Starring Beam Milland and teenage heart-throb Frankie Avalon. A cult-classic that When i absolutely love. Story begins with loved ones of four leaving Los Angelos at 4 each day for an extended vacation inside Sierra mountains. The year is 1963, just after the Cuban missile situation. As their car is usually climbing the hills eastern of LA they look back to see atomic mushroom clouds rising above the city. The movie is the story of their total survival in the wilderness when confronted with deprivation, attack by hoodlums, family feuding, and paranoid fear associated with anyone who might create a threat, which meant everyone for a little bit. Filmed in black & white colored, there is an eerie quality which appears to kick in just as soon as they sight the first mushroom cloud and know that everything they know just changed forever and they cannot go back thus to their former life. For the rest from the film they appear much more ghost-like than alive, moving jerkily, speaking irrationally, repeating the same mantras just like normal life will at some point return. In the end many people encounter US soldiers interested in survivors and they drive into your dawn together but with virtually no welcoming scene, a long and dangerous journey still before them. Ghosts to the conclusion..

The movie is controversial due to the father's early decision to jettison the principles of civilization to be able to ensure the survival with his family. For instance when he runs beyond money to buy materials he uses the rifles he cannot afford to be able to rob the store owner of both guns and the goods he can afford. Later he tosses fuel across a jammed freeway to brew a stop-sign so his loved ones can drive across. When he arrives in his chosen isolated spot within the mountains, he destroys the bridge so nobody else can find the item. Finally, he hunts down and murders the area hoods for molesting his / her daughter, with hardly a subsequent thought. On the other fretting hand, he eventually agrees draw in the very store owner he previously earlier robbed, to protect him and his wife through the same hoods (unsuccessfully). In one of the best interesting scenes, when a doctor is definitely treating his son, Milland makes a positive touch upon the outcome of your nuclear exchange, when the doctor responds "Well, ding-ding for us", sarcastically referring to folly regarding conducting war with nuclear items, and implying that the sane person in this particular situation would do what exactly Milland had done-abandon society and rules and revert to your most primitive of predatory instincts: protect oneself and one's unique. Plainly the writer and producer planned to state their view on the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction over the characters of Milland plus the Doctor.

One of the best end-of-the-world movies available, replete with hot-rods, classic 50s juvenile delinquents, destruction and mayhem over a grand scale, and a great just one for wondering What would I actually do if ever forced to undergo the same principle?