Just perfect...

How sad is this?

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Blistering performances.

Pros: Darkly comedic collection of outdated propaganda films, archival footage and so on, soundtrack filled with obscure tunes, final scene featuring Hungarian Rhapsody #2, glad it's selected by the National Film RegistryCons: Not for the fate of heartIT'S A BOMB , DUCK AND COVER

The older boomers would recall the atmosphere of this era very well.The belief that nuclear weapons were probably going to fall at any time was accepted as a matter of course. Coming out of the carnage and rubble of WW2 perhaps that was to be expected, but the PSAs and political leaders honed that message to suggest it was not much more of a concern than a flock of tornadoes. "Duck and Cover" ads, back yard bomb shelters, Conelrad symbols on the radios (AM of course), public fallout shelters in the bank basements and other related markers were given little thought.Younger folks would get a kick out of the over-simplified logic and ham-handed propaganda and be astonished to think that we took it for granted that nuclear warfare was just a dirty conventional tactic similar to the London Blitz.It is an informative film and very entertaining in its odd way. Worth a watch for interested parties.

I just ran this film for a high school Social Studies class. Part documentary, part propaganda, part satire. I, too, remember "duck and cover" civil defense drills mixed in with fire drills. It is particularly interesting to consider this film in a post-9/11 world and think about the messages in the current news media and our security-phobia today. The more things change...the more they stay the same. I saw this film in 1982 when it was released, and it hasn't lost any of it's impact. It is entertaining, informative and a little frightening. There is an aura innocence as well as something sinister captured at a time in the history of the United States.

When I viewed this video all I kept thinking was, I actually lived through this. It's on target and shows just how bizarre the world was at that time. I've read many who have said it was at times boring, but for my generation, it was anything but. Imagine being 12, being at home after school, and watching cartoons....instead of watching commercials on Wonder bread, we were watching commercials on how to ...in an event of a nuclear strike...to run to the nearest shelter and continue to "wipe" off the nuclear fallout.In '62, during the Cuban missle crisis, my dad was busy building a bomb shelter in our backyard. It's still there though he made it into a workshop after the crisis was over. Someone else has since bought the house and workshop but I doubt they know the origins of the workshop, even though there is still a pipe for water in the middle of the structure. I still can't imagine 5 people living in a shelter roughly the size of 12feet by 12 feet for 30 some odd years. In retrospect, I think death by radiation would have been easier.As I've said...it was a bizarre world then. .