The Day After
1983
Director: Nicholas Meyer
Cast Includes: Jason Robards, JoBeth Williams, Steve Guttenberg, John Cullum, John Lithgow, Bibi Besch, Lori Lethin, Amy Madigan, Jeff East
The Primal Screen:
The Bomb movie that created the most interest and controversy and really led the new wave of Bomb movies was The Day After, directed by Nicholas Meyer. The American equivalent of The War Game, it was actually a TV movie and was originally four hours long, but Meyer cut it down to 195 minutes. The British critics, right-wing polititions and other pundits of the Right heaped abuse upon it when it was televised [here] in Britain; it was called a 'second rate disaster movie' and a 'badly made soap opera' and while it's true that the first half is pretty feeble as Mayer introduces us to his cast of Kansas small-town characters who are so bland they make the Waltons seem interesting, the second half is quite powerful. Unusually for an American TV movie it is resolvedly bleak. There is no last-minute happy ending, no sudden miracle cure for the survivors; instead it finishes on a note of true despair. It's this uncompromising approach that, in the final analysis, elevates The Day After out of the status of 'mere American disaster movie' to something rather important. Its stark pessimism was undoubtedly the reason it caused such a fuss in both the United States and Britain and irritated polititions of a hawkish persuasion in both countries. After all, the year before had seen the transmission of a two-part TV movie called World War III, starring Rock Hudson and David Soul, in which a Russian and American military confrontation in Alaska all ends peaceably, and there was not the slightest murmer of dissent.
MS Cinemania 1994 - Leonard Maltin Review:
Chilling after-effects of the catastrophic nuclear bombing of Lawrence, Kansas, in a potent drama written by Edward Hume. Probably the most controversial TV movie of its time, with unrelenting grimness, performances ranging from sturdy to overwrought, and a rare musical score by David Raksin, with Virgil Thompson's The River interpolated. Foreign theatrical and home video tape (but not video disc) versions run 126 minutes. Cut by 23 minutes for network rerun.
External Links
updated february 2010