Monday

Last night's October-thon movie was Panic in Year Zero! (1962)* directed by and starring Ray Milland. Not a horror movie, per se (but movie-thon topical if only for title punctuation), this Panic takes place in the kinder, gentler cold war of the sixties: after an era when cinematic radiation unearthed stomping monsters or grew giant ant armies, but prior to the fiery apocalypses and nuclear winters of the seventies and eighties. A time between knowing too little and too much, when we still had faith in automated protections and the possibility of outrunning fallout. Harry and family (including Frankie Avalon!) embark on their vacation one morning, but between here and there, here and there are blasted in a nuclear strike by unnamed European and Asiatic nations. From a safe distance, they witness the movie's lone mushroom cloud ascending over the horizon. Dad, a Civil Defense Corpsman, knows just where CONELRAD* broadcasts on the AM dial. Now, Harry will attempt to pilot his family through a resulting holocaust at once grimly pessimistic and naively upbeat. Sure, civilization panics in the aftermath, and the rough rule the road; but soon civilization will assert itself and rule-of-law will be reestablished. Can Harry and family make it through the nuclear interim? Besides being hopelessly dated in its holocaust science, the movie is absurd for its crashing Les Baxter hot jazz score waxing upbeat, daddy-o, over jaunty scenes of desperate road war. It's shot in eye-popping widescreen, framing little of interest off-road. While on the road, however, this precursor to, and possible inspiration for, Mad Max achieves a certain worth. It's fairly prescient too: several scenes, especially one where civil defenders attempt to protect an idyllic hamlet from L.A. refugees, uncomfortably precreate real-world events in Gretna, LA after Hurricane Katrina apocalypsed New Orleans.* [Cavin]