Victor Crowley Kills!

Hatchet (Unrated Director’s Cut) (2006)
Directed by Adam Green
Screenplay by Adam Green

It’s unsurprising that Hatchet came out the same year as Behind the Mask. Hatchet is the kind of straight up slasher film that films like Behind the Mask and Scream owe their existence to. The fact that people are still making films like this is proof of the resilience of scary stories of this bent.

Ben, a college student whose girlfriend dumped him for some jerk....Joel David Moore (Art School Confidential, Bones. This guy is always worth a chuckle.)
Marcus, Ben’s friend, or should I say his black friend....Deon Richmond (Not Another Teen Movie. Another comic genius. And he used to be on The Cosby Show)
Buddy #1....Adam Green (Attention: Director Cameo)
Buddy #2...Lance Kelly
Buddy #3....John Gross
Sampson, a hick...Robert Englund (Because it wouldn’t be a horror movie without Robert Englund.)
Ainsley, Sampson’s Son....Joshua Leonard (The Blair Witch Project)
Marybeth, Sampson’s Daughter....Tamara Feldman (Gossip Girl, Dirty Sexy Money)
Misty, a ditzy low budget porn star....Mercedes McNab (Harmony from Angel.)
Jenna, a porn actress with an inflated ego, a degree from Hofstra, and crabs....Joleigh Fioreavanti
Doug Shapiro, an amateur porn director....Joel Murray (Greg’s buddy from Dharma & Greg. Mad Men)
Jim Permatteo, a tourist....Richard Riehle (a fantastic and hilarious actor, and he appeared as Merrick in Buffy)
Shannon Permatteo, his wife....Patrika Darbo (another great actress)
Shawn, the tour operator...Parry Shen (best Chinese Cajun American accent ever)
Reverend Zombie, a shop owner....Tony Todd (Candyman.)
Victor Crowley, a supernatural slasher, handy with an axe....Kane Hodder (Jason lives.)
Young Victor Crowley, a disfigured child....Rileah Vanderbilt (It’s not every director’s girlfriend, now spouse, who would put on horrific makeup to look like the child version of a monstrous axe-murderer ghost)
Mr. Crowley, Victor’s father....Kane Hodder
Halloween Skeleton, a mean child trick or treating....Adam Weisman (Son of Straw Weisman)
Mardi Gras Partygoer...Johnny Rock
Mardi Gras Extra, another partygoer...Kristin Michelle Duncil
Vomiting Girl, a girl vomiting on the streets of New Orleans...Sarah Elbert (Producer)
Balcony Flasher #1, a woman who flashes her bare chest in the hope of getting some beads....Jessica Luebe
Party Girl, a girl who is partying....April Montgomery
Kissing Couple Girl, a girl who is briefly seen kissing someone...Brandy Scott

Original Music by Andy Garfield (He hates Mondays.)
Cinematography by Will Barratt (Some of the most remarkable day for night shooting I’ve seen.)

The first thing to keep in mind when watching Hatchet is that this story was first created by Adam Green in summer camp when he was a kid. That means that this film, this story, is someone’s childhood dream. Yeah. I dreamt of making a film like Lawrence of Arabia or Dr. Zhivago, or at least Star Wars. People dream differently, obviously.
As much as I like a film like Behind the Mask, I know that it wouldn’t even be conceivable if there wasn’t a living tradition of films like Hatchet. I like the commentary, but I understand that the commentary isn’t possible without the text that is being commented on. Hatchet is a good example of that kind of the slasher horror narrative, mostly unencumbered by genre self-consciousness.

The film not only has Robert Englund and Kane Hodder (just like Behind the Mask) but it also has Tony “Candyman” Todd. Green’s Dream also has a bit of a dream cast for him. So, maybe there is some degree of genre self-consciousness in here after all.

Hatchet also proves that a few good jokes, a few good performances from good actors and decent technical effects will make even a ridiculous shopworn premise with plot-holes like white elephants watchable. Mostly.
The comic portions of Hatchet hold up nicely. The cinematography is brilliant. It is, until the end, a very watchable film. It proves the durability of illogical ghost killer narratives like this. If you’ve seen any of the original Friday the 13th films or Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street then you should be familiar with the structure of the narrative here.

Victor Crowley was a deformed child who was cared for by his father in rural Louisiana. On Halloween some trick or treaters taunted Victor and accidentally set the Crowley cabin on fire. Victor’s father, tried to break down the door with an axe to save his son (why didn’t he try the window?) and unwittingly slammed through the door and Victor’s skull with the axe. And now the ghost of Victor Crowley haunts the woods calling out for his father and viciously killing people. I know what you’re thinking: I’ve heard this story a thousand times before. Yep. You have. There’s nothing new here, really. Hatchet is your standard ghost story, complete with the standard problematics. For instance, shouldn’t it really be Victor’s dad’s ghost who haunts the woods looking for revenge on the mean kids who set his house on fire and made him accidentally kill his kid? If both Victor and his father are now dead, then why would the ghost of a now fully grown Victor call out for his daddy? What kind of implications does this have for your interpretation of an afterlife? Hmmm?

While you chew on those questions let’s backtrack to the plot. The opening bit shows Sampson and Ainsley doing a little bit of nightfishing in the bayou. Good solid horror comedy. Ainsley is a whiny incompetent who is desperately trying to get some acknowledgement from his father, who thinks he’s not as manly as his sister. To cap it all Ainsley nearly gets killed by an alligator while taking a whizz off the side of the boat. This prompts him to stop in midstream (never a good idea, even if you just pissed on an alligator) and get the boat to land where he runs off in search of some privacy. As you can imagine, this is when the unseen Victor Crowley steps in to turn Sampson and Ainsley into some spicy andouille.

Meanwhile, our college student sad loser character Ben is having the worst Mardi Gras ever. It’s broad daylight and people are drinking, vomiting, showing their tits, but Ben is still sad because his girlfriend dumped him. It’s just like the sad guy in Hostel who won’t stop talking about his ex-girlfriend. At least Ben has some sensible friends who depart from him very early on never to return. That leaves his friend Marcus with one of the toughest choices of the film. He makes what seems to be the right call, foregoing the continued debauchery in order to accompany his depressed friend Ben, but it will eventually cost him his life. Sucks to now know the future. But to be fair, at this point in the movie, you could easily see the other friends being lured into a brothel/charnel house and being turned into sausage like they would in a film like Hostel. Or at the very least those drunk guys are going to pick up an STD and not in the cool way but by doing something drunk and stupid like daring each other to lick a toilet seat. And Marcus has already committed the cardinal sin of horror movies (maybe it’s a cardinal sin in real life too?) of being the only minority in a group of white guys. For that matter, if he was the only Anglo in a group of drunk Maoris he’d also be running a risk.

They try to go on Reverend Zombie’s swamp tour, but he doesn’t do swamp tours any more because someone sued him. It’s rare when you get commentary on our litigious society in a horror film, so this is a bit of social commentary treat. So the boys go to Marie Laveau’s shop where Shawn is getting a swamp tour together. Here we learn something about gender relations. Marcus doesn’t want to do the swamp tour, but when he sees Misty and Jenna take their tops off for Doug’s camera while standing around the shop, he finds himself more amenable to taking the tour. This is because men will put up with a lot for even a hint of sex. On the other hand, the tour operators charge the men more than they do the women. This is because the tour operators also know that men will put up with a lot for the company of women, without which there wouldn’t even be the hint of sex. There’s a lot of economic collateral damage in this system, but that’s a discussion for another time. The point is, that Marcus will go on the swamp tour with Ben because Misty and Jenna have already shown him their tits (without the necessity of a beads for breast-viewing barter) which bodes well for any future transactions of the sexual sort that he may be hoping for.
Doug Shapiro, the producer of Bayou Beavers, has thus ensured the continuation of the narrative.
The fellowship thus begins its travel on a little yellow school bus. We have our traveling company: Shawn, the tour operator who knows less about New Orleans than his passengers, Ben and Marcus (hero and sidekick), Doug Shapiro, (the filmmaker with a secret identity), Misty and Jenna (the expendable females), Shannon and Jim Permatteo (the token older couple), and finally Marybeth, the mysterious angry girl at the back of the bus.

You will note that this film has now gone on for nearly forever without any killing. This is probably the best part of this film. It is not a hurried slash-fest. Green takes the time to let you get to know everyone. In this, he surpasses many of the films he emulates. Even after the gang switches from the bus to the tour boat in the bayou, this film could still just be a plain comedy. Even the hillbilly drinking his own piss while nightfishing (seriously, folks, I don’t care how much you like fishing, nightfishing in gator country is a bad idea) who warns the boat to not go down the river because it’s been closed off, is less of a figure of foreboding doom and more of the comic relief in what is already turning into a pretty funny movie.

And then we see a flash of Victor Crowley. And now things go to hell. Marybeth turns out to be on a search mission to find her father and brother. Jim gets his leg bitten by an alligator, thus slowing his movement and lending some urgency to their travel. As with all modern horror films, we are in a place where there is no cell phone coverage. And then Victor Crowley’s story is told and he starts axing people (well, hatchet-ing some, but killing others in more novel ways.) It’s open-minded of Victor to use such a wide variety of means to kill people instead of just using his hatchet. I’m still unsure why Victor needs to kill people, but I guess the psychology is that all normal people shunned and taunted Victor and cause his death and his father’s distress, so he’s really developed a hatred for all people. The question would be if he could ever recognize and find common ground with a similar outcast such as himself, or if his supernatural vengeance is now general, at least in this territorial confine.

The Permatteos die in spectacular and abrupt fashion precipitating the flight of the rest of the fellowship and the revelation of secrets. (We already know that Jenna has crabs.) Doug is killed off and his wallet reveals that he wasn’t really Doug Shapiro, filmmaker, but that he was a mook posing as a pornographer in order to get a collection of porn tapes. I don’t know how much of a revelation this is, because frankly that still makes him a pornographer and it doesn’t preclude him marketing and distributing those tapes for a profit, and since the actresses are already paid, then that would make him a real pornographer though just not as famous as he claims to be.
Shawn gets his head twisted off and Jenna has her chin ground away with a sander (yikes) and is finished off with some impaling (of course--Feminists, start your engines...if you didn't start them earlier, that is). Misty makes it down to final four but the moment they put her on lookout duty you know she’s going to become a torso. That leaves us with a chase through a graveyard with our final three. Shooting Victor Crowley doesn’t work, and even setting him on fire doesn’t seem to finish the job. Which it wouldn’t now, would it? Because he’s already a ghost.
Marcus is killed in the cemetery, because he should have taken his chances with whatever kind of urban legend horror was going to happen with his other drunk friends.
That leaves Ben and Marybeth who are now in love. Okay, maybe not, but they’re going through some serious shared trauma so if they live they might at least attempt to form a relationship. But, true to the spirit of Camp Crystal Lake, the last scene is back on the water with Marybeth being lured to the surface by Victor Crowley using Ben’s detached arm as bait. Yeah, Victor Crowley lives, and he kills. End of movie.

The frustrating thing about this kind of horror movie is that it follows dream logic, (or nightmare logic), which is to say that it isn’t bound by the logic of conscious thought. Which works with dreams because we don’t have those lucid moments of questioning the premise of our dreams and nightmares as often as we do with conscious activities.
So, the question here is WHAT IS VICTOR CROWLEY? And if he is a supernatural being with physical traits then tangling with him at all is guaranteed to result in failure. I haven’t seen Hatchet II, but the premise of that will hopefully resolve this to some extent. But then, real horror movies, the ones that are really scary, are the ones that deal in the inexplicable. Victor Crowley is scary precisely because we don’t know what he is and what he’s capable of or if he can even be stopped. A killer of any form is scary enough. But a killer with supernatural abilities is the stuff that nightmares are made of.

As I said earlier, Hatchet isn’t really an original film. The ground was created and expanded back in the golden age of the great slashers like Jason, Freddie, the Leatherface gang and whatnot. Think of Hatchet as a new subdivision in the same neighborhood. The houses here have new fixtures, but the structure is still the same. And sometimes familiarity isn’t a bad thing, if well done. This film has all of the flaws of the genre but all of the strengths as well. And in the end, it’s a pretty entertaining thing to watch if you can handle the gore content.

Features
1. Commentary w/Adam Green, Will Barratt, Tamara Feldman, Joel David Moore and Deon Richmond
Some fun tidbits here, but it’s not like listening to Bruce Campbell talk about a movie.
2. The Making of Hatchet (2007)
Directed by Sarah Elbert
There is something to be said for the sheer joy that Adam Green shows in making this film.
3. Meeting Victor Crowley (2007)
Directed by Sarah Elbert
I have to say that when I first saw this I thought that calling Victor Crowley a new horror icon was a bit overblown. But with Hatchet II already out there and a third one on the way, I guess the iconification is well under way, even if the icon looks remarkably like other older icons. I suppose that was the point of the exercise. Then again, there have also already been two Gingerdead Man movies and nobody's calling an undead cookie the new face of horror.
4. Guts & Gore (2007)
Directed by Sarah Elbert
Gruesome horror movies are all about learning how to do these special effects, and this is a great look at what (no matter what you think of the film) are some remarkable FX sequences.
5. Anatomy of a Kill (2007)
Directed by Sarah Elbert
Now look at that flip top head sequence again with the knowledge that Green and John Carl Beuchler did it without CGI.
6. A Twisted Tale (2007)
Directed by Sarah Elbert
Maybe you don’t like horror movies, but you do like Twisted Sister, and you’re thinking to yourself, “I wonder if this film has any connection to Twisted Sister” then this bit with Dee Snider is perfect for you.
7. Gag Reel
I think all horror movies should have a gag reel. Note to Adam Green: Don't ever make your actors actually throw up again. It doesn't have to look real for me to get the point that he's throwing up.
8. Trailer
Creepy kid voice narrates this creepy trailer.
9. Previews
Spiral
Joel David Moore in another film involving art and murder. Directed by Adam Green and also featuring Amber Tamblyn, Zachary Levi and Tricia Helfer.
Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
I will never tire of seeing this trailer.
Horror Comes Home (Anchor Bay promo)
Wow, Anchor Bay really is the home of horror.
Karas: The Revelation
Anime. That's all I have to say about that.

Necessary Monsters

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)
Directed by Scott Glosserman
Screenplay by David J. Stieve & Scott Glosserman

Behind the Mask goes further than Scream in fully deconstructing the slasher genre and making a really interesting film out of the result. It’s hard to not like Behind the Mask, especially since it features the most genial slasher this side of Dr. Giggles.

Leslie Vernon, a psycho killer....Nathan Baesel (Invasion)
Taylor Gentry, a college student/documentary filmmaker....Angela Goethals (Home Alone, Phenom, 24)
Doug, her cameraman....Ben Pace (Check him out in Elevator, a web series set in an elevator)
Todd, her other cameraman....Britain Spellings (Apparently he plays Mario in a series called Video Game Reunion)
Eugene, a retired psycho killer....Scott Wilson (In Cold Blood, The Great Gatsby, a fine underrated actor)
Jamie, his wife....Bridgett Newton (Radioland Murders, another great performer who deserves a big role)
Mrs. Collinwood, a librarian....Zelda Rubinstein (The great Zelda in her last role. Creepy as ever.)
Kelly, a high school student/waitress....Kate Lang Johnson (Fired Up, Persons Unknown, very tall next to Zelda R.)
Shane, another high school student....Hart Turner
Lauren, another high school student....Krissy Carlson (Passions, Sunset Beach, Devil in the Flesh, the puppet episode of Buffy)
Stoned Guy, a high school stoner...Teo Gomez
Slightly More Stoned Guy, another high school stoner....Matt Bolt
Virgin Girl, a girl from another high school in another town....Jenafer Brown
Doc Halloran, a psychiatrist on the trail of Leslie....Robert Englund (Freddie as the good guy)
Guy at Elm Street House....Kane Hodder (The man who was Jason in a cameo)

You can put Behind the Mask next to films like Man Bites Dog, American Psycho or The Last Horror Movie and it will hold its own as entertainment, art and commentary. Like those other films, this one takes us into the perspective of an affable killer. In the case of Leslie Vernon, he’s so affable that it becomes inevitable that you should root for his success. This film hits the nail on the head in mixing up the humor and the serious and the genre dissection (which is often hilarious).

Behind the Mask doesn’t quite accuse the audience of complicity through voyeurism in the way that Man Bites Dog, American Psycho or especially The Last Horror Movie do. Nonetheless, there is an inherent discomfort in finding yourself rooting for the killer, not because you dislike his victims (which is how many other horror films operate) but because you find yourself genuinely liking this Leslie Vernon fellow. One of the factors that makes Leslie sympathetic is best explained by his mentor who puts it into terms that any folklorist or mythographer would understand. Every culture has its monsters. Leslie’s desire for an “Ahab”--a representative of all that is good--to hunt him as his opposite is an extension of this awareness of narrative. And this is what makes this revisionist slasher so interesting. It’s not just an awareness of genre, but an awareness of the very nature of storytelling and myth. Leslie is a necessary part of a story. Our need for the monster makes his case sympathetic. He is essential for this kind of narrative and this kind of narrative is (presumably) essential to culture...or at least the kind of culture we have created.

The perspective of the film forces us to admire Leslie for the hard work and ingenuity he puts into keeping up his part of the narrative. And in the end his hard work is shown to be even more brilliant than we could have imagined.
Leslie’s potential victims are the usual lot of mooks whose deaths will not set back the progress of civilization and only the documentary film crew (and Doc Halloran) come across as sympathetic as Leslie or his substitute parental figures Eugene and Jamie.
Unlike the films that serve as critiques of horror films or violence this film doesn’t judge the morality of horror narratives. It may not deliver a ringing endorsement of why such narratives are essential to society, it nonetheless embodies the point that a horror film as intelligent as Behind the Mask is essential to society and its understanding of our need for scary stories. This is not a film that gives us a real look behind the mask of a real monster, but a look behind the mask of the fake monsters that we use to scare the crap out of each other with. Why do we feel the need to do this? I think maybe that requires another film entirely.

In the meantime, Behind the Mask if a perfect corrective to the watching of pure horror films. It forces you to sit and think about what your watching but without launching into the kind of polemic that academia or the Council for the Infantilization of Culture would have us sit through.

Bonus
1. Commentary with Nathan Baesel, Angela Goethals, Britain Spellings, Ben Pace
This commentary was a little bit like watching a movie with my friends from middle school.
2. The Making of Behind the Mask
If you liked the movie and just can’t let go of it, yet, then this is for you.
3. The Casting of Behind the Mask
I think some of these things are great for learning which actors do well at casting sessions.
4. Deleted & Extended Scenes with commentary by Scott Glosserman
It’s inevitable that some good bits have to be cut out of a faux documentary for the sake of pacing, so these are a real treat on their own.
Deleted Scenes
Breakfast Scene
A bit slow in places, but I like the tonal shifts in this scene.
Walk-Run Demonstration
This scene is brilliant. It’s a core scene for the film and I think it’s a shame that it’s not in the final product, but you can easily see how this is the sort of fun scene about the mechanics of slasher training that is what this film is all about.
Teen Sex?
This scene had to be cut because of the lighting conditions, but it’s another good scene. Random high school girl gets asked awkward questions on the street by an awkward interviewer.
Groundhog Day
A brilliant scene with Eugene and Jamie. Maybe too much to the point, but a really good scene.
Extended Scenes
Study Scene
A great extra, but you can see how some of the riffs in the library are repetitive. You don’t often get slashers who read Heraclitus.
Fireside Chat
Like the scene with the books, this one just gets a little too obvious. I don’t like the coy (and copyright safe) way of referring to characters from other movies by their initials.
High School Single Take
So close to being a great single take shot of multiple fields of action in front of the high school. Just a little off with the girls jumping rope, but still pretty nice.
Ahab Definition
This is a good extension. Consider this extra credit.
Leslie’s Confession
This is a good scene with serious impact. Nice acting.
Preparations
See above. This is a great scene, not just a great horror movie scene.
5. Trailers
Trailer
The trailer is worth seeing if you haven’t seen it before because it does contain a couple of bits that aren’t in the film. The trailer sold me on wanting to see this film, so it worked.
Teaser Trailer
See above.
6. Previews
Hatchet (2006)
Review forthcoming. This is a straight up old-school somewhat supernatural slasher.
Night of the Living Dorks (2004)
German High School Zombies Dubbed Into English! Must see this film.
Hellboy: Blood and Iron (2007)
This animated bit seems almost more charming than any of the live-action Hellboy movies.
Masters of Horror: Right to Die
And now I’m a little creeped out. Thanks Masters of Horror.
7. Screenplay
You can download a PDF of the original screenplay. The original script is fascinating because it included a whole series of scenes where Leslie was hanging out not just with Eugene, but with the whole gang of mentors including Freddie and Jason. I may like the film as it is, but I can also say the original script has a lot of charm too.

In one last note, I have to admire the fact that this film featured product placement for Kreuz Market in Lockhart, Texas. Nicely done. I suppose this means I'm going to have to do a movie of my own to get a shout out for Smitty's.

The Day After The Day After

The Day After (1983)
Directed by Nicholas Meyer
Screenplay by Edward Hume

A Late Cold War Classic, this film is a good reminder to people traumatized by recent history what real apocalyptic destruction looks like--or at least could look like. You see, there was a time when “national threat” meant complete and utter destruction. This is one of the last great Cold War atomic destruction movies and as such it is a vital piece of history.

Oh, and it was directed by the guy who directed Wrath of Khan. Chew on that for a second.

Dr. Russell Oakes....Jason Robards (You know it’s serious when you’ve got Jason Robards.)
Helen Oakes, his wife....Georgann Johnson (Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman’s mother)
Marilyn Oakes, their daughter....Kyle Aletter (would go on to be a model on The Price is Right)
Nurse Nancy Bauer, a nurse in Lawrence, Kansas....JoBeth Williams (THE JoBeth Williams, fresh out of Poltergeist and The Big Chill two other scary post-apocalyptic films.)
Dr. Sam Hachiya....Calvin Jung (The guy from the Calgon commercials)
Dr. Austin....Lin McCarthy
Dr. Wallenberg...Rosanna Huffman (Murder One)
Dr. Landowska...George Petrie (Dallas, Mad About You, Herman’s Head)
Jim Dahlberg, a farmer....John Cullum (Holling from Northern Exposure)
Eve Dahlberg, Jim’s wife....Bibi Besch (Dr. Carol Marcus from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)
Denise Dahlberg, the farmer's daughter.....Lori Lethin
Bruce Gallatin, Denise’s fiance....Jeff East
Danny Dahlberg....Doug Scott
Joleen Dahlberg....Ellen Anthony
Reverend Walker....Dennis Lipscomb (Wiseguy, The Famous Teddy Z and that other 1983 nuclear war film Wargames.)
Farmer Jenkins...Herk Harvey (director of the cult classic Carnival of Souls)
Dennis Hendry....Clayton Day
Ellen Hendry....Antonie Becker
Joe Huxley, a science professor at the University of Kansas....John Lithgow (Take a sip, you’ve been Lithgowed.)
Stephen Klein, a University of Kansas Student.....Steven Guttenberg (That’s right, before he became our nation’s laughingstock and well before his inexplicable rise, he was young Steven Guttenberg.)
Alison Ransom....Amy Madigan (And take another sip for Mrs. Ed Harris)
Cynthia....Alston Ahern (The Jerk, Private Benjamin)
Aldo, a Kansas student....Stephen Furst (Flounder!, Vir!)
Professor, a college professor with no name....William Allyn
Airman Billy McCoy.....William Allen Young (CSI, CSI: Miami, District 9)
Tom Cooper....Arliss Howard (Full Metal Jacket, Anistad, Medium, Rubicon)
Cleo Mackey....Barbara Iley aka Barbara Harris (Now a voice caster)
TV Host....Madison Mason (You’d think with a name like that he’d be a she and she’d be an adult actress)
Mack...Vahan Moosekian (Executive Producer of Lie to Me)
Barber #1....Tom Spratley (He was in The Sting. Enough said.)
Barber #2...Glenn Robards (Do you think they hired him before or after they got Jason Robards?)
Vinnie Conrad...Stan Wilson (roomed at Juillard with Robin Williams and Christopher Reeve and later shacked up with Shelley Duvall.)
Man at Phone, a man at a telephone booth...Harry Bugin (Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, The Big Lebowski)
Man in Hospital, a man in the hospital....Wayne Knight (Newman...)
Guard #1....Alex Van (American Gothic, The Crazies remake)
Hospital Patient....Eugene Jackson (Pineapple from the Our Gang films.)
Radiologist...John Lafayette (Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger)
Boy in Barn, a boy in a barn...David Kaufman (The animated voice of Stuart Little and Marty McFly)
Football Fan Dad....Hugh Gillin (Between 1980 and 1985 this guy was in everything.)
Newcaster....Arthur Ashe (The tennis great? Take one last sip for that.)

Cinematography by Gayne Rescher (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)
Music by David Raksin (much of Raksin’s score was replaced by music written by Virgil Thomson for the 1938 documentary The River.)

There’s a good argument to be made that The Day After (and some other films like it) should be required viewing for every new generation, kind of like films about the Holocaust, only with a special kind of urgency because atomic scare movies are about an apocalypse that never happened but which is still possible at a moment’s notice.
In the past decade people in the good old United States went a little crazy about seeing danger in every explosive shoe or specially rigged underwear. Obviously those threats are real, but I think the asymmetric fear we show in the face of those threats are in some way a long-term result of the complacency we felt at the end of the cold war. When the imminent threat of worldwide nuclear destruction subsided we lost a sense of perspective. We fooled ourselves into believing that all threats were gone, and when some new threats showed up we behaved like a retired beekeeper being stung by a mosquito. Also, I think there were some of us who were starting to believe that there was only one nuclear power left in the world and that we could conceive of potentially using our nukes with impugnity if we wanted to. It’s like we decided to forget the entirety of the cold war. And somewhere along the line we also seemed to believe that the definition of peace was the complete disarmament and elimination of our enemies. Well, that’s certainly not how the cold war ended and it’s not how most conflicts end.

Which brings us to The Day After. It’s a film that posits the Cold War heating up into a full scale nuclear conflict.
The Department of Defense refused to cooperate with the filmmakers unless they made it clear in the script that the Soviet Union launched the first strike. This is what we call soft-censorship, or “the encouragement of proper thinking.” To their credit, the filmmakers opted for something in between moral complexity and ambiguity by deliberately obfuscating the question of culpability for the fictional war. In the film the conflict starts with the Soviets trying to squeeze Berlin (again), a NATO ultimatum and then a small scale war that is rapidly followed with NATO making a nuclear strike on Warsaw Pact forces which is followed by a Soviet Nuclear strike on NATO HQ in Brussels. Then comes the near simultaneous launch of ICBMs that is the focus of the film. Just to remind you that the USSR is bad they are reported at one point to have launched an air strike in Germany that bombed a school and a hospital--you know, because that’s what evil people do on purpose and the good guys do accidentally because they can’t tell the difference. At any rate, the point of the film is that once the mushroom clouds hit Missouri and Kansas it really doesn’t matter which idiot started it, because the whole world is grey, dusty and very poisonous.

The film drives its points home by starting us off with a nice innocent day in innocent Kansas City and Lawrence and points in between and surrounding. People are living their normal lives on “The Day Before” doing ordinary things like going to art museums to discuss their decisions to follow their boyfriends up to Boston or having premarital sex on the day before their weddings or having marital relations upstairs while their kid is glued to a television watching the scary news reports. But all is not so innocent, even in middle America, because all of these civilians are living next door to ICBM silos, one of which we see is located right next door to a quite innocent farm in what looks like an innocuous ranch style house where only the fencing looks suspicious unless you’re close enough to read the sign.
You have to sympathize with the farmers who are neighbors with the Minuteman ICBM. That’s a pretty uneasy place to be growing corn.

Before we get too wrapped up in the innocence of middle America I should note that this film features the first (and I believe last) representation of two sisters playing a game of keep away with a diaphragm. The first time I saw this film I was 9 years old and I had no idea what was going on, but it’s hard to escape its presence. That’s right, they snuck that one past everyone back in 1983, but it’s there. The Dahlberg girl is getting married the next day, but she and her fiance aren’t exactly Promise Keepers, unless the “promise” is the promise to use a diaphragm. When the elder girl goes back upstairs to retrieve her diaphragm before riding off with her husband-to-be on his motorcycle she discovers that her little sister has taken the diaphragm and when pressed to give it back she blackmails the older sister by threatening to reveal the diaphragm to their parents. I am going to repeat this point--there is a whole subplot related to the use of a diaphragm in this movie. In a way, you could think of that diaphragm as a metaphor for something related to the Cold War...but that’s a bit of sophistry that even I won’t do even if I’m not attempting to keep a straight face while doing it. The point is, later on when the whole country has been nuked, Denise regrets having used the diaphragm the night before because if she hadn’t she would at least have been able to get pregnant with her now most certainly vaporized fiance. The other characters in the basement have the good sense to not tell her that it was still possible for her fiance to have been shooting blanks in which case dispensing with the diaphragm wouldn’t have done her much good in getting pregnant even if she’d had the foresight to foresee the impending nuclear doom. This whole diaphragm business is a good example of the kind of thing that drove later Kansans and Missouristanis into more extreme puritanism in subsequent years. The idea of kids riding around the farms on their motorcycles with their diaphragm probably triggered the reactionary movement that has culminated in the neo-purity movement.

Meanwhile, in Lawrence, Kansas we see a bunch of University students and this is where we see Steve Guttenberg and that’s how we know that the world is bound to end in an apocalyptic furnace. Does anything else matter once you’ve seen that Steve Guttenberg is in this movie? Even if you absolutely loathe Steve Guttenberg (though I can’t imagine anyone having that strong a reaction to him one way or another) you can’t take much satisfaction in watching him die (slowly) of radiation poisoning in a way that pretty much foreshadowed his subsequent career.

Guttenberg’s character is a student who is going home...to Joplin, Missouri. Before he can make it Joplin it is destroyed along with Kansas City and other places by the nuclear strike. I was watching this just a few days after the recent tornadoes hit Joplin. It was a bit disturbing.

FEMA is thoroughly ridiculed in this film as they are the source of a lecture a local leader has to give to his fellow farmers about how they have to scrape off the top layer of their soil in order to plant which prompts the other farmers to wonder just how they’re supposed to do that and where the contaminated soil is supposed to go as it will likely form a pretty giant mount for each of their farms.

This is nothing compared to the chaos and breakdown of society. When Jim Dahlberg goes back home he finds a bunch of random people camped out in front of his home and when he tells them to leave they simply shoot him. Even after you've watched whole cities vaporized this seems a bit cold. Come on man, he's got a dying daughter and his little boy is in a hospital blinded for life because he looked right into a nuclear explosion. Give him a break. With his elder daughter dying with Steve Guttenberg in Lawrence (which is a fear many of us in this country still live with) that leaves his wife and younger daughter at the mercy of the armed yokels who just killed him. Thankfully the film doesn't show us what else happens, but the very thought of the possibilities should give you some chills. (Unless you're just a cold-blooded twerp.)

As Dr. Oakes, who is dying of radiation poisoning, leaves Lawrence to go die in the rubble of Kansas City he sees soldiers forming a firing squad shooting people. No trial, no judges. It’s real martial law, now. (Though we were earlier treated to the complete breakdown of military discipline outside a missile silo where the folks on the outside rightly questioned the need to guard the outside of a missile silo that had already launched its missile and was now expecting incoming ICBMS. What are you really guarding it from?)
Anyhow, with the reinstitution of military discipline represented by the firing squads you are officially Welcome to New America. It could be worse. In New USSR you have the government doesn't shoot you, you have to shoot yourself. (After you wait in line for three days.)

The only hopeful note for humanity is that when Dr. Oakes screams at people in the rubble of Kansas City they offer him food and he cries. The poor man has lost his wife and both his kids and everything else too. He’s angry and bitter about all that’s happened and surely resigned to his own death but at least he recognizes the little bit of kindness left in the ragged remnant of humanity left.

Hindsight certainly makes much of this film seem as silly as much of the Cold War seems now, but on the other hand there’s a lot to be gained from periodically taking a gander at such things, not least for the corrective they might provide to our own fears. The kind of destruction posited in The Day After, unlike the kind of threat represented in communist takeover films like Red Dawn or Amerika, is not quaint because the means for its occurrence are still at hand. The world is still armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons and our complacency about them in their entirety stands in marked contrast with our concern over less world-ending threats. So maybe a viewing of The Day After every so often would be a good thing for society, you know to remember the important things like.
Once upon a time there was a Cold War, and Steve Guttenberg and these things called diaphragms...