Panic in Year Zero! [Panic in the Year Zero] ***½ (1962, Ray Milland, Jean Hagen, Frankie Avalon) – Classic Movie Review 3640

‘An orgy of looting and lust. The day when civilisation came to an end!’

The 1962 Panic in Year Zero! [Panic in the Year Zero] is the best of actor Ray Milland’s directing efforts, following A Man Alone, Lisbon and The Safecracker. It is an end-of-the-world tale, an apocalyptic nuclear holocaust survival film, with himself as the star.

It all starts with married couple Harry and Ann Baldwin (Milland and Jean Hagen) taking their kids Rick and Karen (Frankie Avalon, Mary Mitchel) on a camping and fishing trip.

When they hear a huge blast, they realise that a nuclear bomb attack has flattened their home town of Los Angeles. Looting, killing, pillaging and raping (of Mitchel) is rife, so the father Milland robs a store for supplies at gunpoint and holes up in a cave as he fights to keep his family alive.

This generally fascinating science fiction thriller is done with considerable conviction and gusto, working from a decent story and screenplay by Jay Simms. But there are minuses in the minimal production values, Les Baxter’s insistently loud, undistinguished music score and singer Avalon’s wooden acting.

Also in the cast are Joan Freeman, Richard Bakalyan, Rex Holman, Willis Bouchey as Doctor Strong, Neil Burstyn, O Z Whitehead, Russ Bender and Richard Garland.

The screenplay by Jay Simms and John Morton is based uncredited on short stories Lot and Lot’s Daughter by Ward Moore.

Panic in Year Zero! [Panic in the Year Zero] was released by American International Pictures as a double feature with Tales of Terror (1962).

Ray Milland directed several off-beat, low-budget films with himself as the lead, notably Lisbon (1956), The Safecracker (1958) and Panic in Year Zero! (1962). He worked on two notable films with Roger Corman, as a man obsessed with catalepsy in The Premature Burial (1962) and as obsessed self-destructive surgeon Dr Xavier in X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963).

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© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3640
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