Good premise, the temporary suspension of civilized values after a nuclear attack, an idea around which a good and gripping film might have been built. Instead we have a poor script and below-par acting in a meandering and disjointed tale.
The Baldwin family load their car and trailer at four in the morning (broad daylight) for a vacation in the mountains. A few hours later, on the road, they see a flash over Los Angeles, followed by a vast mushroom-shaped cloud. "We'd better turn around and go back," opines the family patriarch, Ray Milland. That's mistake number one, five minutes into the movie. Headed back towards LA they face a constant stream of cars speeding away from the city, driving crazily, blowing their horns, passing illegally. "What's the MATTER with everybody?" screams the pretty teen-aged girl that all such threatened families must have with them. There follow a series of encounters with people of various backgrounds and characters. A grocery store owner who hasn't heard the news yet. (New York, LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago, and, I think, maybe Baltimore and Keokuk, Iowa, have been nuked out of existence, as have Rome, Paris, and, by our retaliatory response, targets in "Europe and Asia".) The grocery store owner is happy to unload his entire store of goods in one hour. But a wised-up gas station owner charges them -- get this, now -- THREE DOLLARS A GALLON, which shocks everyone into silence and prompts Ray Milland to bop the guy in the chops and knock him out.
No need to go on too long about this. Three hoodlums seem to track the Baldwins wherever they go, even unto the alien corn, until finally, one by one, they are knocked off by Ray Milland or his son, the multi-talented Frankie Avalon.
The function of the two women -- Jean Hagen is Mrs. Baldwin and Mary Mitchell the daughter -- seems to be to nag the men as they go about the business of preserving the family. "You pointed a gun at that man! I've never seen you like this before!" says Hagen after her husband has confiscated some stores. "Let's go back. I want to see grandmother," says the daughter.
It ends abruptly, with the Baldwins and girl captive they've rescued from the three goons stopped by the Army, quizzed, and allowed to proceed because Frankie Avalon is dying from loss of blood in the back seat. The sergeant says, "That's five more that made it without radiation poisoning," as the two soldiers gaze at the departing car. That's the end. That's really it. The end. It's as if the crew had suddenly run out of film and had time to shoot only the last few sentences.
What a waste, except for Joan Freeman as the captive rape victim the Baldwin's have picked up. She can't act any more than the rest of the cast but she's cute as a calico kitten. AIP should have thrown ambition to the wind and made a movie called, "Panic in the Year Zero at Bikini Beach."
The Baldwin family load their car and trailer at four in the morning (broad daylight) for a vacation in the mountains. A few hours later, on the road, they see a flash over Los Angeles, followed by a vast mushroom-shaped cloud. "We'd better turn around and go back," opines the family patriarch, Ray Milland. That's mistake number one, five minutes into the movie. Headed back towards LA they face a constant stream of cars speeding away from the city, driving crazily, blowing their horns, passing illegally. "What's the MATTER with everybody?" screams the pretty teen-aged girl that all such threatened families must have with them. There follow a series of encounters with people of various backgrounds and characters. A grocery store owner who hasn't heard the news yet. (New York, LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Chicago, and, I think, maybe Baltimore and Keokuk, Iowa, have been nuked out of existence, as have Rome, Paris, and, by our retaliatory response, targets in "Europe and Asia".) The grocery store owner is happy to unload his entire store of goods in one hour. But a wised-up gas station owner charges them -- get this, now -- THREE DOLLARS A GALLON, which shocks everyone into silence and prompts Ray Milland to bop the guy in the chops and knock him out.
No need to go on too long about this. Three hoodlums seem to track the Baldwins wherever they go, even unto the alien corn, until finally, one by one, they are knocked off by Ray Milland or his son, the multi-talented Frankie Avalon.
The function of the two women -- Jean Hagen is Mrs. Baldwin and Mary Mitchell the daughter -- seems to be to nag the men as they go about the business of preserving the family. "You pointed a gun at that man! I've never seen you like this before!" says Hagen after her husband has confiscated some stores. "Let's go back. I want to see grandmother," says the daughter.
It ends abruptly, with the Baldwins and girl captive they've rescued from the three goons stopped by the Army, quizzed, and allowed to proceed because Frankie Avalon is dying from loss of blood in the back seat. The sergeant says, "That's five more that made it without radiation poisoning," as the two soldiers gaze at the departing car. That's the end. That's really it. The end. It's as if the crew had suddenly run out of film and had time to shoot only the last few sentences.
What a waste, except for Joan Freeman as the captive rape victim the Baldwin's have picked up. She can't act any more than the rest of the cast but she's cute as a calico kitten. AIP should have thrown ambition to the wind and made a movie called, "Panic in the Year Zero at Bikini Beach."