Mastodawn

I thought to watch something not recorded by the TiVo to take a break from trying to clear some recording space.

So I looked at what was on the various channels live. There was a 1959 #GregoryPeck movie, set in Australia, post-war, with submarines. It was called On The Beach.

I was expecting some technicolour romp with lush South Pacific scenery. Perhaps some surfing or swimming or something.

How wrong I was!

It's a black-and-white post-apocalyptic tale of how Australia is the last place on Terra to succumb to radioactive fallout after a global thermonuclear war and everybody slowly dies. (G'day, professor Falken!)

Hell, no!

So back to the TiVo recordings and the made-for-TV romance with #JewelStaite it is, then.

Even though the premise of that is that the other halves of both of the protagonists, who are obviously Destined to Find Love, have recently died. It has to be more cheerful than #OnTheBeach.

#GlobalThermonuclearWar

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Colin Haynes Feb 1

@JdeBP I've read the book of On the Beach. I don't read many books more than once and I've read that several times.

Thought provoking and really sad.

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JdeBP Feb 2

@ColinHaynes

It's interesting how the general public's idea of a #GlobalThermonuclearWar, rooted in fiction, has changed.

#OnTheBeach is definitely an example of the idea of MAD, and #TomLehrer's "We'll all go together when we go!", that was present right up through #WarGames in 1983.

Then in 1984 with #TheTerminator the idea returned that with just enough 'duck and cover!' we might survive a thing that in reality we could not. (They had to make the T-1000 in #TerminatorGenisys ridiculously pause to do banter with its target in order to make it evadable by a human. Killing machines would kill the species stone dead very effectively.)

#USMovies #history #sociology