Product Details

• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Sony Pictures Home E
• VHS Release Date: May 25, 1994
• Run Time: 92 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6303052908
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #267,887 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Cold War Classic, September 24, 2005

By 

Roger J. Buffington (Huntington Beach, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Panic in the Year Zero [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is probably the best movie ever made about World War Three. Made in 1962 at the height of the Cold War, Panic in Year Zero is the story of a family which luckily leaves Los Angeles the morning before the city, and the nation, are attacked by hydrogen bombs. The film is their story of survival. Society breaks down, ammunition becomes the only currency, and survival is the order of the day.

This film, as other reviewers note, has nothing in the way of special effects. Nevertheless, this is an engrossing film with pretty good acting, and the viewer truly gets a feeling of what a nuclear war might have been like for the survivors. The "official war bulletins" that punctuate the movie sound real, and really add to the sense that a nuclear holocaust has taken place. I have seen several films about nuclear war, but this one remains my favorite even after all of these years.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good 60's Movie, January 22, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Panic in the Year Zero [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I love this movie! I remember seeing it years ago as a kid and then got to watch it again 30 years later. Although it's a black & white "B" movie made in the early 60's, I think the characters, plot and dialog are really good. I like the non-victim mentality of the main characters. I think the story line was well thought out and always left me thinking what I would do if I was in a similar situation and I always liked optimistic endings. It doesn't have all the special effects, stunts and foul language you see in today's movies, which I also like.

It can give you a good view of the mind-set of the pop culture during the cold war era.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Modest Yet Intense Thriller Catches Spirit of Cold War, January 24, 2004

By 

Martin Asiner (jersey city, nj United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Panic in the Year Zero [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Science fiction thrillers of the Cold War era tended to be grim reminders that man's stay on earth was at best a tenuous affair. PANIC IN YEAR ZERO asserts that when the chips are down in a nuclear holocaust even so-called 'good' folks are more likely to loot and steal than they would like to think. Ray Milland, who both stars and directs, hits just the right note of grim realism in front of and behind the camera. Milland is Harry Baldwin, a solid, middle class type who takes his wife (Jean Hagen), his son (Frankie Avalon) and daughter (Mary Mitchell) on a cartrip from their home in Los Angeles to the countryside when the Big Bomb falls. LA is devastated, though we see it only obliquely as a huge mushroom cloud and hear about it through their car radio. PIYZ is not a big budget film, and its special effects are non-existent. Yet, not for one moment does the viewer doubt the reality of the atomic war. Milland, with his weary face and stark grasp of reality, carries the film as he is in nearly every scene. He knows that the strands that hold society together are fragile, and the Bomb has severed them, possibly forever. As director, Milland sets up the viewer to accept the bruising of human decency as he places himself as an actor in several minor yet revealing scenes that point out, more to the audience than to him, that law and order ultimately reside in the barrel of a gun. The race for survival falls to those who can make the necessary mental adjustment. Part of the queasy feeling that PIYZ is so rich with is that humanity is held together only by the most fragile of mutual consents. The opportunity for some savage wilding is apparently too irresistable for many. The radio intones incessantly about looters, and Milland has to confront a trio of punks that in ordinary times would probably have limited their hell raising to stealing a few hub caps. Even his own son (Frankie Avalon) has to recognize that killing is a two-edged sword and that to take pleasure in it is to lower himself to the same level as the riffraff. For Americans who had just recently witnessed the hovering of fingers on the buttons of nuclear armaggedon during the Cuban missile crisis, PIYZ was surely a wakeup call to bless those fingers that did not plunge those red buttoms into their deadly bases.