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 "A day when civilization came to an end!" Ray Milland (they brag about his
Oscar) goes on a fishing trip with his family while L.A. is "devastated by a
nuclear
attack." The family goes to their "vacation spot" in an effort "to escape the
cold lawlessness around them." Their daughter is kidnapped and raped by "three
hoodlums." The family retaliates and kills two of the gang. They conclude by
saying, "gripping drama meets edge-of-your-seat suspense in this controversial,
futuristic nightmare!" 1962, 92 minutes, VHS
This is one of those kind of movies that has an exclamation point after the
title in the opening credits. I was settled in for Panic In Year Zero and the next thing I knew I was watching Panic In Year Zero! which caused me to sit up and take notice that perhaps I was about to see
something important. Turns out I was. See, this movie stars Ray Milland and
is directed by him as well. It turns out that Ray, in 1962, was pretty far
removed from his Oscar win in 1945 for Best Actor in The Lost Weekend. It would be kind of like Oscar winner Kevin Costner appearing in awful,
unrealistic end of the world movies. Oh I guess he has. Waterworld kind of
fits the bill. Oh, and I guess The Postman does, too. Maybe Costner was a bad
example or maybe this nuclear holocaust movie of Ray's isn't such a come down
after all, even if he's forced to play Frankie Avalon's dad. The movie opens
with Ray getting the family up early so that he and his wife and their two
kids, Rick and Karen can go on a family vacation. The kids are whining because
it is so early in the morning, but you, I and Ray know that if we want to get
to Shibley's Point when the fish are biting we need to be up and on the road by
4:00 a.m. So they hit the road and drive out of L.A. and we have to endure
some idiotic banter between husband and wife when all of a sudden there are
some big flashes of light. At first everyone thinks it's a storm and I'll bet
Ray was cussing that they didn't get up any earlier because now they'll never
beat the storm and the fish will be kind of skittish. Well, the flashes keep
happening and soon there are some really big clouds in the shape of mushrooms
and the radio comes on and casually announces that yes, L.A. has just been
wiped out by a nuclear attack along with an entire laundry list of cities,
foreign and domestic. At this point, I think Ray tried to hide it, but I'll
bet he sighed with relief, because even though half the human race had just
been vaporized, there wasn't any storm and those big fish would still be ripe
for the catching! The film then attempts to show the disintegration of civilization. This is
accomplished by showing traffic jams where road rage is rampant and by showing
that people are not polite at diners when they run out of eggs. Ray and family
stop off at diner to get some coffee and call back to L.A. to see if they can
get
ahold of his wife's mother. At this point I was hoping that a big chunk of
fallout would nail this family. If the world has just been nuked, the roads
are clogged, people are starting to freak out and I've survived the immediate
blast area, am I going to stop at a diner to call my mother-in-law? Especially
when she lives in a city that just had a hundred megaton nuclear tipped warhead
dumped on it? This movie is fraught with moments of when Ray's stupid wife
whines and nags and complains about what he's doing and what he should be
doing. I guess you can't escape a harpy even if the world does end! That was
a very sobering point this movie made. So he tries to call and guess what? He
can't get through. He gets some AT&T operator saying something like, "we're
sorry, but there has been a nuclear war, all of our circuits are busy. Please
press one if you would to hear about our deluxe Call-Notes package." Ray
gathers up his worthless family and they hit the road again. He's driving one
of those late fifties cars with fins and is towing a trailer behind him! The
world has ended Ray! Time to ditch the trailer! There were moments were I
thought he was Clark Griswald and his car was the Family Roadster! Call it National Lampoons Nuclear Vacation. "Hey, Russ, is there a sandwich back there that hasn't been hit with
radiation? Don't worry, I'll bet WallyWorld escaped the worst of it!" Mere
hours after the attack, they've raised the price of gas to three dollars a
gallon and Ray is punching out the attendant because he doesn't want to pay
three dollars a gallon. Tell it to OPEC, crybaby. How about paying a buck
sixty a gallon everyday and not even having the benefit of the apocalypse so
that you can safely beat up gas jockeys!  Ray's plan is to stay off the main roads, go through little towns who haven't
heard about the attack and stock up on supplies there before heading on up to
their vacation retreat where they will ride out the nuclear attack until the
coast is clear and they go back home and resume their normal lives. They stop
in
this little town and since people in little towns don't own and/or listen to
radios Ray manages to get the drop on everybody and he buys a ton of
groceries. They also buy lots of coffee. I assume you'll need to mix it with
water, but they didn't seem to mind the prospect of drinking glow in the dark
coffee so why should I? Then they go to a hardware store where Ray tries to
buy some guns and ammo. Two problems, he doesn't have enough money for the
guns and even if he did there is some kind of waiting period that those
panty-wearing liberals have forced through the legislature. You know that was a
very sobering moment in this movie. I learned that when they take guns out of
the hands of wimpy husbands like Ray then wimpy husbands like Ray will actually
have to sprout a set and take them by force! So Ray manages to load a gun and
hold up the owner of the store with some able assistance from the always
perfectly coiffed Frankie Avalon. That was one of the cool things about this
movie. No matter was happening, whether it was finding out the world had
ended, adjusting to life in a post-apocalyptic scenario, or getting shot,
Frankie's hair was always excellently maintained and sculpted. Ray runs into trouble on the way to his fishing hole when he comes upon three
punks, or hoods, as they were known in those days. They try to steal stuff and
act tough until Frankie wings one of them with the rifle. The hoods flee and
then we find out that the reason Frankie only winged the punk was because his
mommy tried to stop Frankie from shooting and moved the rifle as he was firing.
I think it's safe to say that most of us in this situation would consider that
dumb ninny our ex-wife from that point on and leave her sissy ass on the side
of the road with a big sign on her that says, "please kill me, I'm too stupid
to live," but Ray kind of frowns at her and maybe says something a little curt
and that's about it. Finally we get to the vacation spot and they decide that
they are going to live in a cave they found the last time they went on
vacation.
This movie is so bad that we see the little women preparing dinner and serving
it at a picnic table that they've brought! I think they even set the table!
Ray periodically says profound things about the nature of civilization and
makes up some rules so that his family doesn't forget about the civilized life
they had. One of the ways that they are going to retain their civilization is
that he and Frankie will continue to shave regularly! You know, at about this
time, if I was Frankie, I would either kill this guy in his sleep and take all
the stuff I needed (guns and ammo) and leave the broads or I would just walk
out of the cave right then and there and take my chances with the retards who
don't happen to be related to me. So now, the men go out during the day
hunting or just looking at the land or something while the women stay home and
wash clothes in the nearby river. Why is anyone wasting their time washing
their clothes? Then Ray's daughter gets herself raped by those thugs the
mother wouldn't let Frankie kill (thanks mom!). It was so bogus. They show
these guys climbing up on her and then we hear her scream and her mother comes
running and finds her lying in the bushes crying about 10 seconds later! How
could she have been brutally raped in that amount of time? And what are the
odds that these same thugs would be wondering around the same woods as Ray's
vacation hideaway? And would there really be gangs of vicious thugs formed to
harass innocent citizens within a couple of hours of a nuclear attack? Simply
amazing!  Ray finds out his daughter claims she was raped so he and Frankie go and kill
two of the three thugs and rescue a girl they find in their secret thug
headquarters. Then the third thug manages to find Frankie and the new girl and
Frankie gets himself shot in the leg after throwing a stick at this guy who has
a gun. So the big climax of the movie is trying to get Frankie to a doctor.
They do and then they head to a hospital where they run into the US Army and it
looks like everything is going to be back to normal in a few weeks. The title
of this movie comes from one of the radio broadcasts shortly after the attack.
The announcer says that the government has decided that this time period would
henceforth be known as "Year Zero." I really would like to think that the
government and the emergency radio bulletins would have something more
important to do than come up with catchphrases for the ruination their military
industrial complex caused us. This movie is really quite bad from stem to
stern. The music provided by Les Baxter is reminiscent of the type you would
find in one of those teenage hotrod movies of the day, not a supposedly serious
meditation on nuclear proliferation (I think Ray wanted us to take it
seriously). Ray can't decide if his character is
a wimp or if he's strong or gaining strength through this crisis. Everytime he
does something nasty, it looks like he enjoys in it in its own grim way and
then he says something afterward that's supposed to temper what he just did.
He tells Frankie not to like shooting people, he says "you should hate it!"
Whatever, pops. You don't seem to have a problem doing it. Besides, at that
stage of the game, you don't worry about nothing but staying alive. Anyone
who's got time for morals after the they drop the big one ain't got time to
live . This movie is basically a fantasy of what surviving a nuclear war is
like. They treat it as if it's just some kind of camping trip where you have
to rough it for a while and instead of warding off bears and coyotes from your
campsite, you have a few hoods to plug. Truly a laughable effort about an
unfunny subject. If you want to see what surviving a nuclear holocaust might
be like in the real world you should check the 1984 British movie Threads. There's not a movie out there that has as much impact as that one. When
you're finished watching it you'll feel like they've dropped the bomb on you
and wonder why in the world people would put up with their governments having
these types of weapons. With Panic In Year Zero!, you'll just wonder what Frankie used in his hair.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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