The Day after was one of the most influential TV dramas ever made. It shook the world - and even Presidents.
It is the dramatization of WWIII and a nuclear attack on Kansas City - and the aftermath. Although produced with a limited budget and always with the fierce American TV censors in mind - it is gory, brutal and moving.
But most of all it kicked the American public into gear to seriously discussing the current state of affairs and nuclear arms reduction (from Wikipedia):
Reagan wrote in his diary that the film “left me greatly depressed.” and that it changed his mind on the prevailing policy on a “nuclear war”. In 1987 during the era of Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika reforms, the film was shown on Soviet television. Upon signing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty at Reykjavik with Gorbachev, Meyer received a telegram from the Reagan Administration that said, ‘Don’t think your movie didn’t have any part of this, because it did.’
The nuclear arms race is still going, but with less ferocity than before. But the US and Russia still waste billions of dollars on nukes. The danger of a “Day after” is much smaller, but we still have way too many atomic bombs around - and the doctrine of a first strike or using “tactical” nukes is still in the heads of Generals and Politicians.
The danger is still with us.
More? Search Mininova for The Day after or watch the whole movie on YouTube (part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5 - part 6 - part 7 - part 8 - part 9 - part 10 - part 11 - part 12 - part 13 - part 14 - part 15)
