BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Bumpy Chip It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

SnoopyStyle Harry Baldwin (Ray Milland), his wife Ann (Jean Hagen), son Rick (Frankie Avalon) and daughter Karen (Mary Mitchell) leave L.A. for a camping trip out in the country. They see nuclear blasts hitting the city. While Ann wants to go back to find her mother, Harry foresee a coming chaos and set off with ruthless survival instincts.It's a well-made B-movie. The biggest takeaway is Harry's callous ruthlessness. He both foresees and bring about the lost of civility. The movie doesn't make him a heroic lead. It is dark, exploitative, and melodramatic. It works.

atlasmb Directed by and starring Ray Milland, "Panic in Year Zero!" is the story of a family of four whose planned camping vacation is interrupted by the onset of nuclear war. The husband (Milland) decides they should be proactive and head for the hills, away from the predictable hazards that will accompany the breakdown of civilization. As they struggle to survive, they make difficult choices that may change them.Shot in black and white, which helps add gravity to the story, the film features a jazz soundtrack by Les Baxter--accomplished and celebrated arranger--that is misplaced. On occasion, it detracts from the somber tone of the film.Besides Milland, the film also features Jean Hagen as the wife, and Frankie Avalon as the son. The entire cast is credible, though a group of three hoods is portrayed in a predictably stereotypical fashion.This is no "Lord of the Flies", but its depiction of what happens when civility is removed from civilization is just as revealing. There are always those for whom lawfulness is merely a thin veneer or a well-acted façade.

tomgillespie2002 Shortly after leaving Los Angeles on a trip, the family Baldwin - Harry (Ray Milland), Ann (Jean Hagen), Rick (Frankie Avalon) and Karen (Mary Mitchel) - witness a large mushroom cloud over their home city. Radio reports conclude the start of a thermonuclear war, and Harry's survival instincts click immediately into gear. After abandoning the rescue of Ann's mother due to the fleeing Los Angeles residents, Harry takes the family off-road and into a small town to gather supplies. The news has yet to spread to this small town, so they are instantly met with suspicion. They leave to settle some place safe and away from civilisation, but are met with more hostility in the form of three young punks.This cheap end-of-the-world quickie effort from American International Pictures is now seemingly all but forgotten, but this is a surprisingly effective little movie that benefits from a strong central performance and direction by Hollywood Golden Era legend Ray Milland. This is obviously low budget, with the camera never focusing on anything but the immediate action, allowing the audience to use their imagination to experience the wider picture. But more than anything, this is a character study of an all-American family trying to hold any remnants of civilisation together in the midst of social decay and lawlessness. Like Val Guest's excellent The Day The Earth Caught Fire just a year before, the outlook here is very gloomy. But Panic in Year Zero! is the reserve side of The Day The Earth Caught Fire's coin, offering a right- wing alternative, embodied in Harry's instant tooling up and viewing every outside the family as an enemy. It is here that the films fails, where some more character building and intimate moments (especially between Harry and Ann) could have provided more insight into Harry's narrow view. But this is a cold look at humanity in crisis, where robbery and rape are just around the corner and every man is out for themselves. Ultimately, an exciting and often shocking little film that does wonders with what little it was given.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

Uriah43 As luck would have it, "Harry Baldwin" (Ray Milland) and his family are leaving Los Angeles to go camping and fishing. While they are traveling, an atomic war starts and destroys all of the major cities, to include Los Angeles. Harry then acquires a single-minded focus to keep his family alive and comes up with several innovative decisions to ensure their survival. Now, rather than revealing the entire story I will just say that, although certainly dated, this is a pretty good film dealing with the subject of the aftermath of a nuclear war. And while I thought Harry was correct in adopting a survivalist mindset, I didn't care for his autocratic "father knows best" attitude or for the way his wife "Ann" (Jean Hagen) continued to question every single decision he made. It got old after the first few times. Still, the movie remained fairly interesting and I recommend it to those who enjoy films of this particular genre.