Thank goodness for Mill Creek. These kind folks search vaults, closets, back rooms and heaven knows where else to dig up copyright-free movies that can be stuffed into multi-disc sets and sold on the cheap. Often the collections offer pictures that’ll eventually be on late night TV if one just waits long enough.
But not the “Cold War Hysteria” collection. If not for Mill Creek (or some similar operation), these things would have been buried back in the 1950s and never unearthed again. After all, the demise of the Soviet Union substantially reduced the dread people used to feel about the end of the world.
That isn’t to say that it couldn’t still happen. But if it does, it likely won’t look much like it does in these movies. Their quaintness tends to make them either hysterically funny or intensely boring. Thus of the 43 pictures included on the three-disc set, the following are the eight best and worst just to save you a little time.
Let’s start with the fun stuff:
Duck and Cover – The classics never die. Actually, if you’ve seen The Atomic Café then you’ve seen most of this one. And if you haven’t seen The Atomic Café, track it down and watch it before you see any of the pictures on this list. It provides some essential cultural context, particularly for those not "lucky" enough to have lived through this craziness first-hand.
Management of Mass Casualties – The Air Force supplies this handy guide to properly sorting the different levels of battlefield casualties a medic might expect in the wake of a nuclear strike on a military unit. My particular favorite part was the placement of tags on head cases to make them easily identifiable. The only thing missing was instructions for the proper extraction of little yellow cowards from a tent full of brave men wounded in battle.
Red Chinese Battle Plan – Most of the focus of Cold War stuff tends to be on the undeclared war against the Soviet Union. Even when the enemy went unnamed, it was still clearly implied that we were talking about the Russians. But here we pause to send props out to Communist China. For the most part it’s standard Red Menace screed, but some of the footage is interesting.
A Day Called X – Unlike most of the entries in this set, this one was produced by CBS – a reputable news organization at the time – rather than the government or the likes of Encyclopedia Britannica. Glenn Ford narrates as Portland is mock attacked by the Russkies. Every once in awhile the screen sports a super that says “An attack is not taking place,” no doubt in an effort to keep from War-of-the-Worlds-ing the viewing public.
The Challenge of Ideas – Edward R. Murrow, John Wayne and others lend their voices of authority to this explanation of the Soviets’ three-pronged attack on truth, justice and the American Way. As a snapshot explanation of the Cold War, this one’s hard to beat.
Medic: Flash of Darkness – This is one of many shorts in which actors perform scenes from nuclear attack scenarios. The draw here is the thorough explanation of triage practices for the victims of an atomic bomb blast. Good times!
Atomic Alert – EB, the folks who made all those science movies we had to watch in high school – supplies the “Elementary Version” of nuclear annihilation. As the kids square away the family’s basement bomb shelter, big brother remarks “Suzie, this stuff would come in handy on a camping trip.” Fella could have a pretty good time in Vegas with all this, too.
The House in the Middle – Of all the productions included in this collection, this one’s my favorite. It was created by The National Clean Up - Paint Up - Fix Up Bureau. So if you think your job is tough, imagine being required to introduce yourself as an agent of CU-PU-FU. But the real fun here is the footage from bomb tests proving that untidy houses with stacks of books and magazines, clothes drying on lines and unpainted fences were more likely to burn down during an atomic strike. Though never explicitly stated, there’s a strong racist component that’s hard to ignore. God bless taxpayer-supported scientific research.
A fine line separates the wheat from the chaff in this collection. For the most part they’re all trying to accomplish the same goal. The bad ones just go about it the wrong way.
Operation Ivy – Ugh. How can explosions this big be this boring? A pipe-smoking Murrow look-alike takes us through more than an hour’s worth of detail about one of the Pacific atoll bomb tests. And when I say “detail” I mean it. Footage of planning meetings (or at least recreations of planning meetings). Footage of trucks being unloaded from ships. Footage of trenches being dug for pipes. Footage of dials being calibrated. If you’re obsessed with literally every aspect of the bomb testing process, this should give you no end of pleasure. Personally, I’d far rather cut straight to the earth-shattering kaboom.
Anything else starting with “Operation” – Though Ivy is by far the longest and dullest, just about all the rest of the movies devoted to particular tests are long on the tech specs and short on the fireballs.
Our Cities Must Fight – Though conservative paranoia runs like a river through most of these pictures, it reaches a ranting fever pitch in this one. The thesis here is that anyone who lives in a major urban area and tries to flee in the face of an imminent nuclear strike is a traitor. Good Americans are apparently expected to stand fast and fry.
Bombproof – This short movie produced by The Burroughs Corporation extols the virtues of transferring business records to microfilm to increase the chances that they’ll survive a nuclear attack. Any guesses about what The Burroughs Corporation manufactures? The best part of this entry is the cranky employee who keeps fretting about getting his paychecks on time after we get nuked. Where the hell are you going to spend all that money, genius?
Tale of Two Cities – Most of the rest of the pictures in this set – good and bad – are funny in a crazy sort of way. This examination of the aftereffects of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is just depressing. It’s also creepy how much emphasis is placed on structural damage to buildings with relatively little time devoted to the human cost of the attacks.
Occupying a Public Shelter – The idea behind lessons from Civil Defense is to prepare the population to survive World War Three. Unfortunately, this one has the exact opposite effect on me. Am I really being offered a choice between instant death and a long (weeks? months? years?) stretch in a fallout shelter with obnoxious strangers? Even assuming that it would be possible to wait out nuclear winter without running out of water, food and air, I’d still just as soon spread a blanket out in my front yard and prepare for the ultimate tan than be subjected to such an extended, uninterrupted dose of my fellow citizens. The same criticism applies to “Information Program within Public Shelters.”
A New Look at the H-Bomb – This is the usual parade of unconvincing arguments about the survivability of a nuclear strike. However, the blather is accompanied by extraordinarily bad art. The least they can do is sugar-coat their crap with some decent animation, dramatizations of happy-looking people living comfortable lives in their basements, or professional-looking guys assuring us that despite all appearances we really are going to be alright. The narrator here doesn’t even look like he believes his own nonsense.
This Is Not a Test – For starters, this one doesn’t even belong with the rest. It’s a feature-length narrative drama, not a training film, documentary or docudrama. And as already noted in the movie review, it’s a thing of immense dreadfulness.
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