Hacker Cinema
Testament
1983 · Film · 90 min
Directed by Lynne Littman
It's just another day in the small town of Hamlin until something disastrous happens. Suddenly, news breaks that a series of nuclear warheads has been dropped along the Eastern Seaboard and, more locally, in California. As people begin coping with the devastating aftermath of the attacks — many suffer radiation poisoning — the Wetherly family tries to survive.
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8 comments on Hacker News
Speaking of 1980s nuclear war movies, I'd recommend the US movie Testament. (1983) Everyone who was around remembers the grand spectacle that was The Day After (depicting the aftermath of a nuclear attack on a city), but Testament was, like Threads, a small scale story about a family. The movie is set in a small town too far away from cities to actually be damaged in the initial attack, but as the weeks go on the town begins to run out of supplies (because there is no longer a supply chain), and fallout begins to arrive in the rain, leading to radiation poisoning.
There's also a similar American film that seems to get forgotten -- 1983's Testament, which is about a small American town distant enough from big cities and military bases to avoid actually being damaged in the actual nuclear war, but which suffers from radiation sickness due to fallout and dwindling supplies a few weeks later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testament_(1983_film)
why are bicycles nonexistant on post-apocalyptic stories?
Bikes are present (and maybe even integral to) some post-apocalyptic films like, Testament, Turbo Kid, The Stand. There are some media with no gas powered cars, like Adventure Time, and probably more.
However, for better or worse, Mad Max set the trope that the fight for fuel is often an interesting conflict. It's easy for a gas hungry viewing public to understand, at least!
I recall a film I saw on TV as a kid called Testament which just killed me. It depicted a family slowly dying off after their town is bombed. I cried for a few nights after seeing it. I've never watched it since. I wonder if I could handle it now as an adult.
Also Testament (1983), an American movie about a small town far away from major cities to avoid the nuclear war itself, but unlike this typical situation in fiction, they don't live happily after but eventually have to deal with radiation sickness due to fallout and the problem of supplies running out.
I've read enough about Threads to know that I absolutely do not want to see it. Just reading the story in the article makes me queasy. The article calls The Day After "reassuring and sanitized," but from what I remember, that was something of a nightmare.
The movie Testament also came out around this time and it's often brought up in the same context as The Day After and Threads. Watching Testament felt like a gut punch.
I wouldn't tell anyone else not to watch Threads. (How could I? I've never seen it.) But if you are going to watch it, you should brace yourself emotionally. If your idea of a post nuclear apocalypse is driving around in cool cars like Mad Max in the Road Warrior, you probably should watch Threads.
I'm not sure where some of these other responses are coming from, but the cold war was very much front and center for my generation, growing up in the 70's and early 80's. If you want to get a good feel for the grinding fear that the possibility of nuclear war instilled in people, just watch the movie "Testament" or read the book "Alas, Babylon" and you'll get a good idea of what that fear was based upon. As another poster indicated, there was nothing "binary" about nuclear war unless you were lucky and were within the blast radius and it killed you instantly.
I was 10 when I saw "The Day After" [1] and "Testament" [2], back-to-back.
I tell people this, and the younger ones never believe me, but I genuinely believed that I would never live to be an adult.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testament_(film)