7. The Day After (1983)
This was the first ever Nuclear war film I watched and I was shocked and horrified to the core. It is an American television film which, when premiered, was watched by 100 million Americans. It provoked nationwide controversy with some critics saying it sensationalised nuclear war and the others saying it was too tame. Reagan himself watched the film a few days before its broadcast and he wrote in his diary that the film was hugely realistic and left him depressed. One of the reasons that the film is so effective is that it builds up characters for the first part of the film and then we watch them go through the effects of the blast. Some live, some die. We have to watch the survivors struggle through a nuclear winter. Our hearts are genuinely wrenched. The nuclear apocalypse is triggered by a war between NATO and the Warsaw Pact over some sort of jiggerypokery between forces in East and West Germany. We see the impact of a full on US/USSR nuclear exchange through the experiences of American people living in the state of Kansas. It is pretty harsh - with main characters having protracted deaths by radiation sickness or losing their families. However, the film has a kind of "Nuclear war would be a dreadful thing but we would all ultimately be okay" tone which is displeasing. It should have gone further in its depiction of life after a nuclear holocaust - I have done a lot of reading on this, and the number of people who would be psychiatrically disabled after a nuclear war would be so great, life would be hard to resume let alone for those who have been physically maimed or poisoned. But still, it the midst of Reagan's Star Wars plans, The Day After did shake a lot of people up and made the public think. Interestingly, the film was shown on Soviet TV in 1987 as part of Gorbachev's perestroika plans.