I noticed Panic In Year Zero on Turner last night. I didn't have a copy and hadn't seen it in several years. Seemed like a natural to time shift for this morning. It's a 1962 American International film about the nukes falling on the USA. Ray Milliand stars, and directs, as the dad leading his vacationing family into the mountains near their hometown of Los Angeles. On a stop to check the windows of their trailer they hear a boom and see a mushroom cloud form over LA. Things turn bad pretty quickly as Ray and son Frankie Avalon stock up on gas, food, and guns. They swiftly go from paying for stuff with money to robbin' with guns. They don't like to but Ray is making sure his family survives. There's a mom and daughter but they take a while to come to terms with their new life style of livin' in a cave. They hid out there for a while, occasionally fighting off the villians who always range the countryside when society breaks down. They rescue a girl, then Frankie gets shot. They go looking for a doctor and meet up with some soldiers who direct them to help. Society is reforming. It's a pretty good movie. It's well enough made for a low budget film and the story moves along pretty briskly. The actors do a good job with a good script. Worth seeing, one of the better post apocalypse films.
I was digging through the R box looking for something to go along with the first movie. Here's one I haven't seen in a while. The Running Man. It's set in a post collapse world slightly into our future, or even the future of the first film. Military governnments have sprung up. The people are downtrodden and kept off the streets by force and violent tv. Arnold Schwarzenegger stars in this 1987 movie directed by Paul Michael Glazer. Some of you might remember Glazer as Starsky in the TV series Starsky and Hutch. He wasn't the blond guy. TRM is probably the most famous of his directorial work. After Kazam, which Glazer wrote, directed, and produced, he took a 6 year break and then switched to directing tv shows. Not surprizing, putting Shaq into a movie is just plain stupid. TRM has some stupid stuff in it too, but it works pretty well. Arnold was a military guy who wouldn't shoot the citizens during a food riot. He's framed and tossed into a work camp. He escapses with a couple of his pals. They all get caught and wind up on The Running Man tv show. It's one of the shows that keep the population at home glued to the tv. If our gang survive being hunted down they get a paid vacation in Paradise along with a pardon for their crimes. Secretly the winners just get shot down like rabid dogs. Richard Dawson, of Family Fued and Hogan's Heroes is the host of the show. He wanted Arnold on the show and he got him. It's, of course, his down fall. Not only does Arnold bring down the show, he sends Richard to his firey death, and helps blacken the eye of the government. It's undecided as to what happens as the movie ends. Do the people rise up and continue the fight? Probably not. I'm sure we are doomed as the citizen's turn back to Climbing For Dollars. Escaped convits try to climb a booby trapped rope, snatching cash as rabid dobermans jump and try to pull them down. That's entertainment.
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