Things don’t get much more apocalyptic than The Day After, a made-for-TV movie from 1983. Made in (and set during) the height of the cold war when Armageddon was seemingly only the push of a button away, the film follows a small number of people living and working in the area around Kansas City, Missouri.

As we follow their daily routines, interspersed with a few glimpses of military personnel going about their business, we see snippets of news about things gradually heating up in East Germany. First there’s a build-up of Soviet troops on the border, then the access to West Germany is cut off. News reports reiterate the NATO pledge to defend West Germany with any and all means necessary, including the use of tactical nuclear weapons …

All the while, discussions between the US and Soviet Russia supposedly go on, as military readiness escalates.

Then Soviet tanks start pouring through the Fulda gap (the lowlands corridor between East and West Germany); there are reports of tactical nuclear weapons air-burst over the advancing forces; Moscow is being evacuated.

And when the Minuteman missiles start to fly from the silos all over Missouri, it appears that there can be no going back:

“They're on their way to Russia. They take about thirty minutes to reach their target.“
“So do theirs, right?”

This is not a cheery film. Things start off bad, then get worse, and don’t improve much from there.

Were it not for the looming sense of menace provided by the scenes of military preparation and the unfolding news from Europe, the opening 45 minutes would be incredibly dull. As it stands, it is a riveting portrayal of when the worst is about to happen, and then does.

Featuring quite a few famous faces (Jason Robards, JoBeth Williams, Steven Gutenberg - yes, it was so early in his career that he was still credited as “Steven” - and John Lithgow, amongst others) the depiction of the inexorable descent into an essentially ideological conflict - while normal people just try to get on with their lives - is truly frightening. The nukes going off (oh, have I spoilt it for you?) and flash-frying millions of people should be bad enough, but it’s the survivors, many predictably dying from radiation sickness while everyone else tries to work out if there can be any sort of future, who seem to have got the raw end of the deal. Unlike some other post-apocalyptic films, these are not a group in whose shoes you’d care to imagine yourself.

So, putting all the (purely) vicarious excitement of billowing mushroom clouds aside, this is probably not the film to watch to satisfy your post-apocalyptic urges. It is a sobering and apparently realistic portrayal (though by its own admission, probably underestimating the destruction) of how our chosen leaders could take us into a nuclear war and its inevitable aftermath by acting in our “best interests”.

This is a film everyone should probably watch - I seem to recall being made to watch it by my Dad when it was shown on television in the UK in the mid-eighties. It’s a good, if frightening film. But don’t be expecting a happy ending.