The film was one of several other tv productions around the same time that were addressing the issues of nuclear war. It was like the 1960s when the whole Cuban Missile Crisis era had seen an escalation of bared-to-the-bone grim horrors of nuclear war films such as Panic in Year Zero! (1962), Dr Strangelove or; How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) and Fail-Safe (1964). Likewise The Day After was the first of a whole series of tv productions around the same time that once again addressed the horrors of nuclear war, concurrent with the escalation of the American-Soviet Arms Race by President Ronald Reagan. The same year as The Day After also saw Testament (1983), which also went the initial tv movie released to theatres route as this did, and the tv movie Special Bulletin (1983), a startling film about nuclear terrorism conducted as a faux news bulletin, as well as WarGames (1983) about a teen hacker who accidentally triggers a nuclear war alert. These were followed by British entries such as the utterly devastating Threads (1984), the mini-series Rules of Engagement (1989), and the animated film When the Wind Blows (1986).

Sadly The Day After doesn’t really meet up to such fanfare. Firstly The War Game (1965), a mock documentary about a nuclear holocaust, made by the BBC eighteen years earlier, had covered exactly the same territory with exactly the same problems with panicking executives, and did it all with far more frightening impact. The Day After comes from director and former novelist Nicholas Meyer, who had just made the fine time travel film Time After Time (1979) and had just had great success with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). Alas while these other films show Meyer with a fine grasp of character and drama, The Day After is disappointingly superficial. It is the least accomplished of Meyer’s films. Direction often seems hurried, it is badly written and sentimental and filled with shallow characters. There are many characters throughout but their stories seem more vignettes and glimpses, rather than they do actual stories. Meyer certainly creates often strong images – just seeing the physical decay of the characters; or one sequence where a young girl in a shelter begins to frenziedly kiss the young med-student who has taken refuge with them and the camera pulls back to show the rest of her family watching; another shot which pulls up to show an entire basketball court filled with the wounded; and the nifty special effects of people suddenly being rendered as x-rays when the explosion goes off. But the film’s problem is that characters are blank identities full of even more banal responses. Events happen – bomb explodes, people fight for water – but there’s no drama here.

Perhaps most obvious is the fact that the film soft pedals the nuclear holocaust. Meyer simplistically draws on cliches of Midwest Americana – perhaps the reason why the film was perceived to have such shock value is that it sets up what America regards as its emotional heartland and smalltown characters and shows them reduced to rubble. As the end credits note the attack shown is actually far less devastating than any real nuclear strike would be. (One of the scenes that has proven of great amusement to lovers of the unintentionnally ridiculous is Jason Robards’ ability to survive a nuclear firestorm simply by ducking down in the front seat of his car).