Threads

[Giggler]

I just mentioned BBC nuclear war drama Threads in the office and, despite being the youngest here (I'm 31), no-one else had ever heard of it.

What are the forum's memories of it? It's on YouTube in twelve ten-minute chunks if anyone wants to refresh their memory (and run the risk of not sleeping for the next two nights.)

[Borracho]

Threads

Watched it five or six years ago. It freaked the living shit out of me.

Scarier than probably any horror film ever made.

[Bootleg Mark Chapman]

Threads

http://www.wsc.co.uk/forum-index/30-film-tv/641939-threads

I watched it on YouTube after reading the previous thread. Very hard to shake some of the images and scenes afterwards.

[Crusoe]

Threads

We were made to watch it in school. I think we were aged about 14 or 15. It was shown in a "Personal and Social Education" lesson, which was a fairly woolly and confused replacement for RE (where I once passed a test by making Noah's Ark out of an HMS Ark Royal kit and some plasticine animals).

Utterly terrifying, it was. My friend Trev turned green and had to leave before he threw up. As said already, some of those images and scenes stay with you for a long time.

[Ginger Yellow]

Threads

What Crusoe said. Apart from the Trev bit. And the Noah's Ark bit.

[Houdi Elbow]

Threads

Analogue Bubblebath II wrote: Watched it five or six years ago. It freaked the living shit out of me.

Worth remembering that at the time it was made it was a very real fear. I used to have a nuclear holocaust nightmare every few weeks.

[Joe Wiz]

Threads

Peter Watkins (director of the second best film about Pop music ever. Although it's not actually about Pop music. But still) "War Game" is actually as harrowing as Threads, despite being made 20 years previously.
It's the voiceover, basically.

[Borracho]

Threads

They actually showed this in classrooms to British mid-teens? Why?

[Rory Bunk]

Threads

I was thinking about this recently too as it showed up on someone's fb.

I remember watching it the once on Australian tv in the 80s. Like Houdi, I had an occasional recurring nuclear nightmare, and re-watching this, I think this is where it was implanted. Frightening.

Here it is in Youtube in a single chunk.

[delicatemoth]

Threads

Houdi Elbow wrote:

Watched it five or six years ago. It freaked the living shit out of me.

Worth remembering that at the time it was made it was a very real fear. I used to have a nuclear holocaust nightmare every few weeks.

I remember being out playing with a pal when suddenly we heard the air attack warning. We looked at each other and we were both white with fear (we didn't quite understand how an attack wouldn't happen out of the blue, that there would be prior tension-ratcheting and so forth). I think it must have been some sort of test, or a local joker playing the intro to 'Two Tribes' incredibly loudly. Where I grew up was directly under Upper Heyford flight paths, and I always felt a bit of unease when the F-111s flew overhead.

And yes, Threads is great. I recall The Day After seeming rather anti-climactic in comparison.

[Mitch]

Threads

I chose to go to Sheffield Uni purely on the basis on watching Threads when I was 7. Well, a Threads/Def Leppard combo really.

But the council filled in the 'hole-in-the-road' roundabout (the Sheffield landmark that the bomb ignites over) just after I arrived, which was disappointing.

[beak]

Threads

Houdi Elbow wrote: Worth remembering that at the time it was made it was a very real fear. I used to have a nuclear holocaust nightmare every few weeks.

Threads was the first film since early childhood to give me legitimate nightmares, and this was when I was in my early twenties, and the world was way over the Cold War.

[jason voorhees]

Threads

Our Threads was The Day After (as mentioned by dmoth.)

The thing about Threads that I didn't buy was how humans suddenly had a Middle Ages education once they had to live like the Middle Ages. For me, The Walking Dead comic has done the best job of showing a realistic view of how humans would be if educated with a modern education and suddenly had to live like hundreds of years ago.

[Toby Gymshorts]

Threads

The horror of Threads was compounded, for me, by the fact that my childhood village was the location of a NATO Ammunition Depot; which, according to a poster I saw concerning a redevelopment proposal, would be a prime target for a nuclear strike should a war ever come to pass.

So that was nice.

[evilC]

Threads

Toby Gymshorts wrote: The horror of Threads was compounded, for me, by the fact that my childhood village was the location of a NATO Ammunition Depot; which, according to a poster I saw concerning a redevelopment proposal, would be a prime target for a nuclear strike should a war ever come to pass.

So that was nice.

Similarly, I proposed the theory to my schoolmates that, living in Farnham - which is pretty much in between Aldershot, Farnborough, Odiham and Bordon - one big bomb right on us would take out loads of army and air force stuff. (There's also a secretive 'radar' establishment down near Odiham - possibly Warnborough, I think - with those big 'golf balls' and radar dishes, which mysteriously don't show up on satellite maps.)

[Mumpo]

Threads

Mitch wrote: I chose to go to Sheffield Uni purely on the basis on watching Threads when I was 7. Well, a Threads/Def Leppard combo really

My God. So you spent three years at Sheffield, just because of its association with a miserable combination of noise, aggression and grim physical injury?

...and Threads?

[Giggler]

Threads

jasoń voorhees wrote: Our Threads was The Day After (as mentioned by dmoth.)

The thing about Threads that I didn't buy was how humans suddenly had a Middle Ages education once they had to live like the Middle Ages. For me, The Walking Dead comic has done the best job of showing a realistic view of how humans would be if educated with a modern education and suddenly had to live like hundreds of years ago.

PTSD on such a massive scale would result in a much poorer Ofsted inspection, wouldn't it?

What's always puzzled me about it is when comparatively so many people had to choose between fight or flight, they chose to fight. I'm no quitter by any stretch of the imagination, but what would be your motivation to keep on living in such an environment?

[jason voorhees]

Threads

Real good point about Post-Traumatic. Real good.

However, everyone I've met who survived the Holocaust or the early 80's Lebanon or other atrocities were some of the most intelligent, sharp people around.

But if I really think about it, the lack of food (after all, the brain runs on carbs,) would certainly make you a dumbski quite quick. You should see me around 11:30am.

[Heliotrope]

Threads

jasoń voorhees wrote: The thing about Threads that I didn't buy was how humans suddenly had a Middle Ages education once they had to live like the Middle Ages.

That's like the miniseries Amerika, which aired sometime in the Reagan era. It was about the US after a Soviet takeover, and everyone was dressed all grimly in dark clothes. If people were living in economically depressed conditions, wouldn't they just wear the old things they still had, even if they were bright '80s wear?

[Giggler]

Should you be not-all-that-fussed about ever having a fully-uninterrupted night's sleep ever again, Threads is being re-released on DVD in a sparkling remastered version:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Threads-Spe...ywords=threads

[Jah Womble]

(Double-post.)

[Jah Womble]

Surely, in keeping with the narrative, it should be downgraded to scratchy Betamax, semi-playable and only via the one existing machine left in the country?

As I recall, it was shown at much the same time as the US-made The Day After. That it p*ssed all over the latter - both in terms of dramatisation and impact - probably goes without saying.

(Edit: As has been suggested upthread, some years back...)

[Satchmo Distel]

I think The Day After was on ITV which was a clear signal of its inferiority.

I also recall some attempts to get Threads banned, as had happened with The War Game. The BBC thankfully still had political courage in 1985.

I also wonder if Threads influenced how Jimmy McGovern made his Hillsborough dramatization.