The Day After

Excellent seller and quick shipment of this hard to find Movie from the 80'S. Most of these were done on VHS since DVD was not around in the 80's, But this is a DVD of the movie "The Day After. If you are looking for this video on DVD, then check out this seller.

I love this movie. When I first viewed it in 1983, it scared the heck out of me, my family, and my girlfriend, along with about 25million plus Americans that night. The momentum building up to the fateful moment is difficult to decipher becuase the radio and TV newsbroadcasters are overshadowed by the characters talking to each other. If one really listens to those broadcasts, the storyline and dramatics really will scare you - if they don't, then you don't recall the Cold War (thankfully!).

Good acting by all, a nice glimpse of how unprepared FEMA was in this movie that we can relate to given Hurrican Katrina; emotionally stirring if you really watch and become engrossed in the drama, because back in 1983, we did fear a nuclear war on a different scale than the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

A good movie for simple historical purposes, well worth it for entertainment value, and it's a cool glimpse into what could have happened to us back then.

I remember vividly a friend telling me about this show. My response was that no one would survive and there wouldn't be a day after to tell of. Then he told me that no one did survive. There were some who were still alive but you could see that they weren't going to live long. It's not like some bombs drop, thousands of people die and then the survivors rebuild. Not with nuclear war. The fallout and radiation lasts much, much longer. People's hair falls out, they break out in rashes and eventually die even if they survive the initial attack. You would have to be in a fallout shelter for months before it would be safe to come out. Of course all livestock would die and the ground may never be suitable for growing crops for decades. This is not a scenario we want to experience. Lets hope our "leaders" won't choose this path. It would indeed be madness

I really liked the film, in fact, I've seen it twice (The Day After). It was a wake up call but I wished it was a little longer and showed how life would be after a certain amount of years and what (if anything) would survive. I'm glad I purchased it.

This movie originally came out my sophomore year in high school. I can still remember all the unrest and dialogue it caused; it was all everyone wanted to talk about the next day at school. So many people were so upset that I recall some teachers taking time out of class to discuss the topic of nuclear war. To say the least, this movie "hit a nerve."

For myself, I had read articles in SCIENCE magazine and had done extensive research on the subject matter. The movie was disturbing, but nothing really surprised me in it. The next day @ school I looked around and thought to myself: "Am I the only one who has ever thought about the consequences of using nuclear weapons? Are people that naive?"

While I'm sure many other people had read up on it, I'm equally as sure that that vast majority did not. That much was readily apparent. Such was the utility of this movie; to make people think about the un-thinkable. And, insofar as that is concerned, it did a terrific job.

Looking back, the FX of the bombs going off are not particularly impressive. Of course, that was not the "point" of this made-for-TV movie. It wasn't made as an "excuse" to show off great special-effects. Rather, it was designed to show what the aftermath of a nuclear confrontation would be like.

The best part of the movie is in how subtle some of its points are. The ultimate point is this: nuclear war is the great equalizer. After such a war, it matters not how educated you are, how rich you are, how poor you are, whether you're gregarious or dislike other people, whether you hold an important social position, etc. None of that matters. Anarchy replaces order and chaos replaces our social mores. The Darwininan instinct to survive trumps all else, even if it means hanging on to a life of grotesque radiation sickness.

The film is nostalgic in that it has a young John Lithgow and an even younger Steve Guttenberg. It had been so long since I saw it on TV that I did not recall Guttenberg being in the movie. Of course, he was yet to become a big name @ the time this was made.

These days, THE DAY AFTER does not carry quite the same poignancy as it did in the 1980s. The chances of an all-out nuclear war are fairly slim at this point in time. The much greater concern now is a nuclear weapon(s) being detonated by a terrorist organization. Still, IF that were to happen (and I hope it doesn't in my lifetime - or ever!!), much of what you see in this movie will be true-to-form. Hence, 20+ years after its inception, this movie still bears a chilling warning about what scientists like to call "tickling the dragon."