Movies: Nuclear War | TheaterFire

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KVR62@reddit

A couple other older vintage nuclear war movies to check out are Failsafe, which is very scary realistic. And the very somber On the Beach, set in Australia following a global nuclear war as the population contemplates the eventual arrival of the lethal levels of fallout in the jetstream. Great casts in both films.

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Right_Dream_7580@reddit (OP)

wow! I'll have to look these up. Thank you!

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MaybeOnFire2025@reddit

Try to find both the original Fail Safe (60s), as well as the 2000 version, live on CBS, which Clooney put together.

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scruffmonkey@reddit

Both are available of the high seas so to speak, not many seeders but give it a week and you’ll have both.

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Right_Dream_7580@reddit (OP)

will do, thank you!

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MinimumAnalysis5378@reddit

On The Beach was so disturbing and sad.

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CthulhusEvilTwin@reddit

The George Clooney remake of Fail Safe is pretty good - it was broadcast live. There are a couple of ropey/fluffed lines in there but overall an excellent version. Also Miracle Mile is worth watching. Boy meets girl, boy oversleeps and misses date, nuclear war.

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Jensen1994@reddit

Threads.

Particularly horrific if you're British and saw it in the 80s when it was first released. Stayed with me my whole life.

We need a modern remake as I'm not sure gen Z appreciates the horror of nuclear war like we did. And that's really important.

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MovieSock@reddit

The guys who made the Adolescence mini series are remaking Threads, or at least have purchased the rights to do so.

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scruffmonkey@reddit

You kinda want to say good lads best of luck but then you think about it and fuck me; maybe don’t lads.

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Worth-Canary-9189@reddit

Threads was the British answer to 'The Day After' and as bad as TDA was, Threads was so much worse.

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manthursaday@reddit

I describe to people that Threads makes The Day After look like a Disney movie.

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Worth-Canary-9189@reddit

You're not wrong.

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Spreadeaglebeagle44@reddit

Thanks for reminding me. That movie stole years of my childhood.

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oldmanhockeylife@reddit

By Dawns early light, Failsafe is a good one and of course Dr. Strangelove.

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oldmanhockeylife@reddit

Oh and I forgot "on the beach" (old one with Gregory Peck). Depressing though.

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MaybeOnFire2025@reddit

The remake with the Aussies and Armand Assante wasn't bad at all.

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oldmanhockeylife@reddit

I agree. It just wasn't as intense. Maybe it was the black and white.

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Agent-15@reddit

Mutants of 2051 AD

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RoninRobot@reddit

Ah. A sommelier of fine, vintage cinema. Have a jelly.

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2_Bagel_Dog@reddit

Don't forget about When the Wind Blows. It's an odd cartoon that gets darker as it goes along (and is an interesting commentary on some of the official preparedness suggestions).

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Right_Dream_7580@reddit (OP)

is this the Studio Ghibli anime?

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2_Bagel_Dog@reddit

I don't think so. It isn't anime and Roger Waters was involved (oddly enough).

You might be thinking of The Wind Rises?

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Worth-Canary-9189@reddit

I rewatched The Day After a year or so ago. I remember watching it on my 10th birthday and being absolutely terrified. It wasn't much better as a 50-something adult. I never realized what an all-star cast it had. That being said, the one good thing that happened from it though was that Ronald Reagan screened it at the White House and it terrified him so much, it led to the landmark nuclear nonproliferation agreement between the U.S. and Soviet Union in 1984.

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geo_the_dragon@reddit

"ladies and gentlemen, we begin bombing in five minutes"

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grammanarchy@reddit

I was about your age when it came out. The week before, there was an article about it in the Sunday paper with maps of my state with likely targets marked. I remember explaining to my mother that the closest impact would be far enough away that we wouldn’t die immediately, but if we saw the explosion our eyes would turn to liquid and run down our cheeks, and that was why I was not allowed to watch The Day After.

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Worth-Canary-9189@reddit

My parents insisted we watch it. My brother was only 8 at the time. Both my parents lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis and were fairly traumatized by it. My mom wanted to make sure that we were aware of the world around us and to be as prepared as possible.

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OldBanjoFrog@reddit

Threads

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BarracudaFar1905@reddit

This film will never leave your head if you watch it.

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Right_Dream_7580@reddit (OP)

I'll watch it when I'm ready...and it seems I'm not ready. Is it more dark than "Testament"?

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NVJAC@reddit

It is incredibly dark. Maybe the bleekest movie ever made.

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geo_the_dragon@reddit

I feel no horror movie comes close to the plausible scenario of Threads

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OldBanjoFrog@reddit

I saw it as a kid in the 80’s. I am still scarred

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lesh17@reddit

Threads, /thread.

(Seriously, back in the 80s this movie gave me months of nightmares and the surety that I would perish in nuclear flame.)

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NVJAC@reddit

and the surety that I would perish in nuclear flame.)

And that would have been the good alternative.

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MaybeOnFire2025@reddit

Only if you have your affairs in order. JFC, what a depressing watch...

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manthursaday@reddit

Threads makes The Day After look like a Disney movie.

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Signal_Cake5735@reddit

I watched this with my parents in 1984 when I was 14 years old. It was one of only two times that I saw my normally very spirited dad turn sheet white. The second was when he had dialysis 27 years later.

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scruffmonkey@reddit

There’s bits of Sheffield still not recovered.

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geo_the_dragon@reddit

If you want to be freaked out watch "Threads" from the UK, 1984.

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NVJAC@reddit

Threads makes The Day After look like a Sunday church picnic.

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forgetful_waterfowl@reddit

You should try 'By Dawn's Early Light'

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Right_Dream_7580@reddit (OP)

it was suggested and I'm watching it now, thank you!

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MaybeOnFire2025@reddit

Fantastic HBO film. I read the novel it was based on, not nearly as good.

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anotherspaceguy100@reddit

The Quiet Earth; highly recommended. Not strictly speaking about nuclear attacks, but in 1985 this was heavily implied.

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Right_Dream_7580@reddit (OP)

thank you! adding to list!!

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WileyCoyote7@reddit

Great movie. I thought I was the only one that remembers it.

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GenralChaos@reddit

“By Dawn’s Early Light” is a decent made for HBO movie about an accidental launch that triggers an escalating exchange. James Earl Jones, Powers Booth, Martin Landeau, Rebecca De Mornay.

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Right_Dream_7580@reddit (OP)

the name of the movie sounds familiar but I don't recall if alive ever seen it. Will have to look it up, we especially since I love JEJ. Thank you!

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MaybeOnFire2025@reddit

Here you go!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5D36Haa8L0

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Right_Dream_7580@reddit (OP)

Thank you so much. watching this one tonight!!

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Any-Neighborhood98@reddit

House of Dynamite. Based on Annie Jacobsen's truly terrifying minute by minute book of how nuclear armegeddon could unfold

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Right_Dream_7580@reddit (OP)

will have to look for both, thank you

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MaybeOnFire2025@reddit

A word of caution, both Annie's book and A House of Dynamite -- both recent -- have not aged well. Lots of critical pushback on the premises of both. Not saying don't read/watch, but rather, put them towards the end of your list.

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johnonymous1973@reddit

Threads was a UK version of TDA, and far darker.

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MaybeOnFire2025@reddit

Threads will make the toughest grown man feel....just icky.

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Backhanded_Bitch@reddit

Threads was way rougher to watch than The Day After was for me. I think it was well done.

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NotReallyButMaybeNot@reddit

Also had a much longer time horizon… that was, as mentioned, very dark and bleak

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BazingaQQ@reddit

Came here to post this. Freaked me out big time when i was 10 or 11.

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Psycle_Panda@reddit

Much darker. It really affected me and I found it hard to watch TBH.

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GeneSmart2881@reddit

If you easily dismiss War Games as silly or “yesterday’s technology”, then you’re probably not well educated. STILL STANDS THE test of time

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MaybeOnFire2025@reddit

It's one of my teenage daughter's favorite movies -- I am trying very hard to show my kids as many good 80s - 2000s films before they fly the coop.

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Erazzphoto@reddit

I guess I’m not like most, nuclear war occupied very little of my mind. I wasn’t watching the nightly news, I wasn’t reading sections in the newspaper outside of the comics and sports sections, I was just too young to follow it enough to care. My world didn’t exist outside of a 10-15 mile range

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ThatMichaelsEmployee@reddit

Miracle Mile is a mostly forgotten 1988 movie that I remember being quite good: I don't know how it's aged in the ensuing 40 years, but it seemed very of-the-moment when it was released. A young man picks up a ringing phone in a phone booth — it's a wrong number — and discovers that a nuclear war has broken out and missiles will hit the United States in 70 minutes: the rest of the movie is a real-time exploration of how people react to unprovable rumours of imminent annihilation. It's pretty bleak.

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egret_society@reddit

Watched it again a few months ago. It’s still great. Starts off sweet and romantic then whiplash. And of course that ending is fantastic

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ThatMichaelsEmployee@reddit

Good to hear it holds up. I'll be watching it tonight. Haven't seen it since the late eighties on my VCR — those were the days, when we'd just rent an armload of videos from the local store on Friday after work and return them all Monday morning before the store opened.

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egret_society@reddit

Oh, I would’ve hated it in the 80s lol. Not enough explosions and people on souped up motorcycles fighting over gasoline

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Strange-Industry132@reddit

When the wind blows was scary and sad.

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Signal_Cake5735@reddit

That terrible scene when they’re puttering around, putting out their identification next to their own bodies.

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scruffmonkey@reddit

I still have my copy of the briggs book, was 10 when it came out and they shut left one hell if a mark on me growing up.

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Crivens999@reddit

Ooh, look it's the cartoon that followed up the Snowman (I think). Lets sit down as a family and watch after dinner. Afterwards was followed by silence and almost Marley levels of despair. Someone put on Superted or some shit, Christ....

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Right_Dream_7580@reddit (OP)

I'll have to look for that one, thank you.

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SecondSight_@reddit

The Cloud: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480083/?ref_=fn_t_6

I think we need a BIG destruction blockbuster right now with the current CGI level to show us realistically what nukes would do. Like the Day After but it´s 2026. Instead we get stupid 350 million dollar marvel slop.

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St00pidSexyFlanders@reddit

I always wondered if this was a less documented part of the GenX experience, and that is surviving a nuclear war. I remember watching The Terminator in the theaters as a kid and being horrified when Reese has a flashback about the future and as he walks into the camp and we see those kids, who were about my age at the time, sitting there in front of a blown out tube TV with just a small flame burning inside. I feel like generations before us figured that nuclear war just ment death, but our generation was given imagery of what the horrors of actually living thru it would be like.

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The9thPlague@reddit

I haven’t watched it in a while but “The Day The Earth Caught Fire” from 1961 is pretty intense from what I remember. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. set off nuclear bombs at the same time and tilt the axis of the earth. Sending it closer and closer to the sun.

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Right_Dream_7580@reddit (OP)

ooh, I'll have to look that one up, thank you.

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The9thPlague@reddit

I know it’s not genx or war film but it’s interesting how they predicted the reactions of a warming planet.

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Alternative-Law4626@reddit

Just rewatched War Games the other night. While I certainly recall the general unease and fatalism about nuclear war, and I was in the military in the early 1980s. I forgot the immediacy of it. 6 minutes warning for a decapitation strike. 22 minutes warning for missiles launched from the USSR against US targets. All day, everyday in the back of your mind.

We used to know about nuclear “throw weights.” I remember Jimmy Carter talking about the MX missile program where we could hide our missiles in trucks and drive them around the US so the Russians wouldn’t know where to hit our missiles. MIRVs, ALCMs, SLCMs, ICBMs entire vocabularies of acronyms most people knew. That movie seemed to bring it all back.

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Right_Dream_7580@reddit (OP)

yep, and although I don't think I've seen the actual missiles being transported, just the maintenance trucks transporting whatever(i lived on the military base in MT and learned to recognize the vehicles used), on top of knowing where the launch facilities were, was very sobering to me.

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These-Educator-1959@reddit

It’s been a while. I have not seen TDA in a decade or more and I watched Threads last year. To answer the OP honestly I don’t have anything to offer to improve it. The point was to be unsettling and dark and to leave with an ambiguous gnawing dread because that is useful to understand the horror of that possible reality. Although Grave of the Fireflies is more broadly about the horrors of war and the impact on families (and it’s a “cartoon”) I would still add to a list of similar movies that teach us that war, nuclear or even conventional, sucks.

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Right_Dream_7580@reddit (OP)

The Studio Ghibli anime? I haven't seen that one yet. Thank you, I'll be sure to watch it soon.

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These-Educator-1959@reddit

Yes that’s the one. It is shocking in the power and it just slowly builds. The pacing is incredible.

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Working_Farmer9723@reddit

Damnation Alley with George Peppars and that guy from air wolf. The mutant cockroaches were creepy.

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Right_Dream_7580@reddit (OP)

sounds a bit scary, mutant cucarachas, ewww. Will look it up, thank you.

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The-Grand-Wazoo@reddit

That was the other film in a double feature with Star Wars that I saw at the drive in theater. Was seven years old so pretty much slept through Damnation Alley.

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claude3rd@reddit

Here’s a terrible 1980s Canadian post apocalypse movie: “def-con 4”

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Right_Dream_7580@reddit (OP)

I recognize what that means and will have yo look up that movie. Thank you!

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