1962 science fiction, dir. and starring Ray Milland, Jean Hagen,
Frankie Avalon: IMDb. The
family is heading out for a camping trip, when the sky behind them
starts to look very strange…
Ray Milland, our lead here, also directed; and apparently got a
bit overwhelmed. But he clearly felt very strongly about the film's
message of preparedness. Watching it now I get a rather different
sense: Milland's character is not a survivor because he was prepared,
but because as soon as he saw the bombs exploding he was quicker than
anyone else to cast off the trappings of civilisation, rob a grocery
store, loot a gas station.
We also have Frankie Avalon, not quite yet the teen heartthrob he'd be
after the following year's Beach Party with Annette Funicello, but
definitely here to try to bring in a younger audience who wouldn't be
impressed by Milland.
Our family goes a long way across country to their planned camp site
(why is that batter than anywhere else?), then cover the camper and
set up in a cave. (Won't the turn-off leafy branches they use for
cover turn brown against the green of the rest of the foliage? Never
mind.)
I picture an alternative version of this film in which the entire
attack is in Milland's head, and he becomes increasingly violent as
his paranoid psychosis progresses. But that's not the film we got.
Instead there are ne'er-do-well kids turned bandits.
This is what The Day After and Threads would be working against
twenty years later, the survivalist fantasy: you can make it on your
own or with just your family, as long as you abandon your standards
early and get them before they get you.
I talk about this film further on
Ribbon of Memes.