8. Threads (1984)
In America in 1983, TV audiences were treated to The Day After - a film documenting a build up to nuclear war and the eventual launch of nukes resulting in an all out strike on America. The film then explores what life is like after the apocalypse. American audiences were powerfully affected by this film and it is said to have depressed the heck out of Ronald Reagan, who at the time was particularly bellicose about expanding the nuclear weapons in the Western bloc. In the UK in 1984, British television audiences were treated to the UK equivalent of The Day After, a film called Threads. Threads follows the fortunes of two families in the build up to a nuclear confrontation between East and West, describes their devastation in the immediate aftermath of the attack and gives a bleak long term view of life in Post-nuclear Britain. It is such a harsh and solemn film, it makes The Day After look like the Brady Bunch. Threads was one of the first nuclear war movies to depict a harsh and cruel Nuclear Winter and the devastation it would wreak on survivors of the bomb. Shot on a low budget, the film handles the actual nuclear attack very deftly - making terrifyingly realistic use of stock footage. The film doesn't shrink from horror with graphic scenes of a post attack hospital, jammed to the rafters with injured people, and amputations performed without anaesthetic. The graphic effects of both short term and long term radiation poisoning is skilfully handled. The breakdown of society, in which rats are a hot commodity for people to buy and eat as there is no other food is depressing. Writer Barry Hines is careful to build up the tension slowly so that he can establish characters that we can get to know and relate to - in particular the character of Ruth who goes from being a happy expectant mother pre-nuclear assault to being a horrified and bewildered woman, trying to survive the bleak post-nuclear landscape. What adds to the horror is that we have a stark narrator who explains what is going on with the help of captions. This gives a documentary air to the film which makes it even more believable that a nuclear war may some day happen. A solemn affair all round.