Panic in Year Zero

Ray Milland directs and stars in this 1962 post-apocalyptic survival thriller produced for the low-budget drive-in studio AIP. Milland plays Harry Baldwin, an average American husband (Jean Hagen plays his wife) and father of two teenage kids (Frankie Avalon and Mary Mitchel) who is driving out of Los Angeles for a family vacation when he sees a mushroom cloud over L.A. and realizes that everything has changed. Baldwin makes family survival his top priority, and although he preaches the importance of civilized behavior, he also turns ruthless. Panic in Year Zero paints a grim portrait of life in the aftermath of the collapse of civilization, and Baldwin is as brutal as the rest as he stocks up on food and guns (resorting to robbery at times) in order to get his family off the highways (where leather-jacketed hoods prowl for victims) and into a hidden cave in the countryside to wait for the return of order. The budgetary limitations are apparent in the use of stock footage and minimal effects but Milland is uncompromising in his depiction of violence (even with the Production Code), which has made it a minor cult movie for the atomic era, offering a particularly cynical take on a world gone wild. Extras include audio commentary by film historian Richard Harland Smith and a retrospective featurette. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)