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 Dan Colter is a cop who sets up a roadblock on a road in the middle of nowhere
to await the end of the world. The movie focuses on the people he stops. These
people include "the obligatory looters and a homicidal hitchhiker" and they
wait around for the bomb by getting into all kinds of crazy trouble like
"adultery, suicide, and attacking chickens." They say that this is a "grim,
tense doomsday obscurity" and that it "perfectly sums up the fears of a world
waiting to go boom." 1961, 72 minutes, DVD
I've read somewhere that our government has contingency plans for how we would
fight World War IV if we ever needed to (I'm assuming it would involve using
all the really cool mutant abilities we got from fighting World War III). This
underscores the idea behind this movie (I guess), that your government has
everything under control, that they have it all worked out, that you've got
nothing
to worry about when the big one goes off in your backyard, because the
authorities will be there with instructions on to survive an atomic and/or
nuclear holocaust (one of the short subjects included on this DVD said that in
case of nuclear attack it would pretty much be just like a run of the mill
atomic attack, except it would be ten times worse, but you should still use the
same precautions as you would in an atomic attack). Every contingency has been
carefully thought out and accounted for including the one they highlight in
this movie. Deputy Sheriff Dan Colter is in charge of making sure that the
people who are driving on a remote stretch of mountain road at four in the
morning are stopped at his little roadblock and protected from the atomic
attack. The hows and whys are the entertaining aspect of the movie and make
you wish that those dirty commies down in Cuba would have just tried it once,
just so we could show'em, it was no big whup. Deputy Colter gets orders from
HQ that we are in a yellow alert (What color are we at now? Orange or yellow?
How alert do I need to be in my trailer park in rural Missouri?) and that "this
is not a test". They manage to say that quite a bit whenever they're giving
out their orders over the radio as if everyone might somehow forget that they
really aren't getting nuked. The big plan up on this road is to block it off
and stop anyone from going anywhere. That's a pretty good idea. It allows
families that are traveling together to get vaporized together and I think
that's what we're all looking for in our civil defense authorities.  Not being in the civil defense business, this doesn't make a lot sense to me or
to any of the motley group of strangers that Colter stops. He ends up stopping
a husband and wife (who don't like each other), their dog (Timmy) , a
granddaughter-grandfather team driving a truck, a guy driving a semi truck with
a hitchhiker, and a couple that just got back from winning $175,000 in Vegas.
Everyone wants to know why they've been stopped and Colter won't tell them. The
hitchhiker won't get out of the truck, so Colter goes over there and recognizes
him
as Clint, a kid who is a serial killer and so heartless that he wrote his dad
who was dying in the hospital and told him to hang on until he got there so
that Clint could watch him suffer an agonizing death. Naturally, Colter refers
to this little vacant-eyed maniac as a "good kid" thus revealing that the
perpetually moronic look on his pug face goes straight to the bone. Clint runs
away, threatens some people with a knife and demands his suitcase, but loses
it. He runs into the farmer's granddaughter in the woods later and wants her
to bring him his suitcase, but by the end of the movie the suitcase is
completely forgotten about and we never do learn what was inside of it. I
guess that's just the movie's way of pointing out how insignificant the details
of our everyday existences are when the Rooskies are double-crossing us into the
stone-age. Either that or it's just sloppy writing. Once Clint escapes,
everyone assumes that they're free to go, that they were being held there so
that Deputy Dawg could catch Clint. Colter tells everyone to give him their
car keys and that they ain't going nowhere. He gets into a scuffle with the
gambler and handcuffs him to a car. Finally he lets on that they are under
attack and his orders are to keep people from going into town and leaving town
on that road. One of the things I liked about this movie (and I ate it up with a spoon) was
that every time Colter said something completely idiotic (which was pretty much
whenever he opened his giant maw) the rest of the characters would stand around
pointing out how stupid he was. Now, they never did anything about it, like
leave or anything, and pretty much obeyed whatever he told them to do, but they
didn't do it quietly or politely. Like when Colter says that they're going to
be safe where they are. Someone points out all the military and civilian
targets that are within twenty miles of where they are and that basically they
are sitting on ground zero and that any place other than this stupid mountain
road would be safer to hunker down at. Colter's response is that they dropped
the bomb on Hiroshima and people survived so they might survive, too. The best
part of this snappy answer to these worrywarts' stupid question is that he used
it more than once! Since Colter is intent on keeping everyone at this location
while the end of the world occurs, they ask him what his big plan is to save
them all. This is where that governmental know-how that bought $800 toilet
seats and classified ketchup as a vegetable comes in handy. Colter eyes the
semi that one of the guys was driving and says that they are going to unload it
and hide in there when the missiles come. You can imagine the pooh-poohing
that goes on amongst the citizens when they hear that one. Colter is
impervious to these naysayers and so they unload the truck to get it ready as
their mobile bomb shelter. Oh, and did Deputy Colter tell you that you would
be living in that semi for two weeks while all the fallout settled down? Just
for good measure, to make sure that they are doubly safe in their big metal
rectangular tomb, I mean shelter, Colter wastes a bunch of water so that he can
make mud to clog up all the ventilation spots in the semi so that none of that
pesky radiation seeps in there while they're all breathing the same stale air
for two weeks (well for the six hours before they use up the air inside and
suffocate). But Colter even has a plan when he thinks that maybe there won't
be enough air. Guess what cute little dog gets strangled by Colter for
breathing to much? 
Even though it may seem like ridiculing Colter is a full time job, the rest of
the characters in this little group of survivor-wannabes find time to engage in
all sorts of extra-curricular activities. Take the married couple for example.
The husband is a real jerk and the wife is just ready to take the first chance
she can to slut around on him. Enter the semi truck driver. Even though these
people have only been stopped for something like twenty minutes and the end of
world is rapidly approaching, the truck driver and this hooch find time to
sneak off into the bushes where they apparently make-out. The husband goes
looking for the little lady and sees the two of them together and leaves with
the rifle that Semi Driver has dropped (Colter told him to go look for Clint:
Nope, I checked this married woman's girdle three times and I can't find a
trace of him!). Colter tells Cuckold Husband to go get his wife and so he goes
back and tells the two lovebirds that it's time to get into the truck. They
get into the truck and this is when Cuckold Husband becomes Suicide Guy.
Meanwhile the farmer and his granddaughter have hooked up with some young stud
and have run off from Colter and his grand scheme. They decide that maybe
they'll have a chance if they hide out in the old mine shaft near Young Stud's
cabin in the woods. There's canned food in the cabin and an underground spring
in
the mine shaft, so they'll be able to survive their radiation poisoning for
weeks! The old timer tells them that he's going up on the mountain top to
watch the missiles fall because he doesn't want to live in the world that's
coming. Thanks for staying positive gramps. You're too chicken to tough it
out, but you want your innocent granddaughter to hide in a cave with a guy she
met five minutes ago? No wonder Grandma is nowhere to be seen. Whatever happened with that story line involving Clint, the young and
misunderstood serial killer? Clint shows up while all the dopes are hiding in
the semi and tries to steal a car, but since Colter has their keys he can't get
one started (just because you're a soulless serial killer, doesn't mean you
ever learned to hotwire a car). He gets angry and smashes up some cars and
then starts busting up the crates that were all piled on the back of Gramp's
truck. This is where the infamous "chicken fighting" scene comes in. Inside
the crates are all these chickens and when Clint busts them loose he starts
throwing them around and I could have sworn that I saw a dead chicken laying
in the background, but I'm sure that was just a stunt chicken. Anyway, it's
about as bad as you're going to see chickens get treated in a movie not made by
Italian guys, so consider yourself warned. Of course, the apocalypse is upon
us and it is a world gone mad, so I suppose you should expect some chicken
fighting. In the end some looters show up, make fun of Colter and his plan,
steal one of the women, beat up Colter and leave while the rest of the people
go back and lock Colter outside the semi. He bangs on it demanding they let
him in (Hey! It was my plan!) and then there's a big flash of light and "The
End" pops up on screen. A full-throttle recommendation for this one! I never
would have thought that hiding from an atomic attack in a semi would be such
fun! In spite of how utterly ridiculous the notion of stopping people and
herding them into semis in an effort to save them from World War III is, this
one had some that good-old fashioned sweaty paranoid atmosphere that movies
like this depend on to overcome their inborn stupidity. Colter is a lunkheaded
dope that can't think outside the box and is a good representative of
government's response to the atomic threat, i.e. that it is survivable and it's
just an inconvenience that will disappear in a matter of weeks. The citizens
have their doubts, but ultimately follow orders and thus seal their fate. Of
course, what the movie says is that once the missiles are launched our fates
are already sealed, but that seems like quitter talk to me. The low budget of
the movie helps out with keeping this aura of isolation. There's only a few
people around, it's a night so you can't see much more than the people and
their cars and the only link they have to the outside world is Colter's police
band radio. Somehow against all odds, this movie manages to treat a
consistently silly premise with such grave seriousness that you can't help but
get caught up in it all. You'll feel like you spent 72 minutes in a big, hot,
sweaty semi with a dead dog after watching this one!
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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