Threads

This review is for the Blu-Ray edition of 'Threads' released by Severin-Films in 2018.*****NOTE***** - I made some changes to this review after it received several comments. It's still basically the same. I just jazzed it up a bit to make it easier to read and added in a few recommendations.ABOUT MY REVIEW: This review is from the standpoint of a 50+ year old American who is watching this for the first time. This movie has all kinds of outstanding reviews and the reviewers all have their personal reasons as to why they are giving this 5 stars. From where I stand, this is not a good movie. I give my reasons below in the 'COMMENTS' section. For those of you who disagree with me, I understand why. This movie had a profound effect on people when they saw it many years ago for the first time. For me, seeing it for the first time now, it is not very relevant nor entertaining in any way.If you have seen 'The Road' and didn't like it then you will hate this movie. 'The Road' is a much better version of 'Threads' even if the plots are not the same (I'd argue that 'Threads' has no plot at all).BLU-RAY: I did not like the picture. The picture doesn't look any better than what you would get from a standard DVD release of a movie in the 80's. I'm sure fans of this movie would tell you that this is how it was shot but nevertheless I was not impressed.EXTRA'S: The extra's are numerous and are the highlight of this release. You get:-Audio Commentary with Director Mick Jackson, writer Kier-La Janisse and Severin Films' David Gregory-'Audition for the Apocalypse' - Interview with actress and star of 'Threads,' Karen Meagher-'Shooting the Annihilation'-Interview with director of photography, Andrew Dunn-'Destruction Designer'- Interview with production designer, Christopher Robilliard-Interview with film writer, Stephen Thrower-US TrailerPLOT/SUMMARY: I'll keep this brief. There really isn't a whole lot going on here.This movie is shot kind of like a documentary. That is, it's a fictional documentary about the average lives of average nobodies who then either die in the nuclear blast, give up on life, or turn to savages. The movie introduces the viewer to a few people. A young girl falls in love and gets pregnant. Shortly after that, there is a nuclear attack. The remainder of the movie attempts to show you how civilization falls apart one step at a time. There is nothing good happening. Of course that is the point. There are no heroes nor are there any heroic actions. The world gets worse. The End.COMMENTS: I am not a fan of this movie and I'll give my reasons why...- Even the dreariest of movies should have some sort of redeeming value. This movie has none. I don't count that it was meant as a warning. Warnings against 'nukes' are useless. It's the world we live in. They are never going away. It's not like you can ever trust all the evil people in the world. The 'No Nuke' movement is/was a complete waste of effort and everybody's time.- I don't believe society would devolve into anything like the way that is depicted. There will always be good people as well as terrible people. There will always be groups of people who work together. This movie depicts every single person as a savage of the worst kind.-To be honest, even though I strongly dislike this movie and it's message, a nuclear disaster would be much worse than what is depicted in the areas that were devastated by a direct hit... at least as far as the damage goes. CGI didn't exist at the time so there was only so much they could do. That said, the special effects still weren't good even factoring in no CGI.-I don't believe that every single person on earth would be filthy and disgustingly dirty. Britain is surrounded by an ocean. At the very least some people would bathe. There would still be rain. There would be some survivalists out there. There would be others who stockpiled goods, including cleaning supplies and hygienic supplies.-Parts of every country would remain intact and in good shape. This movie depicts everything as a pile of rubble. History has shown that places that get destroyed get rebuilt. Just take a look at Hiroshima. Look at any city that was bombed in World War II. People clean up the mess and move on.-This movie is just way too bleak. Yes, nuclear war would be bleak, but life would go on. Starting from Day 1. There would still be doctors and scientists and people from every walk of life. We would not just turn into savages and sit around in a daze forever. When this was filmed, the filmmakers were trying to send a message, not create a truly believable scenario.-This movie would have you believe that there would be no progress ever again. That is BS. There would still exist batteries, power sources, fuel and other forms of energy. Society would rebuild from there. Survivors would band together and work together. If you disagree, then all you have to do is look at the history of mankind. We weren't born with everything we have. We started with fire and went from there. We went from nothing to what we have today is just a few thousand years. With all the knowledge accumulated and books that exist, it wouldn't take more than 100 years to get back to where we were even if just about everything on earth was wiped out. It would only be a matter of manpower. I could go on and on but I'll stop here.-This movie offers no reason to ever watch it again and I'm pretty sure I will never watch it again. Not because it's scary and I don't want to think about such things. Simply put, in my opinion, the movie is terrible. Again... and I stress, in my opinion, the cinematography is awful and the special effects are terrible.RECOMMENDATIONS/CONCLUSIONS: 'Threads' was made at a time when you had a lot of people marching in the street, screaming "No Nukes". This movie was obviously made by one of those people or at least one that supported those people. The movement was as unrealistic then as it is now. If your country wants to have no nukes and wait around for some terrorist country to nuke you because you don't follow their religion... well good luck to you.This movie gives me the impression that the production crew made it bleak just for the sake of being bleak. It kind of reminds me of some horror movies that just try to shock you and don't really care how believable it is.If you are one of the people that were 'shocked' when it first came out... I get it. I am not one of those people. I'm fully aware that if there there are people out there reading this review and you are a fan of the movie, you will completely disagree with my assessment. That's OK. If you get enjoyment out of it, or it teaches you a lesson, I have no issue with you. Everyone gets to have their own opinion. I encourage anybody who is new to a movie to read several positive and several negative reviews. The same applies to my review. If you are reading my 'negative' review, you should go and check out some positive reviews.Recommended strictly for people who liked this movie when they were growing up.Also recommended for 'end of the world movie' completists.IF YOU LIKE THIS THEN TRY:-No Blade of Grass (1970) - If you like 'Threads', I can't see how you wouldn't like this movie. For the record, I strongly dislike this movie.-The Road (2009) - Bleak, depressing and also very unrealistic. In the world depicted, there should be an inordinate amount of supplies lying around. Somehow, even through the bleakness (much more so than 'Threads'), this movie actually is somewhat decent.RATINGS:Plot: 1 star - As far as I'm concerned, it's bleak, depressing, unrealistic and unenjoyable.Extra's: 4 stars - Some good extra's. The best part of this release.Picture: 1 1/2 stars - I'm not impressed. It may be low quality due to how it was filmed but it's not good no matter what the reason.SFX: 2 stars - Looks very low budget.Overall: 2 stars - I was going to give this 3 stars because it has some decent extra's but I found the movie to be sounenjoyable that I can't give it more than 2. I doubt I will be watching this again for any reason other than to check to see if it is bad as I remember.*****Special Overall Grade***** - For those who are out there who have seen it before and like this movie, then I'd rate this release 4 stars.

I was born the year The Day After was first shown on ABC network across the USA, and year before this film was shown on the BBC network across Britain. I vaguely remember seeing the news covering the fall of the Berlin Wall and the close of the Cold War in the early 1990's. I saw some happy people in Germany and elsewhere, but didn't really get what all the excitement was about. So, I can't say that I might understand at an emotional level what the impact of this film might be within the context of its release year, but I suppose I might have some useful perspective that is detached from the opinions about nuclear weapons/war of those days. So here goes.This film is of a docu-drama style that juxtaposes a human story arc (Jimmy and Ruth) through a nuclear war scenario with proposed statistics describing the effects of the nuclear war scenario. I am a big fan of this choice, because it lends a lot of credence to the storyline portion by referencing from expert sources. It is as if the movie is acting out a small part of a wider simulated scenario, and serves as a powerful warning with its combination of the cold, unfeeling worldwide stats backing up the raw human experiences. I have only learned about the Cold War from history books, and I think this movie conveys that intangible feeling of living through those tense times that books cannot.I am glad that this movie has found a proper release on Bluray and DVD available in the N. American region, because it has an important message that can apply to today's nuclear situation as well as our future. I think the single most important part of this message would be the fearlessness with which the movie's creators approached the topic. It appears that they held nothing back in the name of TV censors or public perception. This is among the most brutally honest and unflinching stories about nuclear war, or any subject really, put to the screen. This movie has some notoriety among those that have watched it that some warning is in order before viewing it for the first time. I think any adult can certainly watch it, and should watch it, but do keep in mind that this can evoke far more horror than any standard gore movie. Upon rewatching it following this digital purchase, I was certainly impacted all over again, but fortunately less so upon further viewing. Still, the reality that we live in a world where enough weapons exist to unleash this movie's scenario looms large and is one of the primary reasons, in my opinion, for the heightened impact. This nightmare could have been a reality.There are some minor drawbacks to the film, in my opinion, but had little effect on the overall theme and emotional impact. A couple characters disappear pretty noticeably through the movie with no character resolution, but then again, that might be a merciful thing for the audience, spared from a couple more grisly deaths within the family/friends circle of the primary characters. Jimmy's friend/coworker shows up to help out Ruth for a brief few scenes in the month or so after the nuclear event and then disappears. Some people have some criticism in reviews of the nuclear bomb effects, some being stock footage, but I found them to be adequate, especially when focusing on the blast/burn effects and destroyed walls that directly affect the characters. Seeing a high-tech nuclear explosion on a city is one thing, but having the guts to show humans writhing in pain while engulfed in flames hits a decidedly different note. I didn't find the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament rally scenes to be all that useful to the movie, because the rest of the movie certainly makes any points espoused by the rally, and the main characters have no interaction with the scenes other than just casually observing from the crowd. Finally, I think a couple points of the movie are actually too optimistic. It feels as though the movie held back a bit on its estimation of the nuclear winter's effect on human populations during that first year. It seemed like a decent crop was still had that summer after the war in May. Also, while the movie does boldly extend its scenario out to 13 years after the war, it leaves an ending that calls into question humanity's fate, rather than resolving it. That being said, the ending is rather shocking and does leave an uneasy impression on humanity's reproduction odds going forward, at least in Britain. It certainly had an impactful ending, though I think exploring the possibility of a mass extinction event with humans as one of the species on the list might have been an option. Then again, the nuclear winter science was relatively new at that point, and we know more today with help of powerful analysis tools what the effects of firestorm debris injected into the stratosphere would entail. Apparently, even a regional nuclear exchange far smaller than this proposed scenario could cause some serious agricultural / starvation problems for all parts of the world. The movie wasn't bleak enough. There I said it.There are no problems on my end with the digital release, and I like Amazon's streaming player functions on a PC. Subtitles were very helpful, and pretty amusing at a couple points. The music at the end of those Protect and Survive public service announcements was subtitled as "(ominous music)". Between that and one other quick scene, there isn't any other humor to be found, though.All in all, this is an excellent movie that deserves far more recognition in the USA than its current underground or seemingly taboo status. Our nation has a distinct responsibility to lead on this issue, and we ought to be equally as fearless and unflinching to understand the responsibility involved to reduce existential risks to our world.

This was shown in 1984, and in that era, there were a number of movies showing what would really happen in a nuclear war. And the build up to the war was very realistic for the time. The scenario presented was all too real, and could still be repeated today. It is all about oil and the Middle East. And miscalculations by both sides. It is in an interesting presentation that is the opposite of the many 1950's and 1960's Sci Fi movies on the aftermath of a nuclear war, that often has one person defending his property from looters or refugees. This shows the horrors of a nuclear exchange on a town in England, and how everything pertaining to civilization gets quickly overwhelmed. The bomb footage were clearly from nuclear tests, and stock footage of war devastations. But it certainly made a point that destruction is total. There was an American production (The Day After, 1983) that looked at the aftermath of a nuclear attack, but more on how radiation affected the family with radiation sickness over a number of days. This production only peripherally showed that. However, the movie showed that a nuclear exchange changes civilization as one knows it, in a very bad way and the effects last a very long time. Nuclear winter was presented, and that is a topic often ignored today. A nitpicking I would have is that it followed the story 10 and 13 years post attack, with Ruth not only giving birth to a healthy baby girl, but then dying at the end, and then her daughter giving birth to a deformed baby. Since Ruth who was pregnant and was in the town at the time of the attack, and none of the others she was with survived very long, it is a puzzle.

Very well done fiction, with documentary style and great attention to details. Please Biden and Stoltenberg, stop playing with fire, I woudn't love to see this stuff for real.

I saw this when it came out in 1984, it has aged well.Interestingly, there was a film made in black & white years before which was banded by the British government as it was deemed to disturbing. It was on the same theme as Threads, showing the UK under and post nuclear attack.I saw a documentary about this subject which had a brief clip of this banned film, which showed a scene of someone trapped in a car which had crashed. However, the footage used was real life from a genuine accident with the person in great distress and bleeding from the mouth. No acting this was real. No wonder the film was banned. Unfortunately, I do not know the name of this film, perhaps it is gathering dust in a storeroom somewhere?

In confronto, "The day after" e' una passeggiata di salute. Taglio documentaristico. A dispetto degli anni presenta ancora bene.

If you're concerned about the way things are going in the world this is probably a good movie to have a look at. If we did suffer a new killer bomb anywhere we probably be in the crap.

Film datato ma terribilmente attuale. Sconvolgente riflessione su cosa accadrebbe se l’umanità sprofondasse in un incubo nucleare.