Plot
Harry Baldwin, his wife Ann, their son Rick, and daughter Karen leave suburban Los Angeles at sunrise to go on a fishing trip to the Sierra Nevada wilderness, bringing with them a small camping trailer. After a couple of hours on the road, Harry and Ann are startled by a series of unusually bright lights, accompanied by a radio station going to static. Tuning through stations, they hear a sporadic news report broadcast on CONELRAD that hint at the start of an atomic war, confirmed when the Baldwins see a large mushroom cloud from a hydrogen bomb rising over Los Angeles, now many miles away. The family attempt to return home and rescue Ann's mother, but Harry soon realizes that the roads will be clogged by panicked people, and what is left of the city will be saturated in atomic fallout. Stopping at a small diner to get food and find out what is happening, Harry hears that Los Angeles was hit by two hydrogen bombs: One over downtown Los Angeles, the other at the Port of Los Angeles. San Diego and San Francisco were also targets. With this news, deciding that his family's survival must come first, Harry decides to continue to their secluded vacation spot in the mountains, abandoning Ann's mother, and weather the crisis from there.
The Baldwins stop to buy supplies at a small town off the main road, which has not yet been inundated by refugees from Los Angeles. Harry attempts to purchase tools and guns from hardware store owner Ed Johnson with a personal check. However, Johnson believes only Los Angeles has been hit, and the government remains intact, so he insists on following state law and withholding the guns for a 24 hours while Harry's checks are verified. Harry absconds with the weapons by attacking Johnson with Rick's help, but he tells Johnson that he will eventually return and pay for them in full. Soon after, Harry stops at a gas station for fuel and finds that the attendant is engaging in price gouging. Unable to pay for all the fuel he wants, Harry attacks the attendant, leaves what cash he can for the fuel he has taken, and the family continue down the road. Later, the family encounter three threatening young hoodlums, Carl, Mickey, and Andy, but manage to fend them off.
After a harrowing journey, the Baldwins reach their destination. Realizing their trailer offers no protection from radioactive fallout, they take the contents of the trailer, and find shelter in a cave where they settle in and wait for civil order to be restored. On their portable radio, they listen to war news and learn that what remains of the United Nations has declared this to be "Year Zero". Harry and Rick discover that Ed Johnson and his wife have coincidentally set up camp nearby, but not for long: the three hoodlums arrive, murder Ed Johnson, and kill his wife.
While doing laundry, Ann drops a blouse in a stream, alerting the hoodlums to the Baldwins' presence. They accost and rape Karen, but Ann scares them off with a rifle. Harry and Rick begin a search for the rapists, and find two of them at a farm house, where Harry kills both of them. The Baldwins also discover a teenage girl, Marilyn, kept in a locked room as a sex slave. When questioned, she explains that she lived at the house with her parents before they were murdered by the three hoodlums. Marilyn is freed and brought to the cave, where she is cared for by Ann and accepted into the Baldwin family.
Sometime later, Marilyn accompanies Rick while he chops wood outside the camp. Carl, the third hoodlum, sneaks up behind Marilyn and forces her to drop her rifle. He questions her about what happened to his buddies. Rick throws a piece of wood at Carl, allowing Marilyn to slip out of his grasp. She grabs the rifle and kills Carl. During the confrontation, Carl manages to shoot Rick in the leg.
The Baldwins leave their camp to find a doctor named Strong, whom Marilyn knows in the nearby town of Paxton, California. On the drive there, the group hears that "the enemy" has requested a truce and "Year Zero" is ending. Doctor Strong stabilizes Rick, but he warns that the young man will die without a blood transfusion. The closest place that can handle the procedure is an Army hospital more than 100 miles (160 km) away. En route to the hospital, the Baldwins are stopped by an Army patrol. After a tense conversation, they are allowed to continue. The soldiers watch the Baldwins leave and note that the family is among the "good ones" who escaped radiation sickness by being in the mountains when the atomic bombs exploded. As the Baldwins drive on, an end title card states: "There must be no end – only a new beginning".
Reception
Frankie Avalon later said, "The film came out to real good reviews." American International Pictures sent the star around the country to promote it. He went on to say, "We did a tour of theaters in Los Angeles, and it made its money back just in Los Angeles alone." [1]
This success led to Avalon making a number of films with AIP. [1]
Critical
Michael Atkinson, the film critic for The Village Voice , liked the film and wrote in 2005, "This forgotten, saber-toothed 1962 AIP cheapie might be the most expressive on-the-ground nightmare of the Cold War era, providing a template not only for countless social-breakdown genre flicks (most particularly, Michael Haneke's Time of the Wolf ) but also for authentic crisis—shades of New Orleans haunt its DVD margins...the movie is nevertheless an anxious, detail-rich essay on moral collapse." [6]
Glenn Erickson writes, in his DVD Savant review, "Panic In Year Zero! scrupulously avoids any scenes requiring more than minimalist production values yet still delivers on its promise, allowing audience imagination to expand upon the narrow scope of what's actually on the screen. It sure seemed shocking in 1962, and easily trumped other more pacifistic efforts. The Day the Earth Caught Fire was for budding flower people; Panic In Year Zero! could have been made as a sales booster for the gun industry." [7]
