Sadly, after his best actor Oscar for "The Lost Weekend" Milland never really got a good role again, except for Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder." But he worked steadily and was never less than very good, even in turkeys like "The Man with X-ray Eyes." Milland fans should not miss his work in this low-budget survival drama.
The premise is that Milland, his wife and two teenage kids (one of whom is Frankie Avalon, short enough to be a credible teenager) get an early start on a vacation in the mountains east of LA. Before sunup LA is destroyed by nuclear bombs, and the movie kicks into high gear and stays there. Milland quickly takes charge of the situation with a cynical foresight which eventually saves his family and him during the breakdown of civilization.
Though he is a basically good man, he intuits that morality will be a relative concept during this disaster and acts accordingly: he apologetically but ruthlessly holds up a hardware store to supply himself; he tries (but is foiled by wife Jean Hagen) to blow away a carload of teen ruffians intent on raping the womenfolk; he causes a traffic pile up in order to get where he's going, and then covers his tracks into the mountains; grimmest of all, he coolly shoots the teen age hooligans (the same we saw earlier) after they have raped his daughter. (Believe me, they deserve it.)
Given the era in which this picture was made, it has to end on hope. It does. Civilization starts to return but only with the help of Army machine guns (more cynicism). All in all, this is a gritty, tightly plotted picture you can't turn away from. Check it out.
The premise is that Milland, his wife and two teenage kids (one of whom is Frankie Avalon, short enough to be a credible teenager) get an early start on a vacation in the mountains east of LA. Before sunup LA is destroyed by nuclear bombs, and the movie kicks into high gear and stays there. Milland quickly takes charge of the situation with a cynical foresight which eventually saves his family and him during the breakdown of civilization.
Though he is a basically good man, he intuits that morality will be a relative concept during this disaster and acts accordingly: he apologetically but ruthlessly holds up a hardware store to supply himself; he tries (but is foiled by wife Jean Hagen) to blow away a carload of teen ruffians intent on raping the womenfolk; he causes a traffic pile up in order to get where he's going, and then covers his tracks into the mountains; grimmest of all, he coolly shoots the teen age hooligans (the same we saw earlier) after they have raped his daughter. (Believe me, they deserve it.)
Given the era in which this picture was made, it has to end on hope. It does. Civilization starts to return but only with the help of Army machine guns (more cynicism). All in all, this is a gritty, tightly plotted picture you can't turn away from. Check it out.