Panic in Year Zero!

Plot synopsis:
Harry Baldwin (Ray Milland), his wife Ann (Jean Hagen), their son Rick (Frankie Avalon), and daughter Karen (Mary Mitchell) leave suburban Los Angeles on a camping trip. The Baldwins notice unusually bright light flashes coming from a great distance. Sporadic news reports broadcast on CONELRAD hint at the start of an atomic war, later confirmed when the Baldwins see a large mushroom cloud over what was Los Angeles.
The family initially attempts to return to rescue Ann's mother, who lives near Los Angeles, but soon abandons these plans as panicked refugees climb over one another to escape the fallout from multiple nuclear explosions. Witnessing the threads of society being torn apart, Harry decides the family must find refuge at their secluded vacation spot.
Along the way, they stop to buy supplies, or, in the case of hardware store owner Ed Johnson (Richard Garland), take them by force when he won't accept a check. They also encounter three threatening young hoodlums, Carl (Richard Bakalyan), Mickey (Rex Holman), and Andy (Neil Nephew), on the road, but manage to drive them off.
After a harrowing journey, the Baldwins reach their destination and find shelter in a cave, while they wait for order to be restored. They find that Johnson and his wife are their neighbors, but not for long. The three thugs appear and shoot them. A farming couple suffers the same fate, and their teenage daughter, Marilyn (Joan Freeman), is kept as a sex slave. Karen is also raped when Mickey and Andy happen upon her. With guns in hand, the Baldwin men fight back, killing the two murderers and freeing Marilyn. Marilyn returns with them back to camp. Some time later Rick is out with Marilyn chopping wood. Carl sneaks up behind Marilyn and forces her to drop the rifle she is holding, and begins to question her about what happened to his friends. Rick tells him to back off and throws a piece of wood at him while at the same time Marilyn breaks away and grabs the rifle and shoots Carl dead, but at the same time Carl fires a shot off hitting Rick in the leg.
With Marilyn's help, they get the young man to Doctor Strong (Willis Bouchey). The doctor does what he can, but the boy needs a blood transfusion and must be taken to an army hospital more than a 100 miles (160 km) away, or he will die. On their drive there, they encounter a military patrol scouting for the army that is reestablishing order. After a tense meeting, the group is allowed to continue. Watching them depart, the soldiers note that they're among the "good ones" who escaped radiation sickness by being in the mountains when the bombs exploded. As the family drives on, a closing title card states: "There must be no end – only a new beginning".

Tags: murder

Review:
But this movie was a surprisingly well thought out & thought-provoking story.Just as a family has left LA for a vacation in the woods, the US suffers a massive nuclear attack on all its major cities from, uh, an unnamed enemy.
The father, well portrayed by Ray Milland, is grimly determined to protect his family at all costs for as long as it takes for order & civil authority to be restored, which he's sure will be a long time coming.The father is a good man, but a little paranoid & controlling.
The contradiction between following the rules & protecting your loved ones in desperate times is very effectively illustrated as he makes some reckless decisions along the way.Normally for a low budget 60's film like this, I wouldn't even bother thinking about how it could've been improved.
But since it's so good at presenting a major moral dilemma in a realistic way, think of these nits as a sign of respect: Milland's character could use a little more introspection, but of course so could a lot of early 60's dads!
Nobody -- except maybe Charlton Heston -- can look quite so anguished and masculine and bearing-the-weight-of-the-world-on-his-shoulders-in-the-face-of-civilization 's-downfall as Ray Milland does in this movie.It looks like we dodged the nuclear war bullet back in the 1960s, but I'm sure that anybody living today can still identify with the terrifying prospect of a devastating nuclear war and what could happen if you were one of the lucky/unlucky survivors.
Though his career was undoubtedly in something of a downturn by the early 1960s, the Oscar-winning actor briefly found new life in the realm of B-movies, starring in Roger Corman's 'X: The Man with X-ray Eyes (1963).' The previous year, however, Milland indulged in his occasional interest in directing {in total, he has five features to his name, as well as numerous television episodes} with 'Panic in Year Zero!
Ever since I read Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Poison Belt" in 2007, I've wanted to make my own post-apocalyptic film, and, fascinatingly, this is exactly the sort of production I'd envisioned; sparse in action and characters, but utilising the family's isolation to bring home the terror of their predicament.The theme of nuclear apocalypse was most common in the early 1960s, when relations between the United States and the Soviet Union were at their most hostile.
When Harry Baldwin (Milland) takes his family on a fishing trip, the sudden flash of light emanating from Los Angeles is initially mistaken for lightning, followed by the mundane remark that "I hope it doesn't rain." The Baldwins are a regular American family who don't deserve to have their lives and lifestyles exploited like cheap pawns in a game of chess.It's interesting that the charming rogues of the 1940s, such as Ray Milland and George Sanders, turned into convincing family-orientated men during their autumn years of acting.
There are, of course, a few unlikely plot turns  by coincidence, the two groups of people who seek refuge in the Baldwins' hideaway are the very two with whom the family had had previously altercations  and the occasional moment that can only be described as B-movie silliness {my favourite is the announcement that the sole outcome of an urgent United Nations meeting was to give this year a dramatic-sounding name}.
Sadly, big time directors continued to ignore him and the end of his life was defined by roles in "Frogs" and "The Thing With Two Heads" - films far worse than anything with Corman's name on them."Panic in Year Zero!" displays the basic conflict of compromise: Ray's character must compromise his beliefs and code of behavior in order to preserve what he cares for.
As we now re-acclimate ourselves to an era in which the possibility of "limited" nuclear attack (from national or independent terrorist groups) seems more likely than Mutual Assured Destruction, it is possible that films such as "Panic in Year Zero!" offer us important ethical problems.
Working with a typically low AIP budget, Milland, as director, concentrated on getting really fine performances out of the actors and telling his post-atomic war story by focusing on one family trying to find safety in isolation.
Ray Milland as Harry Baldwin does all he can to keep his family safe from the harsh realities of Nuclear Warfare and mankind at its worst.
Living in Los Angeles, this film gives us a pattern to survive such an attack if we are just as lucky as the Baldwin family because they are a safe distance from the heart of the city.
Ray Milland stars in and directed this American International melodrama concerning an ordinary Southern California family heading to the hills after Los Angeles is one of many cities hit by a nuclear missile (the film is very shy in saying who our enemy is, possibly European or Asian!).
The Baldwins have no place to return, mother Jean Hagen just wants to get to her mother who was left in the city.Under the circumstances father Ray Milland is keeping as cool a head as possible.
Hope for civilization in addition to Hagen is represented by Willis Bouchey who is a small town doctor whom the Baldwins are forced to turn to.The title refers to the fact from the attack our chronological numeration of years is now starting from this event with the hope that mankind has learned and is stating that he is making a new symbolic beginning.
From their vantage point in the hills it becomes evident that Los Angeles has been the victim of a nuclear attack, what is also evident is that the enemy is not merely confined to those people who launched the bombs.Panic In Year Zero!
The deconstruction of the human condition under duress is a subject that will forever be of interest to the arts and those who willingly observe it, but when a medium is tight in its portrayal then it's something to be cherished, such is the case here in Panic In Year Zero!We have your standard family, Mom, Dad, Daughter and Son, all genuine and honest people, all of them about to witness the dark side of human nature, not only from the outside looking in, but from within themselves as well!
Jean Hagen and Mary Mitchel play mother & daughter respectively, both fitting in perfectly to this family crisis, but it's Frankie Avalon as the son who really comes to the party armed, never one who was blessed with acting talent, his performance here is full of credibility and as the story unfolds, he is never found wanting in the entertainment stakes.It's far from perfect, and some things are hard to ignore, I mean are we really meant to believe that Milland and Hagen have hatched Frankie Avalon from their union!
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.
A suburban Los Angeles family (Ray Milland, Jean Hagen, Frankie Avalon, and Mary Mitchel) leaves their upper middle class home at 4:00 AM to go on a fishing trip in the mountains and discovers while they are driving up there that LA has been attacked by nuclear weapons.
Milland as the father and husband takes control, arming his family, with guns he and son Frankie stole at a rural hardware store, in order to protect themselves against the human fallout of general social breakdown.
What does an "ordinary" family do when the Soviets bomb us?Ray Milland is the dad, and he's good and forceful, taking on a father role with a combination of extreme resolve and civilized goodness.
It is, however, the most direct and sensational of the series of great films made in the early 60s about the coming of nuclear war ("On the Beach" is my favorite, but "Bedord Incident" and "Fail-Safe" are great, too, not to mention the singular "Dr. Strangelove.")The first third of this film is mostly about the actual panic, and it's not a bad rendition of the small towns and deluge of desperate people (and cars—lots of classics).
Mostly this is Milland's show, though, showing wisdom and authority in a male-dominant way that a bit tiring, even if the 60s were still a time where men were supposedly making the decisions (the truth was different, we know).The ending, which I won't give away, is an interesting take on the early 60s, and how our view of the government and the army have changed.
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.
Sadly, after his best actor Oscar for "The Lost Weekend" Milland never really got a good role again, except for Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder." But he worked steadily and was never less than very good, even in turkeys like "The Man with X-ray Eyes." Milland fans should not miss his work in this low-budget survival drama.The premise is that Milland, his wife and two teenage kids (one of whom is Frankie Avalon, short enough to be a credible teenager) get an early start on a vacation in the mountains east of LA.
Milland quickly takes charge of the situation with a cynical foresight which eventually saves his family and him during the breakdown of civilization.Though he is a basically good man, he intuits that morality will be a relative concept during this disaster and acts accordingly: he apologetically but ruthlessly holds up a hardware store to supply himself; he tries (but is foiled by wife Jean Hagen) to blow away a carload of teen ruffians intent on raping the womenfolk; he causes a traffic pile up in order to get where he's going, and then covers his tracks into the mountains; grimmest of all, he coolly shoots the teen age hooligans (the same we saw earlier) after they have raped his daughter.
Throughout the course of the film Milland's character knocks out a price gouging service station attendant, holds up a hardware store, causes a massive freeway pile up by throwing petrol on the road and finds a family murdered by hoodlums who later rape his daughter.
(1962) *** 1/2 (out of 4)Extremely well made science fiction film has a nuclear war breaking out and Ray Milland taking his family into the mountains in hopes that they'll live long enough for civilization to start again.
Ray Milland directs and stars in this gritty, cold war tale of a family trying to survive in the mountains after a nuclear war.
The movie was a low-budget project, so don't expect to see vistas of destroyed cities (you see one distant mushroom cloud) or any massive military presence (you see one jeep), but despite the cost-cutting "Panic in the Year Zero" is an effective early entry into the post-apocalyptic genre.
we don't ever learn what it truly WAS - or the cause behind it (as in "who" or "why") - but just seeing the thing is good enough for Ray Milland to pack up his family and head for the hills before "the bad people" can get on the move.
Hard-nosed family man Ray Milland (as Harry Baldwin) and his sympathetic wife Jean Hagen (as Ann) get the camper ready for a vacation from their suburban Los Angeles home.
like grooming because if they don't groom, civilization as we know it will come to an end.Basically, the movie just follows the families "struggle" to make it through the first few weeks of the war which of course ends with letting us know that our way of life is strong enough to over come nuclear holocaust.Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate the movie, I actually found it pretty interesting, mostly because of the mentality portrayed in the movie.
This movie was made during the cold war in 62 in which Milland and his family are leaving L.A. early one morning to go on vacation and several hours later L.A. and several other major cities are attacked with nuclear weapons.
Milland also directed another movie in 56 called "A Man Alone" that was also really good and like this one the they start out really great but they tend to go downhill at the end..
This movie, Panic in Year Zero, (B&W),(1962), is a story about the aftermath of nuclear war.
Ray Milland both directed and starred in this nuclear war drama as Milland plays a father who takes his wife and two children from their Los Angeles home for a fishing trip in the mountains.
The rules of civilization start to break down, and it turns into a "every man for himself" situation, as they must find a way to survive this post nuclear environment.Good premise doesn't really go anywhere, and result is mostly unconvincing, though the direction isn't bad, and it has its moments, especially in the way Milland's character becomes increasingly ruthless, though all seems to be forgiven by the "happy" ending!.
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.
Ray Milland shines in this film, playing a man who keeps his family in survival mode.
Atomic bombs hit Los Angeles and other West Coast cities just as Ray Milland's family heads out for a camping trip.
"Panic in the Year Zero" explores the transformation that Harry Baldwin (Ray Milland of "Safecracker") experiences between the time that he leaves his home in Los Angeles and winds up at his new home in a cave in the mountains.
Most stories of this type ended up on TV "playhouses", which are rarely rerun now, so this story may now seem more unusual now than it was at the time.Actually, this movie came at the tail end of the period.It is very well made, and, like the original movie "The Thing", shows what can be done by a good director with a good script and decent actors even on a low budget.It certainly shows how the worst comes out(in the worst people) under circumstances like this.The criticism of Milland and his family for certain drastic measures, is, I feel, unwarranted.They don't use force unless there is no choice, and then only as much as necessary.There is a difference between killing out of necessity and killing for the sheer joy of doing so, as the three punks did.As far as obeying the "rules" of civilization, even under normal circumstances you are responsible for your own safety most of the time.The authorities aren't going to guard your home;YOU have to.And when order completely breaks down,each person becomes his own law,answerable to his own conscience and principles.Milland and his son didn't turn into fiends because there was no "authority" to control them;when they rescued the rape victim they didn't treat her as a "prize" to be used for their own pleasure,they acted in a decent and civilized manner.Actually, their main misjudgment was in allowing the three punks to escape when they first encountered them.By proposing to murder Milland in cold blood they condemned themselves.Milland and his son should have executed them on the spot when they had the chance;it was obviously inevitable that if these PREDATORS were allowed to escape that they would kill someone else, as in fact they did.
As luck would have it, "Harry Baldwin" (Ray Milland) and his family are leaving Los Angeles to go camping and fishing.
Panic in Year Zero (1962) aka End of the World CONTAINS SPOILERS The Cuban Missile Crisis ignited an explosion of excellent movies dealing with nuclear holocaust including Fail-Safe (1964), Dr. Strangelove (1964), (Stanley Kubrick's follow-up masterpiece to Paths of Glory (1957) and Lolita (1962), (Spartacus (1960) is very good, but it is what it is)), and The Bedford Incident (1965).
There are some very good exceptions of course, particularly Malevil (1981) and Testament (1983).Panic in Year Zero appeared a year before the missile crisis and follows a family of four, who happen to be driving away from Los Angeles on a vacation when the city is destroyed, as they try to survive the growing chaos in the surrounding areas.
Quite scary really.The cast includes Ray Milland (who also directs), Frankie Avalon, Jean Hagen, Joan Freeman, Richard Garland and Corman regular Russ Bender.Panic In Year Zero is certainly worth checking out.
Ray Milland and his family are on vacation from Los Angeles--heading towards the mountains.
His son, played by a young Frankie Avalon takes to the new order rather well--becoming adept at the new mantra of "every man for himself".What I liked about this film best was its look at the worst of human nature.
Ray Milland is the father of a typical American family here, which includes wife Jean Hagen and children Frankie Avalon and Mary Mitchel.
In this movie you have a patriarch played very well by Ray Milland, Frankie Avalon is his teenage son and he does a very good job, Jean Hagen is the wife who still thinks in terms of civilization, and the daughter (Mary Mitchell)is a drab character in this film.
Harry Baldwin(Milland)and his family have left Los Angeles on a fishing trip moments before nuclear bombs land on several cities, including L.A. The family continues to battle the panic filled highways to reach their destination wilderness to begin a plan for survival.
**SPOILERS** "Panic in Year Zero" was Actor Ray Milland's first attempt at directing and doing a good job at that too.
The movie " Panic in Year Zero" starts out innocently enough with Harry Bladwin, Ray Milland, taking his family on a fishing trip in the mountains and hill country just north of Los Angles.Hearing thunder and and seeing lighting to the south of them Harry and his wife Ann, Jean Hagen, and their two kids teenagers Rick & Karen, Frankie Avalon & Mary Mitchel, feel that they just escaped a heavy summer downfall that hit the city: L.A. How wrong they were!