Morbid Fascination: The Five Scariest Nuclear Attack Segments in All of Filmdom

Actually, I think there may only be five total, so I guess that kind of takes the special out of it.

Bah!  Whatever!  Titles that work are just as lame as well though-out introductions!  Let’s do this!

Oh, I will pause to mention that you are strongly encouraged to read first, and then decide whether or not you want to view.  MRFH and its affiliates, subsidiaries and shadow governments are not responsible for any puking or nightmares that may result.

When the Wind Blows

Ah, yes.  The pivotal scene in the prettiest and saddest bit of animation you’ve never heard of.

It sits at the bottom of the five (Did I mention we’re going by order of increasing scariness?  We are.) because it’s less outright scary (and not at all graphic, unless rolling sheep bother you.), more one part spooky to three parts trippy.  And I gotta say, the music works.  So bravo to whoever.

Trivia: Widely regarded as a pioneer film in the then-unexplored “let’s watch an adorable elderly couple die slowly” genre.

The Day After

Yep, it’s preeeeetty scary.

Sorry, but I’m reviewing this movie soon, and I only have so much material.

Oh, I will say that I’m endlessly amused by the pouty-lipped whining of the people in the theater when the lights go off.  “Aw man!  This is even worse than being vaporized like we’re about to be!”  Where have these people been?

Threads

Despite a number of similarities events-wise, Threads edges out The Day After in large part because of the way the sequence is handled.  Where The Day After is like, “Here, have three or four minutes of solid terror,” Threads is more, “We’re going to start you off with an appetizer terror-minute, followed by a brief intermission calibrated to the exact amount of time it takes you to think maybe that was “it”, at which point the terror will resume in earnest.”

Also, The Day After doesn’t have the weirdly ever-present chorus of screaming.  And I don’t know what this says about me, but the woman weeing herself bothers me more than anything else.

Warning for language and pee.  And I might urge you to pay special attention at 4:03.  E.T.!!!  NOOOOOOO!!!

Terminator 2

No me can watch this scene when it first came out.  Hey, gimme a break; I was ten.

And it isn’t the suddenness or the contrast of the nuclear firestorm juxtaposed against the pretty-happiness of just seconds prior, or the screaming, burning-to-death closeups.  No, it’s more that the squeal of baking children was and is just a tad disconcerting to me.  Yeah, I know, me and my little idiosyncracies.

Barefoot Gen

Dang it, Japan.  Why you always gotta be trying to mess up my life?  I hate myself for loving you.

I have the damnedest rationalizations for watching things.  Back when Jakob the Liar came out, I thought, “Yeah, it’s about the Holocaust, but it stars Robin Williams, so it has to be Silly McFuntimes!  His goofballity is going to rewrite history somehow!”

Things didn’t turn out well for either of us.

I went into Barefoot Gen with exactly the same fallacious attitude; knowing full well that it was about the bombing of Hiroshima, but thinking, “Hey, it’s animation, which I have not yet accepted as anything more than an escapist medium circa 2002.  How bad can it be?”

The answer?  Pretty much the worst thing I’ve ever seen.  Unique amongst its contemporaries, in that I’m going to go past cautioning as I would for any of them, and instead just go ahead and recommend that you not watch the clip at all.  And that’s not a veiled dare.

To give you an idea of what I’m simultaneously endangering you with and protecting you from: I couldn’t use the first clip Youtube returned, because the thumbnail featured a little girl with her eyeballs dribbling out.  So instead, I’m going with a partially-cooked dog fused to a melting guardrail.  And that about sums it up.