world. No hiding place: by the end of the day, the former citizens of Europe, the Soviet Union, the United States, and probably China and Japan had all been reduced to scattered individuals and small groups, buried, burned, punctured by flying debris, each hiding from the radiation and trying to survive in a new world of ashes and bones.

Or so goes the internal chronology of Threads – a television play about nuclear war written by Barry Hines, directed and produced by Mick Jackson, and broadcast by BBC Two on September 23, 1984. A harrowing 110-minute rollercoaster ride through World War III and its aftermath, Threads was both shocking and controversial to telly audiences in early-1980s Britain, and remains controversial to this day. Over the past two and one-half decades, the film’s bleak and unrelenting narrative, brutal tone, and lo-fi documentary look have made it a legend among nuke-film fans, yet time has not dulled its blunt impact and haunting imagery. In many ways, to many people, Threads remains perhaps the most infamous made-for-TV film ever created.

But this is no The Day After, no slick ABC all-American apocalypse. This is a stripped-down, no-name, Brit-bleak vision of the Big One. You ain’t sitting in a basement with John Lithgow and Flounder from Animal House when you watch Threads, and perky JoBeth Williams isn’t going to show up in her spotless nurse’s whites to soothe Jason Robards’ radiation-fevered brow.

Read the whole thing.

That was a great blog post, and a trip down Memory Lane for me.  I posted this in the "Entertainment" category since it was about a British TV movie, but it was anything but "entertaining".

Threads is simply the greatest TV movie ever made.  It was absolutely harrowing and uncompromising.  It was the cinematic equivalent of being beaten up by a street gang.

In the U.S., we had The Day After, which was released with much ballyhoo and fanfare, and featured several big name stars.  But it was a Disney-fied version of nuclear war compared to Threads.  When I first saw Threads, I was literally shaking by the time the first bomb went off.  And things kind of went downhill from there.

[IronDioPriest]

Never heard of it before. I'll have to track it down.

[Glock32]

Yeah just wait until the islamofascists manage to unite a warhead with a viable delivery system. For the past several centuries, the last 2 especially, the West has had unchallenged technical and military superiority over the Islamic world. Even though they are unlikely to achieve parity across the board, it's really only in that one area that something even approaching parity would matter. We, or our immediate descendants, are going to curse our generation for not smiting them while the advantage was ours. Bloodlust? Not really -- they've gone to great lengths to advertise their intentions toward us and it's only because of our postmodern moral vanity that we whistle past the graveyard like this.

As for the movie - is that the one set in Sheffield, England? Or am I thinking of a different one?

[Alphabet Soup]

You can view it online here: http://stagevu.com/video/hmnvlknnvxlh

[AlanS]

Sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out when I get home next week.

[trapeze]

Never heard of it, either. I will check it out.

[Libertas]

So is the movie saying the Rooskies started it or are they saying in true peacenik fashion we drove them to it?

And I agree with G, the IslamoFascist has no qualm about blasting us all away and setting humanity back 1400 years, they are quite comfortable in such medieval conditions!