[Justin101]

Originally Posted by Demdike@Cult Labs

The War Game (1965)

Peter Watkins' 1965 documentary about the effects of a nuclear attack on Britain. Specifically a Kent town some forty miles from any bomb detonation.

Scarily intense and extremely hard hitting i can understand why the government banned this film throughout the 60's, 70's and 80's - decades when the threat of nuclear war was something we constantly lived with. The reason it was banned was the realism of it all. I found the sheer power of it genuinely frightening some 50 years later. Some of the scenes are still disturbing such as children burning, looters being shot whilst desperately looking for food as well as graphic talking head accounts of events.

As with Culloden, Watkins other film on the BFI disc, The War Game is made using interviews done throughout the event of a nuclear strike, before, during and the aftermath of the fallout. The stark black and white photography and commentary of events from Michael Aspel and Dick Graham really force home the sheer terror and panic that must have ensued should such an event occur. The fact of the film were taken from historical documents from Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the flattening of Berlin and Dresden during WW2. It's not just the dropping of the bombs but also the country's lack of any preparation in how to deal with such an event that is just as unnerving. One man thinks ten sandbags up against his front door will save him or a hole in the ground with a corrugated sheet over it would keep another family safe.

However the real skill of Watkins film is that whilst watching it you can't help think it actually happened rather than a fictional account. Anti nuclear propaganda it may well be, it's still the best horror film i've seen in years.

Highly recommended. Culloden / The War Game is the disc of the year so far.

The 2 clips which BFI have put on youtube and the reviews here Dem have made up my mind, I'm buying this disc, probably on the way home today when I grab Michael Mann's Thief