The air was filled with REAL threat during the fifty-year-Cold War. And not just the air but the movies too. Features were filled with spies and espionage and sabotage and wearing white after Labor Day. John Wayne had to put them down in Hawaii in "Big Jim McLain." But it's understandable that there should have been so many threat movies during the Cold War. A population needs to be inoculated against the possibility of a horrible war, in case the possibility is realized.
These films are actually training films in how to play a new role. I remember training films in boot camp -- one about the Universal Code of Military Justice in particular, in which Lee Marvin played a deceitful sailor on the witness stand. There was some other one about venereal disease and another that showed us how to swim with perfect safety through a sea of burning oil, very amusing.
"A Day Called X" is about how to assume the role of disaster survivor in the event of a nuclear war -- how to prepare yourself emotionally and materially.
Phyllis Thaxter is a middle-class Mom who takes care of the house and her two children in Westchester, a well-to-do suburb of New York, while well-groomed Dad goes off to work in the city. A hydrogen bomb is dropped on the city by "the enemy".
All of a sudden the Thaxter house is turned into a chaotic scene of intrigues, arguments, desperate, visitors and survivors -- a rogue doctor who was once a pacifist, kids too young to understand radiation, a woman who becomes hysterical, another who is benumbed, another who gets constantly smashed. But in the midst of all this hubbub, Thaxter is a pillar of stability.
Frankly, it has a hasty look about it. There's a good deal of rushing from place to place on the single stage set. No one is sure of himself except for the local doctor who is -- Walter MATTHAU, looking great in the tumult.
It's more of a historical curiosity now. Thank God for small favors.
These films are actually training films in how to play a new role. I remember training films in boot camp -- one about the Universal Code of Military Justice in particular, in which Lee Marvin played a deceitful sailor on the witness stand. There was some other one about venereal disease and another that showed us how to swim with perfect safety through a sea of burning oil, very amusing.
"A Day Called X" is about how to assume the role of disaster survivor in the event of a nuclear war -- how to prepare yourself emotionally and materially.
Phyllis Thaxter is a middle-class Mom who takes care of the house and her two children in Westchester, a well-to-do suburb of New York, while well-groomed Dad goes off to work in the city. A hydrogen bomb is dropped on the city by "the enemy".
All of a sudden the Thaxter house is turned into a chaotic scene of intrigues, arguments, desperate, visitors and survivors -- a rogue doctor who was once a pacifist, kids too young to understand radiation, a woman who becomes hysterical, another who is benumbed, another who gets constantly smashed. But in the midst of all this hubbub, Thaxter is a pillar of stability.
Frankly, it has a hasty look about it. There's a good deal of rushing from place to place on the single stage set. No one is sure of himself except for the local doctor who is -- Walter MATTHAU, looking great in the tumult.
It's more of a historical curiosity now. Thank God for small favors.