Threads (1984)

[RimTimTagiDim]

I'd heard of it, mostly on lists of "Most Disturbing Films Ever," but I finally watched it at the weekend and I cannot get it out of my head. I've been thinking a lot about why it was so disturbing.

I think one part was the slow realisation that nobody was coming to help - it wasn't like most disaster movies, where it's a case of hanging on for a few days until rescue arrives. This was hanging on for years on end with no light at the end of the tunnel, everybody getting weaker and less human. Even the next generation offered no hope, being worse off than the last.

It felt like watching actual footage from a real event, not watching actors. I think having no score was an excellent decision.

I don't think it helped that I saw 28 Years Later a fewy days before. Two very different depictions of what civilisaiton looks like a decade-plus after a cataclysm, and there's no doubt Threads was a lot more realistic.

I can't even imagine how it would have felt to watch it during the Cold War years.

I feel the need to watch a LOT of funny cat/dog videos this week.

We watched it a couple of weeks ago and found it disturbing, because it depicted so clearly what would happen if there was a nuclear war. Radiation sickness, people fighting for food, having to live next to the corpses of your family, nuclear winter with the complete destruction of society, mutated babies being born to raped children

This is why Gen X ended up as anxious parents. The stuff we were shown when we shouldn't have been.

I wish it was true that Atomic Kitten had taken up podcasting about gritty British horror films of the 80s. That would have been quite the career change 😂😂

I only watched it once and that was more than 20 years ago, yet so many images stay in my mind; the melting milk bottles; the policeman with the crudely bandaged face; the “classroom” with the listless children watching a knackered old video…I can’t think of another film which has haunted me quite as much.

I was made to watch this at school & had nightmares about bombs dropping for years.
I was saying to my husband last night actually, this film & all the safety videos in the 80’s were awful.
Anyone remember the electricity pylon one?

Quicksand, dark water with Donald pleasance narrating, Watership down, pylons, sparklers, railway lines, the boy from space, triffids, tripods, worzel gummidge changing heads, daleks, Mr Bronson, noseybonk, Chocky and bloody Threads …. No wonder us Gen Xers are off our heads !!

It is worth watching but it was cancelled after a couple of seasons. Wish they would finish it.

Yep, this.

It's how realistic it is that's scary.

There aren't zombies or men running around with guns or people making power plays. Instead, in the immediate term, there are ordinary families hiding behind mattresses, council penpushers trying to sort out food supplies, and policemen trying to stop looters. There's a sense that these people are carrying on with life as normal because what else could you do.

In the longer term, nuclear winter destroys everything - people, language, economics, material stuff, society, nature. Life becomes bleak, humans break and it feels like we're witnessing the slow decline of the whole planet. Again, no huge dramatics because rape, violence, hunger are all pretty normal by now. How normal it's all become and what human existence has been reduced to within a generation is terrifying.

We had all been exposed to 'Apaches' and other public information films.

We were also expecting the bomb to drop any time.

I watched it when it was on TV so I would have been 9 too. It haunted me for years! When they showed it again recently I watched bits of it but not all. It was too much. I was curious about how much I could recall from the 1984 was actually correct but didn’t really want to watch the whole thing again. My DH watched it as he didn’t see it when it first came out. He felt very differently about it, as he watched it as an adult in 21st century post-cold war Britain!

I’ve never seen anyone else describe it as “boring”! It’s very if it’s time, kitchen-sink, not at all fancy. There’s no CGI. But that’s one of the things that makes it’s so terrifying.

The “classroom” was ghastly. Yes as a pp pointed out it’s not the usual horror genre, which I don’t watch - it was the normality of it all with people like us trying to carry on - and inevitably failing - as their humanity is stripped away. The girl at the end could hardly speak in a sentence and hardly reacted when her “mother” died, (the word “mother”wasn’t being g used any more) simply trying to get her up to work and walking away when she realised she’d gone.

The point was to teach the young generation that nobody wins in a nuclear war. Being under the threat of it should have been enough to teach the now leaders that it's not a good idea. That was the point of showing it in schools

Since nuclear attacks are being floated about by utter nutcases who are in charge of them right now wouldn't have me thinking that threads was boring.

If a nuclear attack happened now, it probably wouldn't be as was shown but life as you know it now would be over in a large way. The threat is real . The Russian simulation of today showed a strike in the sea just off Ireland. The point being to cover most of the UK in radioactive water. Death would be slower and unpleasant but nobody wants that shit happening.

@sashh I was shown Apaches in junior school and I'm still traumatised by it!

I think we all were. But I never went to play on a farm (there were a couple near us).

@megacat have you seen the HBO show Chernobyl?

No I haven’t, is it good?

I thought it was brilliant

Having read about the film, I think there's a Mandela effect going on where some people think there's a version that shows the baby's deformities. There wasn't, it was just your imagination filling in the blanks.

I watched it when it first came out and had nightmares for years.

It shows the girl unwrapping the bloody bundle that’s shoved at her - looking and screaming … and then the film ends. We don’t see what she’s unwrapped.

Yes. But some people seem to think there was a version that showed what she saw.

There's an entire podcast series themed around nuclear apocalypse after the host accidentally saw Threads, aged 3, on TV

Hat tip to whoever it was on the other Mumsnet thread who tipped this as it's fascinating

https://shows.acast.com/atomichobo/episodes

It really isn't, I promise you. It consists of a constipated-looking lead actor and everybody else busy being pathetic around her.

But then again, I wasn't bothered by Threads, either.

Ah I liked survivors. I wish they would finish it off.