I've long wanted to watch this film, as I am a fan of the post-apocalyptic genre, but Threads has long been out-of-print in the U.S. until now; Severin Films has recently released a Blue-Ray format and I viewed my copy yesterday.

Well, I've read a lot about this film from British viewers over the years (it is set in Sheffield, England, and is a BBC film released in 1984), and their bleak reviews were spot on.

These reviewers often point out that, contrary to the vast majority of American films of this genre (and one could also throw in most Australian post-apocalypse films, as well), this film is simply hopeless and unendingly bleak in its portrayal of a post-nuclear world.

Over the years following the nuclear exchange-- 3,000 megatons worldwide, according to this film, with 210 of those hitting the U.K. --people just keep on dying, technology continues to regress, and hope in some kind of a livable future just gets dimmer and dimmer.

Contrast this to most American and Australian films, where a post-apocalyptic world, while grim, often offers opportunities for a new beginning and for people to live ruggedly self-reliant, independent lives of their own choosing (think of the Mad Max films, but also films like The Book of Eli, where it is implied that humankind WILL recover and a potentially better world is on the horizon).

With Threads, the environment is totally annihiliated, and civilization never rebuilds. The only U.S. film I can think of that comes close to this is The Road, where the environment is also destroyed, everyone is freezing in a nuclear winter, and any food comes out of cans from before the apocalypse; there are not even any plants around to eat (the novel by Cormac McCarthy was even more bleak).

There are other films-- like the 1959 version of On The Beach --where humanity is completely doomed, but at least there the environment was still alive and breathing around the survivors, and you never saw people suffering the clinical symptoms of radiation sickness (diarrhea, vomiting, severe burns). Threads shows all of that; it pounds it into you, and pounds, and pounds.

Threads was a good film for what it was-- showing you all the horror of nuclear war in graphic detail --but it is excruciating to watch.

Hopefully the world will never have to endure such a cataclysm.