“5-18-54”, kinescope

“Kinescope of the TV show of the same name. Depicts what happens to an average American family living in the outskirts of a large city during and after a surprise enemy attack. An excellent cast and highly informative as well as entertaining. Technical inaccuracies are considered to be outweighed by the overall value of the film”,

“Long before the wave of nuclear attack television films that terrified an entire generation in the early 1980s (The Day After (1983), Threads (1984), Testament (1983)), David Davidson adapted Judith Merril’s 1950 debut novel Shadow on the Hearth as the penultimate episode of the short lived drama series sponsored by electronics giant Motorola. Directed by Ralph Nelson, later director of the likes of Charly (1968), Soldier Blue (1970) and Embryo (1976), it tells the story of Gladys Mitchell (Phyllis Thaxter), a middle class wife and mother living in Westchester, New York when a never-named enemy (though it’s the mid-50s so we all know who they were talking about…) launches a massive nuclear attack on the United States. With her husband missing having left that morning to work in the now-devastated New York City, Gladys is left with her daughters (Patty McCormack and Patsy Bruder) to cope with the aftermath. Various other characters end up at her home, including a local school teacher who once worked on the US nuclear weapons programme (Robert Keith), a local civil defence block warden (Bill Kemp) and a doctor (a young Walter Matthau) as it becomes clear that fallout has reached Westchester and starts to affect the survivors.”