This documentary is a personal deep-dive into the world of classic Hollywood horror. Hollywood in the Atomic Age uses interviews of directors, actors, set and costume designers, and the loved ones of deceased notable Hollywood sci-fi and horror icons interlaced with promotional materials from the films being discussed. The varied subjects share experience, knowledge, opinions, and stories about the behind-the-scenes action and the social impacts of the films they helped to make.
The Atomic Age has been of great interest to many as the Information Age has solidified and this is a great source of insider information about Atomic Age Hollywood. I consider myself a bit of a film buff, but there was plenty in this documentary that was new to me.
Lining up the actors and directors with their most well-known works was an interesting way of displaying the information and added impact to the interviews to see the scenes or characters to which they referred only moments after mentioning them. The analysis of social forces and history surrounding the production and release of these classic films was a welcome addition, though perhaps underexplored.
The problem with this film was the poor quality of many of the interviews and its length. There are many times when film promotional materials played in full when a slice here or there would have sufficed. Sometimes, they chopped interviews in half between 2-3 minute antique promos which made it hard to follow some of the stories and opinions shared by the documentary’s subjects.
A lack of narrative and background music makes many stretches of this film far too dry and a lack of direction in some of the interviews creates rambling, off-topic sections which should have been edited out while analysis of the system of blacklisting and the insanity of the Red Scare, in general, seems to get cut-off each time it’s mentioned.
While this might be an interesting source of information for a college-level film course, most follow a format of simply watching and analyzing the films instead of watching documentaries about them. Hollywood in the Atomic Age does hold some value as a nostalgia trip for Baby Boomers who were cinephiles in their youth. Older patrons with an interest in film history would very much enjoy this documentary. Hollywood in the Atomic Age: Monsters! Martians! Mad-Scientists! is not a necessary purchase. Aud: C, P