How much did the transition from black and white to color in television doom anthology shows? I have this theory that up until 1966 or so you could pass off the same room as, say, a ballroom in a very old Italian palazzo and a modern dining room without changing it much. After that shows were broadcast in color, so if people had a color set they could see the walls were the same.
That's only tangentially related to Panic in the Year Zero, a 1962 disaster thriller directed by and starring Ray Milland. The tangent is this: It's an AIP movie, which pretty much by definition means it had a very low budget. Milland uses stock footage for things like nuclear explosions and large scale traffic. But because it's all monochrome the seams don't show too much.
It's tight and efficient. Milland and Jean Hagen (Lina Lamont from Singin' in the Rain) lead a family of four going on a road trip. While they're driving a news alert on the radio tells them that their hometown of Los Angeles has been hit by a nuclear attack. And sure enough, there's a mushroom cloud on the horizon. What they have to survive, though, isn't radiation or mutants. It's just people, and the desperation of the moment.
Son Rick Baldwin, played by Frankie of Frankie and Annette fame, sometimes seems a little too eager to start killing in the "every man for himself" phase. Daughter Karen (Mary Mitchel) doesn't have that much to do here except...Well, there's an emphasis on rape in the movie that's somewhat realistic, somewhat exploitative, and brings some relief that this movie was made when the production codes were still in place.
Ann, the mother, is the conscience. As for Harry Baldwin, the father, Milland is to be congratulated here. Directing himself in the lead, he shows no vanity. Harry might have good motives, but he doesn't seem to be better than the average man. His ethics are compromised early on, even if he doesn't descend to all out savagery.
I liked this movie. It knows what it wants to be.
That's only tangentially related to Panic in the Year Zero, a 1962 disaster thriller directed by and starring Ray Milland. The tangent is this: It's an AIP movie, which pretty much by definition means it had a very low budget. Milland uses stock footage for things like nuclear explosions and large scale traffic. But because it's all monochrome the seams don't show too much.
It's tight and efficient. Milland and Jean Hagen (Lina Lamont from Singin' in the Rain) lead a family of four going on a road trip. While they're driving a news alert on the radio tells them that their hometown of Los Angeles has been hit by a nuclear attack. And sure enough, there's a mushroom cloud on the horizon. What they have to survive, though, isn't radiation or mutants. It's just people, and the desperation of the moment.
Son Rick Baldwin, played by Frankie of Frankie and Annette fame, sometimes seems a little too eager to start killing in the "every man for himself" phase. Daughter Karen (Mary Mitchel) doesn't have that much to do here except...Well, there's an emphasis on rape in the movie that's somewhat realistic, somewhat exploitative, and brings some relief that this movie was made when the production codes were still in place.
Ann, the mother, is the conscience. As for Harry Baldwin, the father, Milland is to be congratulated here. Directing himself in the lead, he shows no vanity. Harry might have good motives, but he doesn't seem to be better than the average man. His ethics are compromised early on, even if he doesn't descend to all out savagery.
I liked this movie. It knows what it wants to be.
2 comments:
I'm pretty sure I watched this movie at some point but have no idea quite when that was - probably on late night tv would be the best guess. I do know what you mean though about movies being made in black and white making it easier to reuse sets without particular places always being recognizable to audiences.
What makes this particular film interesting for me to consider is remembering what things were like after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 1962 in particular was the year of the Cuban missile crisis when JFK and Khrushchev engaged in a faceoff that the whole world watched as the Cold War escalated precariously toward the brink of what was then called the Doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction. That was the tactic employed by both superpowers that would enable them to destroy each other with intercontinental ballistic missiles, no matter who fired first. In the last 12,000 years, it was probably the closest human civilization has ever come to annihilation.
People had been frightened about this possibility ever since 1945 and a number of movies were made in those years about the possible aftermath of a major nuclear war. More famous by far than Panic in Year Zero were On The Beach and Dr. Strangelove. But there were others, and horror movies about mutants as well, which makes me think that Ray Milland and the people who put this film together were also very concerned to warn their audience about all that had changed, and could change, in the blink of an eye.
I agree there's much about the movie to like. Another good review, btw.
It seems like the kind of movie that would play a lot on various late shows. In a way that might be the best setting for it. The slight fuzz of static, cheap ads. Of course that's all fading now.
Nuclear arms were a funny thing in Western consciousness. With the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki it became clear that even primitive atomic weapons were more powerful than anything that had ever been known before. For a few years, Americans felt secure that they were the only ones that had these weapons, and there'd be no reason to use them again, right? But then of course the Soviets developed their own, due to a mixture of espionage and having their own gaggle of German scientists. Thus the arms war, and a lot more anxiety about things getting out of hand.
This movie occupies a strange and interesting ground in terms of mood. The world is pretty much set right by the end, which you can count as a happy ending. But too much has happened, and the main character is too compromised, for this to just be a civil defense picture.
Thank you. Another brief one coming up.
Post a Comment