Customer Reviews

The Day After

5 star:		(78)
4 star:		(51)
3 star:		(25)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

The political controversy over "The Day After" when it was first broadcast in 1983 had to do with the idea that a television movie about a nuclear war was an indictment of the policies of the Reagan Administration. Of course "The Day After" was not an attack on a particular president, but rather it represented the liberal nightmare of the worst of all possible futures, with a full out nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. Four years later the ultimate conservative nightmare was aired with the mini-series "Amerika," in which the United States has been taken over by the Communists. Both were predicated on questionable assumptions, the former on an escalation of a conflict over Berlin and the later on the effects of an electro-magnetic pulse, but those were both simply excuses to tell the story that wanted to be told.

Ultimately "The Day After" is not so much a story as it is a depiction of what a nuclear war would be like that comes under the heading of "seeing is believing." Prior to the airing of this television film Hollywood showed what it was like to live in the world after a nuclear war in films from "On the Beach" to "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome," suggested that a nuclear war would be so horrible that a president would drop nuclear bombs on New York City rather than go to war in "Fail Safe," and ended the Cold War satire of "Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" with a series of atom bomb's exploding set to the popular song "We'll Meet Again." But what they did not show was what that nuclear war would be like. Even the "Star Wars" universe assumed there would be a nuclear war some day, as did I, but depicting the horrors of such a war was never really done until "The Day After."

However, exploding mushroom clouds and the victims of radiation poison were not what was most memorable about "The Day After." The icon image from the film became the shots of the missiles taking off, with the people of Lawrence, Kansas looking up into the sky at the ICBMs headed towards the Soviet Union knowing that their missiles were heading for us. Suddenly it became clear that the true moment of horror would be when you saw those missiles because chances were you would never see the mushroom cloud that took your life. In fact, given the choice between being incinerated and surviving long enough to watch your loved ones suffer horribly, I think most people would hope for the quick death. This film turned those last few minutes of life from the old joke about how you need to bend over, put your head between your knees and kiss you ass goodbye into an enduring image of outright terror.

The worst moments of this film are the painful period between the missiles taking off and the nukes exploding. One of the silos is right next to the Dahlberg farm, and the emotion nadir of the film is Denise Dahlberg (Lori Lethin) comes down the stairs holding the wedding dress she will never get to wear and her father tells her to get into the storm cellar. Then Jim Dahlberg (John Cullum) has to go upstairs and drag his wife Eve (Bibi Besch) screaming and crying away from the bed she is making in a desperate attempt to pretend that the world is not coming to an end.

Jason Robards is Dr. Russell Oakes, who along with Nurse Nancy Bauer (JoBeth Williams) has to deal with the casualties following the detonations at a besieged hospital, and Stephen Klein (Steve Guttenberg) is the guy who takes refuge with the Dahlbergs. Joe Huxley (John Lithgow) is the college professor who gets to supply most of the relatively small amount of exposition the story requires: a student thinks they are safe because Kansas is in the middle of nowhere, but the professor is the one who points out "There's no 'nowhere' anymore" since there is an Air Force base and 150 Minutemen Missile silos spread halfway down Missouri, all constituting "an awful lot of bullseyes." When the missiles take off he is the one who knows it takes thirty minutes to reach their target, a fact that applies to the incoming missiles as well.

I remember the night of November 11, 1983 as I watched "The Day After" how ABC did not run any commercials after the nukes went off and that right afterwards the network had a special news program in which Dr. Carl Sagan introduced us to the idea of a "nuclear winter" and the fact that the reality of a nuclear exchange would be much worse than we had seen. To say that this was a sobering idea to give an audience that was already depressed by what they had seen, would be an understatement. Sagan, of course, was opposed to the use of nuclear weapons and condemned the arms race. Speaking on the other side, which is to say in favor of the concept of nuclear deterrence, was William F. Buckley, Jr., and what we got to see in that debate (which is still available on video) was that both were right.

It is rather amazing, given the history of humanity, that it has been almost sixty years since nuclear weapons have been used in war. Ironically, we now live in a world where we still believe that those weapons are going to be used, although now we assume it will be the work of terrorists (or an attempt to stop terrorists) and not a war between East and West. I would not be surprised if right now Hollywood is kicking around ideas of what it would be like the day after that sort of nuclear detonation, going beyond what we saw in "The Sum of All Fears." Hopefully it would be as successful at forestalling our worst nightmares as "The Day After" has been these many years.

I first saw this movie a few months ago on television, and even with all the commercials, I stay tuned for all 3 hours of it. I have never been more frightened for this world in my entire life, and that is a fact. "The Day After" deals with a nuclear war, and the main characters are everyday folk, like us, in Middle America. The movie was filmed in the early 1980's, when the Cold War was at it's peak, and every film studio came out with cheap action films about post-nuclear war heros and giant radioactive insects.

But this telefilm, guided by the talented Nicholas Meyer(Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan), rose to new heights and presented us with a vision of a world that has lost all sense of reason and hope, with 2 powerful nations taking their ignorance out on the billions who are innocent, but still pay for the actions brought on by the ignorant. Jason Robards plays a doctor and Steve Guttenburg(his best performance by far) as a man traveling home are just two of the many everyday people bound together by horrible circumstances.

Two of the most powerful scenes that brought tears to my eyes is where a battered priest is reading from his Bible from a bombed out church, with devastation all around him, and the people in attendance are scarred, bloody, and dying. And as the priest trys to raise hopes about God's plan, and about keeping faith, a little girl dies in her sleep, apparently from radiation sickness.And the family, without saying anything, gets up from their pew, and walks away, while the priest, in desperation, increases his voice, having a hard time himself believing in a God that would let this happen.

Another heart-wrenching scene is when a group of people are in a building hiding from the radiation, when they pick up a message from the President of the United States, telling Americans that a cease fire had been called, and that the US did not surrender, won't surrender, and he felt sympathy for the losses inflicted, but the great nation of America still lives, and he too had suffered personal losses. And as he said this the camera pans around the room, and instead of patriotic fervor from the survivors, you get the more realistic blank faces, from people who had just seen the world as they knew it destroyed, family, friends dead. This scene shows how futile and pointless war of any kind is.

What was the most powerful is that even though we can inflict so much pain on each other, as presented very clearly and graphically in this film, is that there are those who will die to save others in the aftermath, such as in the hospital where the doctors died themselves, worked to death comforting the dying. I think that this film will touch everyone's soul, and hopefully someone in power will take heed of this movie. The threat of nuclear holocaust is still with us, and it would not take much for this film to become reality. Please buy this, rent this, or catch it the next time it is on television. We should not all have to suffer just because a few egomaniacs can't shake hands. This is just one of the many lessons this film teaches, and hopefully it will be a lesson learned, for all of our sakes.

When this made-for-TV movie came out, I remember being scared out of my pants for days literally... The fact that this was at the height of the Cold War era, and many people believed that Ronald Reagan was... well crazy enough and so were the Soviets made this broadcast so real. Oddly enough though, the British managed to outdo it with THREADS, which made me about twice as physically ill when it aired on TV.

The Broadcast was scary, and I remember after a panel of experts appearing on a special Nightline and a special call in to discuss issues. - - Could it happen ? Could anyone survive ? Would the living envy the dead ? - - and even more horrifyingly the fact that one of the more controversial elements of the broadcast was the arguement that the broadcast presented an OPTOMISTIC view of what it would be like to survive a nuclear holocaust.

Though just a made for TV movie (in an era when made-for-TV movies were usually corny), I have found this broadcast to be the most disturbing movie I've ever scene because at the time it was such a real possibility. (Even now it is... but then you could really sense that the U.S. was at a "let's see who blinks first" stand off with the Soviet Union.)

In conclusion, THE DAY AFTER actually wasn't the first broadcast of its type... about 40 years earlier there was actually a radio drama centered around the aftermath of a Nuclear War called THE FIFTH HORSEMAN... check it out ! ! !

I remember the initial pre-broadcast hype for this movie. It aired on a Sunday and everyone at church that day was asking "Are you going to watch The Day After tonight?" Most everyone we knew was planning on watching it. My husband and I watched it and unlike most TV movies, it seared itself into my mind and the vivid images are still there today.

Nearly twenty years later, I now live in the KC metro area. We are within an hour drive of Whiteman AFB and Fort Riley AB, 10 minutes from a major armament manufacturer, and one of the world's largest communications corporations has it's headquarters nearby - in other words - we're still a prime target. With all the goofballs in the middle east right now, the scenes from this movie still scare me because I know nuclear war is a very real possibility.

The actors all did a wonderful job and were totally believable. I enjoy everything I've ever seen Jason Robards in. He was a national treasure and added class to every film he graced.

The special effects were terrific for their day and still hold up. The movie effectively describes the aftermath of nuclear war, horrifyingly updating such cold war classics as "Alas, Babylon". However, I agree that the British movie "Threads" was much more terrible in it's depiction of atomic aftermath.

I can't say I enjoyed this movie. How can you enjoy something that so frightens and depresses you? But I highly recommend it. Parts may be too frightening for younger children.

After many years of wanting to see this movie and the UK equivalent "Threads", I finally bit the bullet and ordered them on-line (I live in Australia and can't ever recall ever seeing these two movies aired on television here.).

I've done a lot reading about Nuclear War etc etc, and comparing both Threads and The Day After is like comparing a Duck Liver Truffle Pate' with Chicken Liver Cat Food.

Threads is hands down the more realistic and more frightening of these two films. Threads gives the viewer a more realistic insight into radiation sickness (The Day After makes it seem like a bit of an inconvenience instead of a fatal illness), disease, end of society and law and order, and the Nuclear Winter.

In the Day After after the bombs go off, the sun is shining, radiation seems to disappear to safe levels quite quickly and no Nuclear winter to even speak of, it's almost like the creators of the film wanted to make people walk out with a smile on their face.

Watch Threads, as you'll see post survivors eating rats and dead sheep (uncooked straight from the carcasse), Radiation Sickness of all magnitudes, newborn mutations/retardation, pretty much the end of everything... and still Threads is probably not that close to the real reality of what would eventuate.

Threads = More realistic, convincing, frightening, educational

The Day After = Hollywood fluff

Probably the most heartbreaking scene in "The Day After" is the one where four missiles bearing nuclear warheads zoom into a crystalline blue sky on a glorious spring morning from a hidden bunker in Kansas, while doctors and nurses at a nearby hospital watch in shock as the impact of what those missiles mean gradually hits them.

Watching this film, we pray that scene never comes true; if it does, we can kiss the world goodbye. "The Day After" is probably the most gut-wrenching anti-war film ever made. It's set sometime in the last quarter of the 20th century; the decades-long cold war has turned burning hot, and the news broadcasts are turning hourly worse. We are in Lawrence, Kansas, the center of the United States, following the routines of ordinary people as they try to go about their lives while the world around them is going to hell -- a doctor and his wife, a farmer and his family, including his young daughter two days away from her wedding, a graduate student, a cynical college professor, and a young soldier about to be separated from his wife and baby. The hostilities between Russia and the United States, meanwhile, have gone beyond the point of no return; and the decision is made: nuke 'em. We watch the missiles being launched; we feel all the horror of the impending counterstrike, and then three stark words from an officer at the missile base: "We have incoming." Incoming doesn't begin to describe it. Two nuclear warheads hit nearby Kansas City, and the world explodes. The resulting scenes of destruction are unbelievable; and yet, they are all too believable. If the wrong finger hits the nuclear button, this could someday happen.

The immediate scenes leading up to the nuclear strike are as compelling as the hit itself: shoppers at the supermarket grabbing up everything edible off the shelves; people bolting out of a college stadium in a panic dash for cover; a young bride-to-be coming downstairs to the family's fallout shelter carrying her wedding dress and her childhood teddy bear, the look of stark terror in her eyes competing with the realization that she will never wear that dress in any wedding; and her mother, grimly going about her business of making beds and tidying up the house, being carried kicking and screaming to shelter, refusing to accept the realization that her life as she knows it is finished. And after the devastation of the nuclear strike, as ashes continue to rain down from the sky for days, we realize that those who died in the attack may have been the fortunate ones; the survivors are left to face a horrible slow death by radiation sickness, starvation and anarchy.

Nicholas Meyer didn't direct this film for shock value, although the shocks keep coming and don't let up; in smaller but telling ways he makes us feel all the devastation of total war. At the film's end, one of the survivors asks, "Is anybody out there? Anyone at all?" His guess is as good as ours. There are no redeeming moments in this movie. From the minute the first button was pushed, everything is gone.

It's been said that "The Day After" is a dated film, but this is true only in the sense that the cold war, as we knew it from 1945 through the 1980s is over; as long as there are nuclear weapons around and anyone fanatic enough to even contemplate using them, it's a film with telling immediacy. When the film was first shown, some viewers asked, why didn't they say who started the war? Meyer shows us that the question is moot; no matter who started it, there will be precious few survivors left to point fingers. We emerge from watching "The Day After" emotionally devastated, drained, realizing that in a nuclear war, everyone, even the victors, will be the losers.

I remember seeing this movie when I was 15 years old. It has ever since burned an impression in my mind as a movie that should not be missed or dismissed.

Just recieved my copy tonight from Amazon, which I hadn't seen in the almost 20 years since it originally aired. While it wasn't exactly as horrific as I remember, it certainly will leave an impression that is daunting and yet leave you with a sense of incredible sadness as this could be a reality for us at any time.

The same school year that this movie came out (one of the best Made-For-TV movies ((IMO)) ever made, I had a World History teacher tell us that it would not be Russia (the former USSR) that would follow through with a nuclear threat, but smaller more rogue nations like we see in this year of 2003. I can't help but think he is right and knew something many of us didn't understand, including my elders.

If you haven't seen this movie, I recommend a viewing through a rental to see if it's something you want in your collection. It can be very disturbing and definately not for the weak or those easily disturbed by potentially real events depicted in fiction.

You may "walk" away with a sense of dread but maybe some hope given this was 20 years ago and we haven't hit that point yet. Never mind the clothes, the hair, the whatever, don't let the time period cloud you from the quality of the story and the potential reality of the story line. It is worth seeing and pondering. War, no matter it's origins always leaves innocent people in it's wake and this is one of those wars that does such a thing.

Jason Robards, those many years ago, at the end of the movie, left an image burned into my brain that I relived this night. An image that has haunted me for almost 20 years. I kid you not, this is not for the weak, those that always think the world is coming to an end...

I don't remember if I saw this movie or not as a young boy; I was only 3 1/2 when it was first shown on TV. I remember seeing it for the first time last summer when I was 20. Even though the threat of nuclear war with the Russians is sharply diminished, I truly understood the meaning and purpose of the movie.

I was a baby in the early 80's when US/Soviet tensions heated up. I never truly understood the danger of the period. However, in watching the movie, I realize just how likely nuclear war is even today. Watching the posturing and preening and machinations of countries like China, India, Pakistan and Israel, it makes me wonder if we might not see a nuclear war in our lifetimes.

The movie itself is a fine piece of work, you can't go wrong with Jason Robards and JoBeth Williams and John Cullum. It's a great script and it is wonderfully acted. It must be a tough role playing a nuclear war survivor having to deal with total social chaos. But they picked good actors for this movie, and a totally superb film resulted.

The world has changed rapidly and dramatically since 1983. But the story and the theme of The Day After has not worn out; if anything it's stronger. There are still thousands of nuclear warheads out there, still more than enough to easily destroy the human race. We must never use them, because as Jason Robards mentions in the movie "[cockroaches will be] the only guranteed survivor of a nuclear war." Strongly recommended viewing for everyone.

Like many of the viewers here, I watched this movie when it first aired on TV, I was in junior high school. I remember the TV stations and media warning people not to watch it alone, and to not let little kids watch. I remember the little 'discussion groups' about it at school the next day. The main image that was left in my mind was almost everyone being vaporized when the bomb hits, and their skeletons showing through for a moment (especially the couple on their wedding day- that must have been kind of a drag).

I was home from work sick a few months ago, and had nothing to watch. The movie hadn't started too long ago, and I figured what the heck, it would probably be interesting to see how 'dated' it looked, and how it wasn't even remotely scary anymore (especially since I wasn't 14 and impressionable, and one of the least of my worries as an adult is a nuclear war-I remember being scared it would happen on a regular basis for weeks after seeing the movie as a kid). I remember thinking that all the warnings to viewers were just really good publicity stunts by the networks to get people to watch. Maybe it would even be 'campy', right? Ha-ha! No.

I watched the movie with only mild interest at first, but got more and more upset as it went on. This movie has not lost any of its impact, but actually disturbed me much more as an adult. Maybe its because I am now grown up, married, know how short life really is, and have more of a realistic idea about how horrible life would really be 'the day after'. I was actually shocked at how graphic and scary the movie was, especially to have been shown on prime time TV in the early 80's, even when watching in the middle of the day. There's a truly chilling scene when a main character has been in a bomb shelter too long and completely loses it, to bolt outside. She's so far gone that she just twirls around happily, as if she came out and the land they lived on looked exactly the same. Instead, the sky is grey, ash covers every surface, every single bit of plant life is dead, and the family dog and all the livestock lie flyblown and rotting (there is dead silence, expect for the sound of flies surrounding the bodies)...in another scene set in a hospital, there was a huge jump that made me hit the ceiling and left me muttering a curse afterwards.

There are other images that I couldn't get out of my head for a long time, such as one of the last scenes where a man visits his ex-girlfriend in some sort of shelter for the radiation victims. They both end up sobbing, and the camera keeps pulling back until you see the other dead and dying people surrounding them number probably closer to the thousands than the 50 or so you thought were in the shelter at the beginning of the scene. It just keeps getting more and more depressing, grim, and scary, until the last incredibly depressing scene, which is made even sadder and more emotional because you see a character obviously insane and dying who you thought might be one of the ones to make it. Afterwards, I think I ended up having to watch "Hairspray" or something equally cheerful to cheer myself up and get my mind off it before I could take a nap.

I always heard how "Threads" made "The Day After" look like an after school special, and had been looking for a copy for a long time (since when I hear that a movie is shocking and upsetting, it usually makes me want to see if it can live up to the buzz). I finally found a store that carries it, but you know what? After getting nightmares after seeing "The Day After" as an adult, I think I'll just pass on "Threads"...

This apocalyptic view of nuclear war was a made for TV movie aired on ABC. Starring Jason Robards as a physician, Steve Guttenburg as a medical student and John Lithgow as a college professor, the movie is set in or around the University of Kansas at Lawrence and Kansas City. The pacing builds up as tension between East and West heightens through news bulletins and growing public anxiety over the threat of war disrupts daily lives, including wedding preparations. That is the main point, how even the build up can be disastrous and the event itself is absolutely catastrophic. The effects are realistic and the make-up showing radiation poisoning is graphic. However, the movie underestimates the pure power of the weapons which would be used and more people live through the initial attacks than would be the case if 20-35 megaton warheads were used. Nonetheless, this movie is an excellent portrayal of the social disorganization and medical misery resulting from nuclear war. Only "Threads" and the British 1967 "The Wargame" are better.