Britainology 94: Threads (1984) feat. Jamie Allerton

so i haven’t actually seen this film and i don’t know if my mental health can take it. pals, do i watch it?

Years ago i took a once-a-week, 3-hours-at-a-time class titled "post WW2 Diplomacy". The week we covered the Cuban Missile Crisis, the professor had us play-act the sequence of events with everyone assigned a role. The guy who was made McNamara kept going off script to demand a nuclear first strike on Cuba and the USSR. The next week we watched Threads and he finally shut the fuck up for once.

There was a similar film called The Day After made in the US at the same time, set in kansas. I think Reagan actually watched that movie instead of threads

NOW a touring member of Arcade Fire???

Having watched this film a number of times I have a lot of opinions on it... anyway, one of the things that Barry Hines got right is the way in which the unfolding crisis in the first half of the film seems like background noise or a bit of a nuisance in the lives of so many people (see Mrs Kemp's puzzled observation of the panic buying, Mr Beckett watching the news and reading the papers without becoming a gibbering wreck) until it cannot be ignored. Mr Kemp isn't taking the doors off the hinges until 8am on the day.

The Last Harvest sequence and everything beyond is just devastating. No light, hope just pure, animalistic terror and despair. I don't think I've ever felt like that watching a film before... 10/10 would watch again lol

There is an excellent story on AlternateHistory.com called Protect and Survive which was inspired largely by Threads. It's a very well researched depiction of the events and aftermath of nuclear war in Britain. It ended up inspiring a series of other stories based in the same universe, from such diverse points of view as a British V-Bomber crew, a Midwestern teenager, and a Miami cop.

That bunker is actually under a large brutalist building that houses electrical switch gear and occaisionally art exhibitions on the top floor.

Also the Glorious 25th of May was the Ankh Morpork civil war

Gimme thread till I’m dead

You never get any closure on Jimmy, but later on, you do get a scene of his friend Bob trying to be all chummy with Ruth while she gnaws on a heel of bread and it’s like bruhh, and then they eat a dead sheep together

Thanks for doing this, this film was very upsetting for me and this episode has been very therapeutic in addressing these feelings.

2 Threads 1 Vape

I sort of eased into y’all chatting and letting the voices wash over me bc I sure enjoy my parasocial pals! before my brain reminded me MANY minutes in OH THIS IS 🇬🇧 THE DAY AFTER. THIS IS THE TRAUMATIC 🤯 MOVIE and have had to fully rewind LOL

Babbi coming!

If you're in the mood for a US based, low budget, post nuclear film that has similar levels of unremitting bleakness, may I recommend Testament (1983)? That's the only film I've ever seen that matches the sense of 'run TOWARDS the mushroom cloud' that Threads has

Second Squeeze connection: They wrote “What Have They Done?” for the When The Wind Blows soundtrack

This episode is making me feel my age. I was 11 in 1984. It's not that Sheffield was a target, It's that we thought the whole of Europe would be bombed - Sheffield is just an example. The message was that the whole world would be this.

I watched this movie as a German exchange student to Canada, and our 11th grade social studies teacher showed it to us. I remember some students walking out bc they couldn't handle the grimness, and our teacher reprimanded them to stay bc it the movie was "very important". I will say I found it shocking back then without even getting any of the references you talk about

Incredibly narrow announcement band, but they are screening it tonight (11/23) at IFC if any NYC-based hogs see this in time... and feel like making that their Saturday night

As a listener who lives in Huntsville Alabama I need Milo to step away from the lathe

The kids speaking broken English. Isn't that because they are supposed to have learning disabilities due to the radiation? That's how I interpreted it

Some notes as a former Sheffield resident: - Sheffield Council was one of the most left-wing councils in the UK when Threads was made (unfortunately this is no longer the case). Sheffield was the first city in the UK to be twinned with a city in the Soviet Union (Stalino, now Donetsk, in the Ukrainian SSR) and few years before Threads came out the council declared the city a nuclear free zone. - Sheffield was a much bigger military target when Threads came out because we still had a steel industry which was critical to the armed forces. Now its mostly just Forgemasters which got nationalised by the MoD before it went bankrupt as they needed at least one domestic steel source for military purposes. - I think the brutalist council building you mentioned is the extension to the Town Hall which was demolished in the early 2000s and replaced with the Winter Gardens. - Around 600 Sheffielders volunteered to take part in the movie quite a lot of whom were wearing their personal clothes rather than a costume which is why it looks so realistic to the time.

I never thought it would happen, with me and an Iranian nuclear weapon🎵

Yeah how could a proxy war in a peripheral country lead to an all out nuclear war. That could never happen *looks at Ukraine*

Listening to this at 5am walking to work in the rain, heard some jets go overhead. Ominous

I think the polar opposite movie of this is A24s Alex Garland's Civil War. Both are movies about the worst thing the film makers could imagine at the moment, Post-Nuclear society and Post-Trump going dictator. But, threads follows everyday British people: punters, yobos, nans, regular dogging enthusiasts suffering everyman human misery. Meanwhile, Civil War follows Americans, the most main character ass civilization since Napoleonic France, the types of Americans for whom the action is the Juice. For the American the worst thing you can imagine is an opportunity to go Dudes Rock. For the 80s Brit, The worst thing you can imagine is an opportunity to imagine increasingly worse things.

Or on 'as time goes by', 'keeping up appearances' or 'one foot in the grave'?

Could you do an episode of britainology about the TV show 'minder'?

Sickos: Yes... Ha ha ha... Yes!

The scary single synth noise is from the Protect and Survive public information films which were a real thing https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7yrv505R-0U

Panorama did a doco called “If The Bomb Drops” a few years before Threads and features an interview with a local council chief exec who is absolutely relishing hypothetically being able to have people executed by death squads

The pub scene where someone tries to put on a game show as the news is going over just how fucked the situation is in Iran is one of those things I think of more than I'd like, especially the last few months.

wow I love to listen to comedy media recap podcasts to distract me from the state of the world!

Not quite as affecting but an earlier, banned film called The War Game (1966) is worth watching too. Although it's set in Kent (quite a lot of it in my hometown) so it's hard to tell the difference between before and after the nukes

Thought the guy's hat said Waffle House for a bit there....

i am so darkly excited, this film affected me in such a strong way