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You Dropped a Bomb on Me
Or how we learned to stop worrying and love the Hollywood apocalypse “The China Syndrome” Sunday, July 31 at 2 p.m. The Florida Theatre, 128 E. Forsyth St., Jacksonville Tickets are $7.50 355-2787
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hen The Florida Theatre screens the 1979 thriller “The China Syndrome” this weekend, local movie fans have the chance to relive one of the most pressing concerns of the mid-to-late 20th century: “What will happen if we suffer a nuclear meltdown and/or attack?” Upon its release, this edge-of-your-seat thrill ride about the volatile situation at a nuclear reactor and possible cover-up by authorities (i.e., “The Man”) was both a box office and critical smash. Jack Lemmon, Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas starred in this Academy Award-winning film that seemed to touch a collective nerve in the American psyche. In the aftermath of the nuclear meltdowns that occurred in Japan following this year’s March earthquake and tsunami, unfortunately, the reality of director James Bridges’ nail-biter of a flick has become all too real. But “The China Syndrome” has a few cinematic peers in the dramatic “what if?” — films like Mike Nichols’ “Silkwood” or even the teen favorite “Wargames,” both in 1983. It’s a good thing Hollywood deals in uncut fantasy, realizing that the reality of nuclear radiation is more palatable when denial is cranked up to 11 – or at least filtered through crazed fantasy. Folio Weekly decided to dig through the rubble of some of the weirder atomic-era films that explore and exploit our fears in radiant, radiation-rich Technicolor (and ash-colored black-and-white).
“On the Beach”
Director Stanley Kramer’s 1959 film, which chronicled the world in the aftermath of WWIII, has it all: alcoholism, tips on child euthanasia, possible religious zealotry and even Fred Astaire! An incredibly depressing film, “On the Beach” was based on Neil Shutes’ equally despairing novel of 1957, while in 1974, Neil Young got in on this giggle party by using the title for a real wrist-slasher of an album.
“Dr. Strangelove”
Mass destruction never looked so fun in director Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 tour de farce that rubbed our collective noses in the atomic nightmare in the form of the Doomsday Machine. Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden and Slim Pickens gave career-defining performances
(Sellers was cast in three mind-bendingly brilliant roles). Perhaps the funniest part of this radiation romp is that the story satirized the actual military strategy of MAD, or Mutual Assured Destruction. In essence, MAD theorizes that since both sides would ultimately be destroyed in the event of a nuclear strike, those opposing sides are then, in fact, less likely to push the red button. Sleep tight!
“A Boy and His Dog”
What do you get when you throw together sci-fi writer Harlan Ellison, The Firesign Theatre, Ray Manzarek of The Doors, a telepathic dog and Jason Robards? No, not the finalists at a bean-eating contest at Orson Welles’ ashram, but rather a few of the disparate elements that helped create L.Q. Jones’ 1975 flick that starred a young, pre“Miami Vice” Don Johnson, who wandered a post-apocalyptic wasteland with his aforementioned mutt as they sought out food, sex and general mirth.
“The Day After”
On Nov. 20, 1983 an estimated 100 million Americans watched this made-for-TV film that told the story of Midwesterners trying to survive the impact of a full-tilt nuke strike. The chilling effect of watching the scabby survivors pick through the rubble was almost as dire as enduring a cast of nebbish ’80s types like Steve Guttenberg, John Lithgow and JoBeth Williams, whose careers have since been pulverized back to atomic matter. Most tellingly, Jason Robards pops up again in this iconoclastic film, which makes Folio Weekly wonder if the gravel-voiced Oscar-winner set off Geiger counters or happened to glow in his sleep.
© 2011
“Damnation Alley”
At the mythical intersection where science, speculation and stupidity meet is a place called “Damnation Alley.” Featuring the tagline “An Adventure You’ll Never Forget!” Jack Smight’s 1977 sci-fi epic was forgotten almost immediately upon release. But there’s no accounting for taste, as this B-movie masterpiece has stars Jan-Michael Vincent, George Peppard and Paul Winfield battling radioactive hillbillies and “flesh-stripping” cockroaches as they travel across a treacherous post-nuked America to the new Shangri-La: Albany, New York. Fans of all of the above will be thrilled to learn this lost classic is finally available on Blu-ray disc. Dan Brown dbrown@folioweekly.com JULY 26-AUGUST 1, 2011 | FOLIO WEEKLY | 19
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