The Most Terrifying Movie Ever Made
This mid-80s masterpiece still traumatizes every one of its viewers because its catastrophic events are suddenly much more likely
As an eleven-year-old child, I have an enduring memory of a series of films broadcast by the BBC in the UK in August 1985 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Part of this series was the first British TV screening of The War Game, an academy award winning pseudo-documentary of a nuclear attack on Britain which was made 20 years prior but which had been deemed too disturbing to broadcast by the then nanny-state. Also featured was the 1983 ABC movie The Day After, which has been credited by some sources as playing a role in changing Ronald Reagan’s policy on Soviet relations and arms control.
But both these movies pale in comparison to the one I really wanted to see: Threads. Not that I ever got to see it — despite my appeals, my parents had decided I was not ready for viewing this kind of material. In many ways I am thankful to them, because when I did finally see it almost 20 years later, I could not help but wonder what that could have done to an 11-year-old boy living at the height of the arms race who suffered from recurring nightmares of nuclear annihilation.
