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Review of Threads

Threads (1984 TV Movie)
10/10
Still an unsettling watch.
30 October 2003
Just watched the first screening of this TV Film since 1985 on Digital Channel BBC4.

My parents would not let me watch "Threads" when it was first aired in 1984 as I was only nine years old. At the time, I was resigned to the fact that Nuclear War was innevitable. This was a fear passed on by my parents and many other adults I knew. People lived in fear of The Bomb, even kids in the school playground where aware of it and afraid of it.

Nearly 20 years later, my opinion has reversed. I see Nuclear arms as mankind's greatest scientific achievement and the single reason that we have never seen a Third World War. No-one would ever risk the "Worst case scenario" as featured in "Threads".

Basically, we witness the strife of two families and one administration in the great city of Sheffield attempt to survive and bounce back from a massive Nuclear Strike that has completely destroyed all of Great Britain's transport and amenity (gas, electricity, water and food) infastructure. All contingency plans fail, all relief efforts fail to appear as it appears that the entire civilised world has been effected and the Earth's ecology is irreversibly damaged.

"Threads" does more than outline the effects of a Nuclear attack and the consequential ecological disaster. It looks at possible effects on society as the human race descends into anarchy and life becomes a living hell of survival of the fittest. The only method of control is in the hands of a provisional government who are forced to use deadly force to control food supply for the good of all. Starving masses are summarily executed for looting food caches and forredging for food by the well fed militia.

"Threads" succeeds in delivering it's stark tale by telling a very human story. It follows the fate of two families linked together by a young couple who are expecting a baby at the time of the attack. The central character, Ruth, carries and delivers her baby (who is mentally handicapped, as many younger children are in "Threads" due to radiation poisoning). The images of Ruth's daughter some 17 years after the attack with Britain "bombed back to the stone-age" are harrowing as the unfortunate youth gives birth to a still-born child.

This movie is harrowing and caused a major storm back in the mid-eighties. It really brings home the fear that was generated by insurgence of Communism and the subsequent "Cold War".

Remeniscent in subject matter to such films as "Soylent Green" in it's de-humanising of society induced by desperate times demanding desperate measures.
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