Esto no es un simulacro

To understand the importance of this film, and one or two others like it, please remember that at the time this film was made, the US government was still insisting that a simple wooden board could save one from the deadly effects of a nuclear blast. I still remember the drills in grammar school - in 1962 (2 years after this film was made), the drill was to duck under our desks. A year later, it was finally admitted that maybe a concrete wall would be needed, so we were filed out into the hall and sat on the floor with our arms over our heads - the placement of the arms were to weaken the effects of fall-out.

This is not a great, or even good, film. It's cheap, it's underdirected, underacted, underlit, underdesigned in every way. And of course there's the unnecessary dash of pure exploitation - drunkenness, lust, bad attitude. And the cop is a hoot by any standards, although let us admit the courage of the writer to make him a complete fool as far as the A-Bomb and his untrustworthy government are concerned.

But that, after all, is the real importance of the film. Only four years later, Barry Goldwater ran on the promise that he wouldn't hesitate to use the A-bomb - in Vietnam, Cuba, what the hell, Alabama, if the Civil Rights movement got violent.

"Nuke 'em, nuke 'em," we still hear the chant, from irresponsible lard-heads who have not the slightest idea how even one or two badly placed bombs would destroy their lives forever - presuming they survived.

So, surprisingly - a historically important film, worth a glance.

*****SPOILERS**** Futuristic-type movie made back in 1962 about an impending USSR nuclear missile attack on America and how it effected a number of motorists and a deputy sheriff stranded in the dark and cold California desert.

We see the people start to panic as the hour minute and second of doom gets closer and closer and how all civility as well as the respect for law and order starts to fall apart. The movie for a while takes on an almost soap opera-like quality as some of the people there, Karen and Al, begin to have an affair at the expense of Karen's husband Sam which leads him to get very depressed and later to kill himself.

There is also Clint who's an escaped psycho murder who hitched a ride with Al, on his tractor-trailer, who takes off when Sheriff Colter tries to talk to him. Clint ends up hiding in the desert brush popping up in the movie every now and them. Clint seems to be there for no other reason but to show the audience that he's still around when the world comes to an end.

By far the most interesting person in the movie "This is not a test" was Sheriff Colter who we see changed from a cool and in charge type of guy to an paranoid lunatic. Sheriff gets every one into Al's tractor-trailer and stuffs the air vents with mud to keep the radioactive air out after the inevitable nuclear blast. Which was really dumb on his part since without air, radioactive or otherwise, you can't survive.

Colter also goes nuts when he spotted Karen's little dog, for a moment Colter was looking at the poor mutt like he wanted to eat it, and crazily grabs and kills it by twisting it's head off why? According to Colter the dog was using up the air inside the truck. Colter becomes almost as dangerous as the coming nuclear blast is to the people who had the sad misfortune to be stuck with him as he loses his grip on things more the anyone, with the possible exception of Clint, else of the movie.

Pretty effective for a low-budget movie with a cast of unknowns that doesn't cop-out in the end as you would have expected it too. It's good to see that it's available on DVD for people to view it and see just what kind of fear and terror of a nuclear war that was on the minds of so many Americans back then in 1962 the year that a real nuclear war almost broke out during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

This was definitely a lower end 'B' movie, in terms of acting and production values. For a movie with such dramatic, relevant and plausible importance at the time it was made, it was surprisingly boring at times.

But it's worth seeing, because this really did almost happen in the year it was made, 1962. It's a time capsule, even if lower end, of such a drama made at the time, not interpreted decades later.

People who make fun of the paranoia of the cold war should remember this fact. The only thing that's really changed, is the perception. The possibility of nuclear war, is still with us.

People who are expecting a science-fiction plot will be much disappointed by this B&W suspense film, set entirely at a highway roadblock at night. The plot elements of a hard-boiled detective story (escaped murderer, faithless alcoholic wife trolling for danger) are fitted into the nuclear holocaust environment typical of the late 1950s and early 1960s America. The success of the Soviet Union's Sputnik in 1957 and the perceived threat of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 form the framework of a story of little people whose lives are overtaken by events they cannot control. "Thirteen Days" (2000) would be a suitable "A" film to this low-budget "B" film in order to supply the background of tension missing to the contemporary viewer who comes upon this film with no forewarning.

It may have helped that I stumbled on this by complete accident, but

this is the end of the world on a Coleman Fransis budget and it works

fine.

The story is taut and surprising; I liked the way the horrible

authority figure can never quite be dismissed, he might just save all

there lives. The ironies packed into its 72 minutes are all handled with

a light touch.

The cast seems inexperienced but mostly do just fine. Mike Green

would go on to play the boss in Albert Brook's great meltdown scene in

"Lost In America." Few know about this film, see it if you can. It stands nicely

along side "Miracle Mile." I wonder if history will ever make these

movies obsolete?