Mostly right-wingers
criticized it for doing the Russkies' work for them, sapping the Americans' appetite for a
possible nuclear war. Later on, television would make up for this serious Leftie aberration
by producing a television series called Amerika which dealt with the US of A
voluntarily submitting to an UN-supervised invasion by the Soviet Union. Pure
unadulterated right-wing nightmare-come-true scenario that!
Only hassle with The
Day After is that there wouldn't be a day after a full-scale exchange
of nuclear warheads as envisaged in the movie - we still have the
destructive capability to destroy the planet and everything on it several
times over. But then there wouldn't be
a movie, would there?
Predictable devastated
landscape with law and order absent as survivors struggle scenario takes up
most of the film. Its most powerful scenes
are with the nuclear warheads being launched and the audience realizing that
this is a frightfully real possibility. At least it shattered the ludicrous
myth of Civil Defense for many people . . .
Incidentally, the foreign
(i.e., outside the States) theatrical and home video tape (but not video disk)
versions run 126 minutes. It was cut by 23 minutes for a network rerun. (The
recently released Region 1 DVD features the longer European version.)
