I just watched Threads. Well that was fucking horrible, thank you very much. I feel like hanging myself. In case you don’t know, and I didn’t, it was a 1984 TV series about the consequences of a nuclear strike on the UK, centred on Sheffield. You can find it on Google’s pirate video service, but don’t. Because you’ll just feel like shit.
They played The Day After on Australian television back in the 80’s but I don’t remember this being shown. The Day After was miserable, but nowhere near the kind of programme that lingers on screaming domestic animals on fire. Although Threads makes it seem like there’s some small civilisation after ten years, where I seem to remember the US version implied they were all going to starve a lot faster.
I’ve had a few ‘end of the world’ student videos handed in this year and they’re clinical, clean, very much about digital apocalypse. One has a man left alone in the centre of the city, a wonderful feat for a student film to empty out a city of 4 million people – another has a ‘time problem’, with four survivors wandering about surrounded by impossibly frozen people – a great shot as the camera pans up at one point to catch a 747 stuck floating immobile in the air. It’s not the first time freeze movie I’ve seen (and it doesn’t solve the old problem – how the hell do these people breathe if time is frozen?) but it has great charm.
Threads has no charm. I mean, it’s a wonderfully done film, but it’s just dirty, messy, horrible. The government information from the era is so defeated – ‘if you’re outside, lie on the ground’. I guess I should be happy that the kids these days make neat and tidy devastation, although I hope they don’t really believe that it would be like that.
I blame Richard Fenwick.
There are people out there who are proud of their country’s nuclear arsenal. You’d have to be a complete tool. Actually, anyone who thinks war is glorious should go be in one.
I promise the cassettes are coming back. I’ve been busy.