The Day After (2-Disc Special Edition)

This made-for-TV movie originally aired the same year I graduated from high school and went off to college. It was definitely a product of its time. I don't think a movie like this could be made, much less broadcast on network TV, during any other period of American history. It perfectly captured the mood of the day, and the fears that we all had back then. The US-Soviet détente of the 1970s was well and truly over; and the Cold War was hotter than it had been at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The hawkish anticommunist crusader, Ronald Reagan, had been in the White House for over two years; and it would be another two years before the pragmatic reformer and peacemaker, Mikhail Gorbachev, would rise to the top position in the Kremlin. Arms control negotiations between the two superpowers had broken down; and the nuclear arms race was rapidly escalating. Reagan administration officials were openly discussing the notion of "winnable nuclear war" and the potential benefits of developing a "first strike" capability. Meanwhile, Soviet troops were bogged down in Afghanistan, fighting a costly war against Islamist insurgents (or "freedom fighters" as we called them back then) covertly armed and equipped by the US. And this was just one of the many "proxy wars" being waged around the globe between US-backed and Soviet-backed factions. The public rhetoric between the US and USSR was often quite hostile. Although it's hard to imagine today, back then it really did seem like the two superpowers were rapidly heading towards an inevitable confrontation that could very well end in nuclear war and the complete destruction of modern civilization. I can recall, as a high school student in the early Reagan years, having casual conversations with my friends about where we'd rather be in the event of a nuclear war: at ground zero, where we'd be killed instantly and spared the tremendous suffering that survivors would have to face, or in a well-stocked fallout shelter far from ground zero, where we'd have a fighting chance of survival, but would face unimaginable horrors, unbearable hardships, and a very bleak future. Okay, I'll admit that my friends and I were a little weird; but our concern about the possibility of nuclear war wasn't at all unusual back in the early-1980s. Everyone back then was worried about nuclear war. And this movie takes those worries and shows us what would happen if they came true. The results are even more horrifying than you could imagine. Over the years, many movies have been made about nuclear war; but this movie is unlike any of those other films. This movie isn't about the actions of politicians and generals. It isn't about the unique experiences of submarine commanders or B-52 pilots. It's not a spy thriller or a post-apocalyptic sci-fi film. It's not a heroic tale of intrepid survivors beating the odds and rebuilding a new civilization from the rubble of the old. Instead, it's a bleak, depressing, utterly heartbreaking portrait of what the experience of nuclear war would be like for ordinary citizens in America's heartland. It is painfully realistic in its portrayal of the horrors of nuclear war. It doesn't pull any punches. But it doesn't make things seem worse than they really would be for dramatic effect, either. What you see in this film is a pretty good approximation of the sort of things that actually would happen in a full-scale thermonuclear war. In a way, this movie is much more frightening than any horror film; because this could really happen. (Fortunately, the odds of it happening are much, much lower today than they were when this movie first aired; but there's still a chance it could happen.) This is nightmare fuel. If you're the sort of person who can't watch horror films because you find them too disturbing, then you probably shouldn't watch this. Likewise, if you hate depressing movies that don't have happy endings, this really isn't the film for you. Though, personally, I actually felt pretty good after watching this the other night. It kinda lifted my spirits, in a perverse sort of way, by putting things into perspective. After watching this, and seeing the absolute worst thing that realistically could happen, my life seems pretty good by comparison, and the problems I'm dealing with and challenges I'm facing seem almost trivial. It was oddly therapeutic. (Yeah, I know, I'm weird.) If you want to know what it would be like to live through a full-scale thermonuclear war, then this is definitely the movie to watch. It's rather melodramatic in places; but that was fairly typical for TV shows and made-for-TV movies in the early '80s. Like I said before, it was a product of its time. So, I'm going to cut it some slack in terms of the melodrama, and say that it's a good film in spite of its frequent emotional clumsiness. I'd recommend this movie to anyone who is interested in learning more about the effects of nuclear war.

Great movie. Growing up during that time ... well, it shows how things were.

I saw the previews on ABC television when this film was the talk of 1983. I was not at all primed for what I watched those next two uninterrupted hours. I remember President Reagan coming on immediately after the telecast admonishing the public to stay sober and that the country was nowhere near the stage of this film. Well, that's what politicians are supposed to say. I later read he was as shook up as everyone else. He sat depressed by himself for a long time after his private screening. There is a denominator commentary in the film that addresses our capacity to block out reminders of our mortality.The movie does not and nor should it apologize for its transparency of just how people are : sheeple . We witness the simplified bubble-like existance of Lawrence, Kansas, in seemingly mass denial that the unthinkable could happen literally in their back yard and why not literally since a missile silo is twenty yards to the right of the barn.But maybe Im being a bit harsh here. Maybe denial is the best coping mechanism when you live yards away from a live round underground missile silo currently being checked...twice. The story doesn't build with predictable speeches from brooding academics or senior cynics sitting on porches sipping cider. We get the story the way jaded America gets it : news flashes and testing signals from the emergency broadcasting system on TV screens in the backgrounds of various living rooms of the characters and they treat it as an afterthought...as we do. But select characters heard the breaking news about soviets closing in on Berlin and moiled over a mounting nuclear strike but not where they couldn't retreat to the comfort of the conventional wisdom of " ...or maybe they will contain it" and use those symphony tickets. But not the audience. The director keeps the TV loud enough in the background where we can hear and discern the urgency while the girls argue over who hid the birth control pills. There was a scene where little kids were watching TV where a reporter described missiles being air-burst over "advancing soviet troops" as they showed American air force pilots running to their bombers and what were their parents doing? Walked right by the TV to go have sex! The movie explores motivations in how the mind copes with the inevitable by instinctively retreating to primal appetites like food and sex which illustrates mans deeper instinctive longing to be told what to do when a crisis hits. The whole essence of our faith in warning systems and voices over speakers telling where to hide and where to meet rides on it...that cocoon of cynical co-dependency finally fails in the face of a power that is sovereign and absolute in its destruction. And this was pretty much how the film revealed the story to us in the first hour...through news flashes and speculative conversations between the jaded and the seasoned everywhere from barbershops to university cafeteria to country kitchens prepping for life's rare highlight: the daughter's wedding. The second hour was not just a storm cloud of Iconic images and sounds of a population caught unprepared, it was an in your face frontal assault against our sensibilities. 1)The sounds we cherish like the quiet cornfields and rustling wheat violated by the unnerving radio squawking of " We want to confirm...is this an exercise...negative..repeat..negative. Roger copy...this is not an exercise!" 2) Downtown shoppers running in a panic horrified at the thought of not enough room in the shelters intercut with Eve setting the table while worrying is there enough potato salad for the guests. ...and then the blood scream as her husband snatches her from making the beds and carries her to the basement...she knows its over. 3) The little boy in the backyard frozen with his mouth gaped open watching a missile emerge out of that fenced off sandbox yards away his parked bicycle. 4) The disembodied voice in the chaotic supermarket yelling, "just get the canned goods...the batteries." 5) Dr. Oats listening to emergency broadcast instructions while driving alone on the expressway as gridlock clogs the opposite direction. 6) Doctors rush into the hospital courtyard to see missile trails overhead. 7) A football game in a sold out stadium. The players stop. No movement in the stands as three white smoke trails arc the sky. Intimacy. Innocence. Healing. The winning touchdown replaced with the touch down of an ICBM in twenty minutes. All society signposts vaporized. We are left with a slow disintegration of relationships for the rest of the film. No feel good bonding here. Again, the script doesn't let you exhale. The special effects were more implied than absolute.They didn't have to be absolute because it fit the movie's gritty saturated look of once vibrant colored reds and golds of a Kansas countryside seared into the dirty white ashen gray of an impending nuclear winter that could last six years. The director lingers the camera on scenes of suffering to where its uncomfortable and sometimes excruciating to watch. Self preservation runs amok. Man has thrown his two babies of moral and ethical facilities out with the bath water of commonsense. The rest is anarchy, sticks, and stones. "Is there anybody there...anybody at all." The Professor asks over the CB radio as the movie ends. The film doesn't answer that question. It just takes its place as one of the great movie lines that addresses when man makes eye contact with the insurmountable...and it doesn't blink. Its been thirty years since "The Day After". The question remains unanswered.

I've watched this excellent and scarily realistic film a couple of times since I bought this DVD. I'm moved to write this brief review now, in early August 2016, just after seeing on MSNBC a piece titled "Trump asks why US can't use nuclear weapons", in which the presenter reveals that Trump met with a seasoned foreign policy advisor and asked him 3 times in the hour-long meeting why can't we use nuclear weapons if we have them! General Hayden, former CIA and NSA head was asked on the programme about the time involved between a potential President Trump ordering a nuclear strike and actual launch, he said it depends on scenario, but the system is designed for efficiency and speed, not for debating the decision. Watch this film and you'll see that unquestioning efficiency in action. Hopefully Trump will not win, or will drop out or be taken out, but a morally bankrupt superpower like the US is likely to throw up another crazy some time.

Thanks to Movies 'n Stuff, an independent Seller from Ottawa who never let's me down for a quality Used DVD.

Good depiction of the loss of society and the grim reality of post nuclear exchange survivors.

Un trabajo de ciencia ficción que debería ser vista por todos, un conflicto de esas dimensiones y la desesperanza de los que sobreviven deja un mensaje muy duro

ti fa capire molte cose, venditore gentilissimo e velocissimo