The Day After (1983) (TV) revisited.

The infamous TV movie The Day After (1983) was recently released on DVD. I would like to ask readers if they have any thoughts, opinions or would like to share their memories of this film. I rememebered watching this movie when it first aired on ABC. The shock and paranoia this movie caused was unbelievable. Even though it was drastically toned down during pre-production and then President Reagan wasn't very happy with it airing and he even wanted the director to severely re-edit the final product.

I was about nine years old when it originally aired. The movie scared me senesless (but after a second viewing it wasn't as jarring). I remembered the nationwide hysteria it caused and the ABC Nightline program that proceeded the film. It featured a classic debate between Dr. Carl Sagan and Henry Kissinger. They argued about the after effects of a thermonuclear war. Dr. Sagan brought about the theory of a Nuclear winter. The third time I saw this movie was in High School. The teacher brought in a copy of the film and we watched in Science Class.

The best End of the World films of the Nuclear genre have to be The War Game and Threads (both of them BBC productions and they were made ironically 20 years apart). Compare them to The Day After shows what it truly was, just another made-for-TV disaster flick. But a highly effective one.
Now a cult classic but it held a nation spellbound over twenty years ago.

Cheers,
Joseph Ulibas