Two 1980s Nuclear Nightmares

If you haven’t had your fill of nuclear doomsday narratives, here are two more.

The Atomic Cafe (1983) is a clever, satirical documentary made up of archive footage from a variety of sources from the late 1940s to the early 1960 addressing every aspect of cold war era nuclear anxiety. Both frightening and darkly funny, it very nicely distills many of the themes in the discussions we’ve had over the last two weeks.


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1126269724766604475&ei=4yuqS-KgHI6mqgL0g7DRBg&q=atomic+cafe&hl=en#

Threads (1984) is a BBC made for TV movie about a nuclear attack on Great Britain. It is, in a sense, a British Day After. It feels decidedly more real than it’s American counterpart broadcast a year earlier. Believe it or not, it is even darker and bleaker. It is widely regarded as the very best, most disturbing and haunting imagining of nuclear war and its aftermath from the 1980s.


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2023790698427111488&ei=Ay2qS7-lNZPorAL7rNXWBg&q=threads&hl=en#

Nuclear War Films on the Digital Campus

In addition to the three required films for next week (Fail Safe, Dr. Strangelove and The Day After), two more movies nuclear war themed movies have now been added to the Digital Campus page. These are On the Beach and The Bedford Incident (1965) (which Whitfield briefly discusses). Though I will not hold you responsible for these two movies, I do recommend that you watch them if you have a chance. It will enrich our discussions on Tuesday and Thursday.

If you encounter problems with streaming from the Digital Campus, please let me know in an email so I can report it the folks at the library. Please be as specific in your description of the problem as possible.

Recommended and Required Movies Free Online

Thanks to Professor Eversley, whom some of you know, I am now aware of a site where some of our recommended and required viewings are available for free. You may need to install a plugin to watch them, however. If that’s the case, you’ll need to follow the links right below the viewer window to install DivX. You may not be able to do so if you are in a computer lab.


You can watch Double Indemnity (1944) (required for next Thursday) and Blue Velvet (1986)(recommended for this Thursday) on stagevu.com for free. Click on the poster images above to visit the site and watch the movies.

Going forward, movies available on stagevu.com will be linked from the calendar page.