More than 100million people, in nearly 39million households, watched the film during its initial broadcast.[2][3][4] With a 46 rating and a 62% share of the viewing audience during the initial broadcast, the film was the seventh-highest-rated non-sports show until then, and in 2009 it set a record as the highest-rated television film in US history.[4]
Dr. Russell Oakes works at a hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, and spends time with his family over his daughter Marilyn's decision to move away. In Harrisonville, Missouri, 40 miles (64km) southeast of Kansas City, farmer Jim Dahlberg and family hold a wedding dress rehearsal for their eldest daughter, Denise, and Bruce, a student at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. The young couple is more interested in sex, with family drama when Denise's younger sister steals her birth control, and when Jim catches Denise sneaking home the following morning. Airman First Class Billy McCoy is stationed at a Minuteman launch site in Sweetsage, Missouri, 20 miles (32km) east of Kansas City. Next to the site, the Hendrys carry out farm chores and mind their children. Throughout these scenes of heartland life is a current of tension: the television, radio, and newspapers discuss a Warsaw Pact build-up on the East German border and the dispatch of nuclear weapons to Europe. Towards nightfall, East Germany blockades West Berlin. The U.S. issues an ultimatum calling for the Soviets to end the blockade of West Berlin by the evening and places its military forces on high alert, which recalls McCoy from his wife and infant daughter at Whiteman Air Force Base near Sedalia, Missouri.
The next day, NATO forces attempt to break the blockade through the Helmstedt-Marienborn checkpoint, suffering heavy casualties. Warsaw Pact MiGs strike civilian and military targets in West Germany. Oakes visits his son's football game, but daily life is starting to break down. Field hospitals are assembled in Würzburg, there are rumors that Moscow is being evacuated, and people start to flee Kansas City. At the university's registration hall, the word goes out that the Soviets have invaded West Germany. NATO is unable to stop the Soviet invasion and threatens the use of nuclear weapons should the Soviets continue advancing south towards the rest of Western Europe. Pre-med student Stephen Klein decides to hitchhike home to Joplin, Missouri, while Bruce presses on as normal and gets a haircut. A conversation at a barbershop with university faculty head Joe Huxley quickly rids him of his calm demeanor as Huxley explains that the nearby missile silos make Lawrence a likely target for a Soviet first strike. At a supermarket, crowds frantically stockpile food. The American and Soviet navies battle in the Persian Gulf, and there are rumors of nuclear strikes on the outskirts of Frankfurt and Wiesbaden. Oakes is stuck in traffic driving to the campus hospital in Lawrence when the Emergency Broadcast System warnings begin. Failing to contact his wife, he turns back toward Kansas City.
As the Warsaw Pact continues to advance, NATO airbursts three tactical nuclear weapons over their forces in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to stop them. The Soviets retaliate by destroying the regional NATO headquarters with another nuclear detonation. Minutes apart, the United States launches its Minuteman missiles, and personnel aboard the EC-135Looking Glass over Kansas track inbound Soviet ICBMs. The film is deliberately ambiguous on who fired the main attack first. McCoy makes it to the Sweetsage base and learns Beale Air Force Base and RAF Fylingdales have been destroyed. Deeming the war over and survival in the silo unlikely, he flees to find his family. Air raid sirens go off and panic grips Kansas City.
Shortly before the ICBMs arrive, a high-altitude nuclear explosion over the Central United States generates an EMP that disables vehicles and destroys the electrical grid across the region. The nuclear strikes then commence as the Soviet warheads reach their targets. Kansas City and the surrounding military bases and missile silos are destroyed. Marilyn and Bruce are incinerated. The Hendrys, having initially ignored the crisis, never make it out of their yard. A nuclear detonation flash-blinds young Danny Dahlberg when he looks at it. While still on the freeway after the EMP hits, Dr. Oakes witnesses two detonations, one over a military base and the other explosion directly over Kansas City. He walks to Lawrence, takes charge, and begins treating patients. Klein, who had hitchhiked as far as Harrisonville, finds the Dahlberg home and begs for refuge in the family's basement.
Oakes receives fallout reports by shortwave from Joe Huxley at the science building. The situation is dismal: travel outdoors is fatal, yet patients continue to come as resources dwindle. Huxley tries to contact other survivors, with no response. Delirious after days in the basement shelter and unable to remember her fiancé's face, Denise runs outside. Klein retrieves her, but they both get exposed to the thick radioactive dust and dead animals on the land. McCoy heads towards Sedalia until he hears from passing refugees that it and its environs have been obliterated. He befriends a mute man and travels to the hospital in Lawrence, where he dies of radiation poisoning. Oakes bonds with Nurse Nancy Bauer, who later dies of meningitis, and converses with an overdue pregnant woman who pleads with him to tell her she is wrong to be hopeless.
"The catastrophic events you have just witnessed are, in all likelihood, less severe than the destruction that would actually occur in the event of a full nuclear strike against the United States.
It is hoped that the images of this film will inspire the nations of this earth, their peoples and leaders, to find the means to avert the fateful day."
— Ending disclaimer
The rad count ebbs. Denise bleeds through her skirt in a service in the rubble of a church, and Klein takes her and Danny to the hospital in Lawrence, where a doctor unsuccessfully tries to treat Danny's eyes. In a defiant radio address the U.S. President announces a ceasefire with the Soviets, promises relief, and stresses liberty, democracy, and American leadership, set to shots of listless survivors in American rubble, and hospital staff piling up the dead and treating the living by candlelight. Soldiers deliver food to the refugee camp that has grown around the hospital, but are unable to honor issued chits and hold food back for other camps, ending in a violent squabble in which some survivors and soldiers are killed. Oakes learns that various criminals are being summarily executed by a firing squad without first being proven guilty, including for petty crimes such as alleged looting. At a makeshift civilian gathering regarding agriculture, a meeting for growing enough food for the survivors lays out grandiose government plans (scrape 4–5 inches off your fields) but is unable to answer Jim's basic questions ("With 150–200 acres to a man?", "Put it where?", "Farm in what topsoil?"). Coming home, Jim is shot and killed by squatters. Denise is balding, bruised, and dying, and Klein too has radiation sickness.
At last aware that he has sustained lethal exposure to radiation, Oakes returns to Kansas City to see the site of his home before he dies. He finds squatters there and attempts to drive them off, but is instead offered food. Oakes collapses and weeps, and one of the squatters comforts him. The film ends with an overlying audio clip of Huxley's voice on the radio as the screen fades to black, asking if anybody can still hear him, only to be met with silence until the credits, as a Morse code signal transmits a single message to the viewer: M-A-D.
Ending disclaimer
Most versions of The Day After include a textual ending disclaimer just before the end credits, stating that the film is fictional, and that the real-life outcome of a nuclear war would be much worse than the events portrayed onscreen.
The Day After was the idea of ABC Motion Picture Division President Brandon Stoddard,[7] who, after watching The China Syndrome, was so impressed that he envisioned creating a film exploring the effects of nuclear war on the United States. Stoddard asked his executive vice president of television movies and miniseries, Stu Samuels, to develop a script. Samuels created the title The Day After to emphasize that the story was about not a nuclear war itself but the aftermath. Samuels suggested several writers, and eventually, Stoddard commissioned the veteran television writer Edward Hume to write the script in 1981. ABC, which financed the production, was concerned about the graphic nature of the film and how to portray the subject appropriately on a family-oriented television channel. Hume undertook a massive amount of research on nuclear war and went through several drafts until ABC finally deemed the plot and characters acceptable.
A scene from the film, in which a nuclear weapon detonates near DeSoto, Kansas.
Originally, the film was based more around and in Kansas City, Missouri. Kansas City was not bombed in the original script although Whiteman Air Force Base was, which made Kansas City suffer shock waves and the horde of survivors staggering into town. There was no Lawrence, Kansas in the story although there was a small Kansas town called "Hampton." While Hume was writing the script, he and the producer Robert Papazian, who had great experience in on-location shooting, took several trips to Kansas City to scout locations and met with officials from the Kansas film commission and from the Kansas tourist offices to search for a suitable location for "Hampton." It came down to a choice of either Warrensburg, Missouri, and Lawrence, Kansas, both college towns. Warrensburg was home of Central Missouri State University and was near Whiteman Air Force Base, and Lawrence was home of the University of Kansas and was near Kansas City. Hume and Papazian ended up selecting Lawrence because of the access to a number of good locations: a university, a hospital, football and basketball venues, farms, and a flat countryside. Lawrence was also agreed upon as being the "geographic center" of the United States. The Lawrence people were urging ABC to change the name "Hampton" to "Lawrence" in the script.
Back in Los Angeles, the idea of making a TV movie showing the true effects of nuclear war on average American citizens was still stirring up controversy. ABC, Hume, and Papazian realized that for the scene depicting the nuclear blast, they would have to use state-of-the-art special effects and so took the first step by hiring some of the best special effects people in the business to draw up some storyboards for the complicated blast scene. ABC then hired Robert Butler to direct the project. For several months, the group worked on drawing up storyboards and revising the script again and again. Then, in early 1982, Butler was forced to leave The Day After because of other contractual commitments. ABC then offered the project to two other directors, who both turned it down. Finally, in May, ABC hired the feature film director Nicholas Meyer, who had just completed the blockbuster Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Meyer was apprehensive at first and doubted ABC would get away with making a television film on nuclear war without the censors diminishing its effect. However, after reading the script, Meyer agreed to direct The Day After.
Meyer wanted to make sure that he would film the script he was offered. He did not want the censors to censor the film or the film to be a regular Hollywood disaster movie from the start. Meyer figured the more The Day After resembled such a film, the less effective it would be, and he preferred to present the facts of nuclear war to viewers. He made it clear to ABC that no big TV or film stars should be in The Day After. ABC agreed but wanted to have one star to help attract European audiences to the film when it would be shown theatrically there. Later, while flying to visit his parents in New York City, Meyer happened to be on the same plane with Jason Robards and asked him to join the cast.
Meyer plunged into several months of nuclear research, which made him quite pessimistic about the future, to the point of becoming ill each evening when he came home from work. Meyer and Papazian also made trips to the ABC censors and to the United States Department of Defense during their research phase and experienced conflicts with both. Meyer had many heated arguments over elements in the script that the network censors wanted cut out of the film. The Department of Defense said that it would cooperate with ABC if the script clarified that the Soviets launched their missiles first, which Meyer and Papazian took pains not to do.
Meyer, Papazian, Hume, and several casting directors spent most of July 1982 taking numerous trips to Kansas City. In between casting in Los Angeles, where they relied mostly on unknowns, they would fly to the Kansas City area to interview local actors and scout scenery. They were hoping to find some real Midwesterners for smaller roles. Hollywood casting directors strolled through shopping malls in Kansas City to look for local people to fill small and supporting roles, and the daily newspaper in Lawrence ran an advertisement calling for local residents of all ages to sign up for jobs as many extras in the film and a professor of theater and film at the University of Kansas were hired to head up the local casting of the movie. Out of the eighty or so speaking parts, only fifteen were cast in Los Angeles. The remaining roles were filled in Kansas City and Lawrence.
While in Kansas City, Meyer and Papazian toured the Federal Emergency Management Agency offices in Kansas City. When asked about its plans for surviving nuclear war, a FEMA official replied that it was experimenting with putting evacuation instructions in telephone books in New England. "In about six years, everyone should have them." That meeting led Meyer to later refer to FEMA as "a complete joke." It was during that time that the decision was made to change "Hampton" in the script to "Lawrence." Meyer and Hume figured since Lawrence was a real town, it would be more believable, and besides, it was a perfect choice to play a representative of Middle America. The town boasted a "socio-cultural mix," sat near the exact geographic center of the Continental U.S., and was a prime missile target according to Hume and Meyer's research because 150 Minuteman missile silos stood nearby. Lawrence had some great locations, and its people were more supportive of the project. Suddenly, less emphasis was put on Kansas City, the decision was made to have the city annihilated in the script, and Lawrence was made the primary location in the film.
Editing
ABC originally planned to air The Day After as a four-hour "television event" that would be spread over two nights with a total running time of 180 minutes without commercials.[8] The director Nicholas Meyer felt the original script was padded, and suggested cutting out an hour of material to present the whole film in one night. The network stuck with its two-night broadcast plan, and Meyer filmed the entire three-hour script, as evidenced by a 172-minute workprint that has surfaced.[9] Subsequently, the network found that it was difficult to find advertisers because of the subject matter. ABC relented and allowed Meyer to edit the film for a one-night broadcast version. Meyer's original single-night cut ran two hours and twenty minutes, which he presented to the network. After that screening, many executives were deeply moved, and some even cried, which led Meyer to believe they approved of his cut.
Nevertheless, a further six-month struggle ensued over the final shape of the film. Network censors had opinions about the inclusion of specific scenes, and ABC itself was eventually intent on "trimming the film to the bone" and made demands to cut out many scenes that Meyer strongly lobbied to keep. Finally, Meyer and his editor, Bill Dornisch, balked. Dornisch was fired, and Meyer walked away from the project. ABC brought in other editors, but the network ultimately was not happy with the results they produced. It finally brought Meyer back and reached a compromise, with Meyer paring down The Day After to a final running time of 120 minutes.[10][11]
The Day Before campaign
Josh Baran and Mark Graham were anti-nuclear activists who were secretly given a bootleg copy of the film by Nick Meyer prior to the ABC broadcast. They sent copies of the film to various peace groups, interviewed peace leaders about the film, and held screenings in homes, bars, and restaurants. There were post-screening discussion groups and town hall meetings. They held private screenings for the media, like Time magazine, the New York Times, and the BBC. As word got out about the film, higher ups wanted to see it including members of the House of Commons, and even the Pope. Baran and Graham called it The Day Before project to hijack ABC's marketing of the film. One scholar said they "pioneered the piggybacking of a public issue onto the release of a commercial media product", and Variety called it "the greatest PR campaign in history."[12]
The consequences of Meyer's bootleg copy and subsequent The Day Before PR campaign was a groundswell of public interest and discussion before the film was ever broadcast. This made it difficult for ABC executives to kill the film, because there were rumors they wanted to quietly shelve it, including rumors that Ronald Reagan had hinted to studio executives he didn't want the film broadcast.[12]
Broadcast
The Day After was initially scheduled to premiere on ABC in May 1983, but the post-production work to reduce the film's length pushed back its initial airdate to November. Censors forced ABC to cut an entire scene of a child having a nightmare about nuclear holocaust and then sitting up screaming. A psychiatrist told ABC that it would disturb children. "This strikes me as ludicrous," Meyer wrote in TV Guide at the time, "not only in relation to the rest of the film, but also when contrasted with the huge doses of violence to be found on any average evening of TV viewing." In any case, a few more cuts were made, including to a scene in which Denise possesses a diaphragm. Another scene in which a hospital patient abruptly sits up screaming was excised from the original television broadcast but restored for home video releases. Meyer persuaded ABC to dedicate the film to the citizens of Lawrence and also to put a disclaimer at the end of the film after the credits to let the viewer know that The Day After downplayed the true effects of nuclear war so it could have a story. The disclaimer also included a list of books that provided more information on the subject.
The Day After received a large promotional campaign prior to its broadcast. Commercials aired several months in advance, and ABC distributed half-a-million "viewer's guides" that discussed the dangers of nuclear war and prepared the viewer for the graphic scenes of mushroom clouds and radiation burn victims. Discussion groups were also formed nationwide.[13]
Music
The composer David Raksin wrote original music and adapted music from The River, a documentary film score by the concert composer Virgil Thomson, by featuring an adaptation of the hymn "How Firm a Foundation". Although he recorded just under 30 minutes of music, much of it was edited out of the final cut. Music from the First Strike footage, conversely, was not edited out.
The film was shortened from the original three hours of running time to two, which caused the scrapping of several planned special-effects scenes although storyboards were made in anticipation of a possible "expanded" version. They included a "bird's eye" view of Kansas City at the moment of two nuclear detonations as seen from a Boeing 737 airliner approaching the city's airport, simulated newsreel footage of U.S. troops in West Germany taking up positions in preparation of advancing Soviet armored units, and the tactical nuclear exchange in Germany between NATO and the Warsaw Pact after the attacking Warsaw Pact force breaks through and overwhelms the NATO lines.
ABC censors severely toned down scenes to reduce the body count or severe burn victims. Meyer refused to remove key scenes, but reportedly, some eight-and-a-half minutes of excised footage still exist, significantly more graphic. Some footage was reinstated for the film's release on home video. Additionally, the nuclear attack scene was longer and supposed to feature very graphic and very accurate shots of what happens to a human body during a nuclear blast. Examples included people being set on fire; their flesh carbonizing; being burned to the bone; eyes melting; faceless heads; skin hanging; deaths from flying glass and debris, limbs torn off, being crushed, and blown from buildings by the shockwave; and people in fallout shelters suffocating during the firestorm. Also cut were images of radiation sickness, as well as graphic post-attack violence from survivors such as food riots, looting, and general lawlessness as authorities attempted to restore order.
One cut scene showed surviving students battling over food. The two sides were to be athletes and the science students under the guidance of Professor Huxley. Another brief scene that was later cut related to a firing squad in which two U.S. soldiers are blindfolded and executed. In that scene, an officer reads the charges, verdict, and sentence as a bandaged chaplain reads the Last Rites.[citation needed] A similar sequence occurs in a 1965 British-produced faux documentary, The War Game. In the initial 1983 broadcast of The Day After, when the U.S. president addresses the nation, the voice was an imitation of President Reagan, who later stated that he watched the film and was deeply moved.[14] In subsequent broadcasts, that voice was overdubbed by a stock actor.
Home video releases in the U.S. and internationally come in at various running times, many listed at 126 or 127 minutes. Full screen (4:3 aspect ratio) seems to be more common than widescreen. RCAvideodiscs of the early 1980s were limited to 2 hours per disc so that full screen release appears to be closest to what originally aired on ABC in the U.S. A 2001 U.S. VHS version (Anchor Bay Entertainment, Troy, Michigan) lists a running time of 122 minutes. A 1995 double laser disc "director's cut" version (Image Entertainment) runs 127 minutes, includes commentary by director Nicholas Meyer and is "presented in its 1.75:1 European theatrical aspect ratio" (according to the LD jacket).
Two different German DVD releases run at 122 and 115 minutes respectively; the edits reportedly downplay the Soviet Union's role.[15] A two disc Blu-ray special edition was released in 2018 by the video specialty label Kino Lorber and present the film in high definition. The release contains the 122-minute television cut, presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio as broadcast, as well as the 127-minute theatrical cut, presented in a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio.[16]
Reception
On its original broadcast, on Sunday, November 20, 1983, John Cullum warned viewers before the film was premiered that the film contains graphic and disturbing scenes and encouraged parents who had young children watching to watch together and discuss the issues of nuclear warfare.[17] ABC and local TV affiliates opened 1-800 hotlines with counselors standing by. There were no commercial breaks after the nuclear attack scenes. ABC then aired a live debate on Viewpoint, ABC's occasional discussion program hosted by Nightline's Ted Koppel, featuring the scientist Carl Sagan, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Elie Wiesel, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, General Brent Scowcroft, and the commentator William F. Buckley Jr. Sagan argued against nuclear proliferation, but Buckley promoted the concept of nuclear deterrence. Sagan described the arms race in the following terms: "Imagine a room awash in gasoline, and there are two implacable enemies in that room. One of them has nine thousand matches, the other seven thousand matches. Each of them is concerned about who's ahead, who's stronger."[18]
The film and its subject matter were prominently featured in the news media both before and after the broadcast, including on such covers as TIME,[19]Newsweek,[20]U.S. News & World Report,[21] and TV Guide.[22] Critics tended to claim the film was sensationalizing nuclear war or that it was too tame.[23] The special effects and realistic portrayal of nuclear war received praise. The film received 12 Emmy nominations and won two Emmy awards. It was rated "way above average" in Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide until all reviews for films exclusive to television were removed from the publication.[24]
In the United States, 38.5million households, or an estimated 100million people, watched The Day After on its first broadcast, a record audience for a made-for-TV movie.[25]Producers Sales Organization released the film theatrically around the world, in the Eastern Bloc, China, North Korea and Cuba (this international version contained six minutes of footage not in the telecast edition). Since commercials are not sold in those markets, Producers Sales Organization failed to gain revenue to the tune of an undisclosed sum.[citation needed] Years later, the international version was released to tape by Embassy Home Entertainment.
The actor and former Nixon adviser Ben Stein, critical of the movie's message that the strategy of mutual assured destruction would lead to a war, wrote in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner what life might be like in an America under Soviet occupation. Stein's idea was eventually dramatized in the miniseries Amerika, also broadcast by ABC.[26] The New York Post accused Meyer of being a traitor, writing, "Why is Nicholas Meyer doing Yuri Andropov's work for him?"[27]Phyllis Schlafly declared that "This film was made by people who want to disarm the country, and who are willing to make a $7 million contribution to that cause".[27]Richard Grenier in the National Review accused The Day After of promoting "unpatriotic" and pro-Soviet attitudes.[28] Much press comment focused on the unanswered question in the film of who started the war.[27] The television critic Matt Zoller Seitz, in his 2016 book co-written with Alan Sepinwall, TV (The Book), named The Day After as the fourth-greatest American TV movie of all time: "Very possibly the bleakest TV-movie ever broadcast, The Day After is an explicitly antiwar statement dedicated entirely to showing audiences what would happen if nuclear weapons were used on civilian populations in the United States."[29]
Effects on policymakers
After seeing the film, Ronald Reagan wrote that the film had been very effective and left him depressed.
US President Ronald Reagan watched the film more than a month before its screening on Columbus Day, October 10, 1983.[30] He wrote in his diary that the film was "very effective and left me greatly depressed"[31][27] and that it changed his mind on the prevailing policy on a "nuclear war".[32] The film was also screened for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A government advisor who attended the screening, a friend of Meyer, told him: "If you wanted to draw blood, you did it. Those guys sat there like they were turned to stone."[27] In 1987, Reagan and Soviet PremierMikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which resulted in the banning and reducing of their nuclear arsenal. In Reagan's memoirs, he drew a direct line from the film to the signing.[27] Reagan supposedly later sent Meyer a telegram after the summit: "Don't think your movie didn't have any part of this, because it did."[10] During an interview in 2010, Meyer said that the telegram was a myth and that the sentiment stemmed from a friend's letter to Meyer. He suggested the story had origins in editing notes received from the White House during the production, which "may have been a joke, but it wouldn't surprise me, him being an old Hollywood guy."[27] There is also an apocryphal story which claims that, after seeing the film, Ronald Reagan said: "That will not happen on my watch."
The Day After won two Emmy Awards and received 10 other Emmy nominations.[34]
Emmy Awards won:
Outstanding Film Sound Editing for a Limited Series or a Special (Christopher T. Welch, Brian Courcier, Greg Dillon, David R. Elliott, Michael Hilkene, Fred Judkins, Carl Mahakian, Joseph A. Mayer, Joe Melody, Catherine Shorr, Richard Shorr, Jill Taggart, Roy Prendergast)
Threads is a 1984 British-Australian apocalyptic war drama television film jointly produced by the BBC, Nine Network and Western-World Television Inc. Written by Barry Hines and directed and produced by Mick Jackson, it is a dramatic account of nuclear war and its effects in Britain, specifically on the city of Sheffield in Northern England. The plot centres on two families as a confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union erupts. As the nuclear exchange between NATO and the Warsaw Pact begins, the film depicts the medical, economic, social and environmental consequences of nuclear war.
WarGames is a 1983 American techno-thriller film directed by John Badham, written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes, and starring Matthew Broderick, Dabney Coleman, John Wood and Ally Sheedy. Broderick plays David Lightman, a young computer hacker who unwittingly accesses a United States military supercomputer programmed to simulate, predict and execute nuclear war against the Soviet Union, triggering a false alarm that threatens to start World War III.
The Waltons is an American historical drama television series about a family in rural Virginia during the Great Depression and World War II. It was created by Earl Hamner Jr., based on his 1961 book Spencer's Mountain and the 1963 film of the same name. The series aired from 1972 to 1981.
M*A*S*H is an American war comedy drama television series that aired on CBS from September 17, 1972, to February 28, 1983. It was developed by Larry Gelbart as the first original spin-off series adapted from the 1970 feature film M*A*S*H, which, in turn, was based on Richard Hooker's 1968 novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors. The series, which was produced with 20th Century Fox Television for CBS, follows a team of doctors and support staff stationed at the "4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital" in Uijeongbu, South Korea, during the Korean War (1950–53).
A television film, alternatively known as a television movie, made-for-TV film/movie, telefilm, telemovie or TV film/movie, is a feature-length film that is produced and originally distributed by or to a television network, in contrast to theatrical films made for initial showing in movie theaters, and direct-to-video films made for initial release on home video formats. In certain cases, such films may also be referred to and shown as a miniseries, which typically indicates a film that has been divided into multiple parts or a series that contains a predetermined, limited number of episodes.
This section of the timeline of United States history concerns events from 1970 to 1989
Nicholas Meyer is an American screenwriter, director and author known for his best-selling novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, and for directing the films Time After Time, two of the Star Trek feature films, the 1983 television film The Day After, and the 1999 HBO original film Vendetta.
Spies Like Us is a 1985 American spy comedy film directed by John Landis, and starring Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Steve Forrest, and Donna Dixon. The film presents the comic adventures of two novice intelligence agents sent to the Soviet Union. Originally written by Aykroyd and Dave Thomas to star Aykroyd and John Belushi at Universal, the script went into turnaround and was later picked up by Warner Bros., starring Aykroyd and Chase.
Special Bulletin is a 1983 American drama television film directed by Edward Zwick and written by Marshall Herskovitz, based on a story by both. It was an early collaboration between the two, who would later produce such series as thirtysomething and My So-Called Life. The film was first broadcast March 20, 1983 on NBC as part of NBC Sunday Night at the Movies.
Harold Arnold "Herk" Harvey was an American film director, screenwriter, actor and film producer, perhaps best known for his 1962 horror film Carnival of Souls.
Amerika is an American television miniseries that was broadcast in 1987 on ABC. The miniseries inspired a novelization entitled Amerika: The Triumph of the American Spirit. Amerika starred Kris Kristofferson, Mariel Hemingway, Sam Neill, Robert Urich, Christine Lahti, and a 17-year-old Lara Flynn Boyle in her first major role. Amerika was about life in the United States after a bloodless takeover engineered by the Soviet Union. Not wanting to depict the actual takeover, ABC Entertainment president, Brandon Stoddard, set the miniseries ten years after the event, focusing on the demoralized U.S. people a decade after the Soviet conquest. The intent, he later explained, was to explore the U.S. spirit under such conditions, not to portray the conflict of the Soviet coup.
Carol for Another Christmas is a 1964 American TV movie, written by Rod Serling as a modernization of Charles Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol and a plea for global cooperation. It was the first in a planned series of television specials developed to promote the United Nations and educate viewers about its mission. Originally televised on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) network on December 28, 1964, it was not shown again for 48 years, until Turner Classic Movies (TCM) broadcast it on December 16, 2012.
The Cold War was reflected in culture through music, movies, books, television, and other media, as well as sports, social beliefs, and behavior. Major elements of the Cold War included the threat of communist expansion, a nuclear war, and – connected to both – espionage. Many works use the Cold War as a backdrop or directly take part in a fictional conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. The period 1953–62 saw Cold War themes becoming mainstream as a public preoccupation.
World War III, sometimes abbreviated to WWIII, is a common theme in popular culture. Since the 1940s, countless books, films, and television programmes have used the theme of nuclear weapons and a third global war. The presence of the Soviet Union as an international rival armed with nuclear weapons created persistent fears in the United States and vice versa of a nuclear World War III, and popular culture at the time reflected those fears. The theme was also a way of exploring a range of issues beyond nuclear war in the arts. U.S. historian Spencer R. Weart called nuclear weapons a "symbol for the worst of modernity."
Edward Chalmers Hume was an American film and television writer, best known for creating and developing several TV series in the 1970s, and for writing the 1983 TV movie The Day After.
The United Nations television film series was a series of American television films planned and developed in the 1960s for the purpose of promoting the United Nations (UN) and educating television viewers about its work. Although six films were originally planned only four were broadcast, all by the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) network between December 1964 and April 1966.
The Nuclear Freeze campaign was a mass movement in the United States during the 1980s to secure an agreement between the U.S. and Soviet governments to halt the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons.
The Brack Report is a British television drama series created by Christopher Penfold for Thames Television looking at concerns about nuclear power, and exploring some alternative energy sources. It was broadcast over 10 weeks on ITV from 6 April 1982 to 8 June 1982 which overlapped with the Falklands War. It stars Donald Sumpter, Patricia Garwood and Jenny Seagrove.
Jeff Daniels is an American-Australian documentary film director and producer.
↑ Meyer, Nicholas, "The View From the Bridge: Memories of Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood", page 150. Viking Adult, 2009
1 2 Craig, David Randolph (2024). "Chapter: Hijacked". Apocalypse Television: How The Day After Helped End the Cold War. Essex, Connecticut: Applause. pp.85–98. ISBN9781493079179.
↑ McFadden, Robert D. (November 22, 1983). "Atomic War Film Spurs Nationwide Discussion". The New York Times.
Meyer, Nicholas (1983). The Day After (TV-Miniseries). United States: Embassy Home Entertainment. Archived from the original on August 13, 2019. Retrieved June 30, 2018.
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