Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3377 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-09-05
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 112 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Hideously plausible when first broadcast in 1984, this BBC TV docu-drama now seems like a terrifying might-have-been, although a great deal of what it says about the probable aftermath of a nuclear attack remains horribly pertinent. Scripted by Barry Hines (author of the novel on which Ken Loach's Kes was based) and directed by Mick Jackson (who later went to Hollywood with The Bodyguard and Volcano), at the time Threads seemed like a response to the American TV movie The Day After although it stands nobly on its own. Showing the after-effects of World War III on the United Kingdom by concentrating on two Sheffield families linked by an unplanned pregnancy, it illustrates the scientific, political, medical and social consequences of the severing of the many vital connective "threads" that support a Western society. Grim in a particularly 1980s way, this is a compulsive if uncomfortable watch and accomplishes a great deal without the distraction of spectacle, picking through all the melted milk bottles and firing squad traffic wardens to find the human horror at the heart of it all. --Kim Newman

Synopsis
This powerful film depicts the aftermath of the most heinous destruction imaginable - global thermonuclear war. A realistic and chilling portrayal.

Customer Reviews

Devastating Television
Threads....set in Sheffield in the early 80's this film depicts the build-up to nuclear war, a strike on Sheffield itself and the aftermath.

Words can barely describe how profoundly disturbing this film is, especially if you lived through the era as the events preceding the attack are eerily familiar and once again have relevance given the various troubling political situations that we find the world in today. What was a film about a certain time in history has now become a timely warning about what could possibly be again.

I revisited this film when studying film at university and was actually reluctant to watch it again because of the impact it had on me the first time around (I'd have been about 9 or 10 years old then). The effect was as massive on me 20 years later and I found myself transfixed with horror. The brutal effects of mankind's most indiscriminately destructive and dirty weaponry are shown with no sparing of the audiences feelings, there is no happy ending, no hope and no winners, how this ever got to be aired on television, especially in the 80's, is remarkable.

The nearest comparison I can give to this would probably be the BBC docudrama 'The War Game' and although this is more obviously a dramatization rather than a documentary style recreation it is still highly effective and absolutely chilling.

I recommend this film wholeheartedly; it is shocking and disturbing for the right reasons.

Still relevant
The original screening of this TV film terrified any number of viewers and reviewers (and even traumatised - look at what other Amazonians say!!) back in the mid 1980s. It is so thoroughly realistic in its suburban English setting (naturally mildly dating it), and in its realisation of the underlying emotion of 'real people', that it's impossible to feel detached.
I personally (in my teens) couldn't stomach it all, and only watched the full film on a worn video in 1998. It brought back the full horror, the pessimism, the complete sense of insecurity of growing up under threat in the 1980s. The political climate may have changed (or has it? Look at the fictional news reports in the film . . .) but the 'Threads' of society are what the film is really about. Are they stronger now, or weaker? What would happen if such a thing happened in the 2000s? This is why the film is still relevant.
I watch this film occasionally, at the very least because the feeling of suspense is so skillful. Ordinary, domestic, things are going on - and then a teleprinter will chatter a fragment of doom over the top. At first matter-of-fact, and gradually more chill sets in. Characters can't sleep (neither will you!), and when the mushroom cloud finally appears, you can only feel the awe voiced by one of the characters, frozen to the spot: '. . . they've done it . . .'
I suspect a lot of people were haunted by that phrase. You care for all the different characters, empathise with them. And then . . . the world we know vanishes (even dear old Woolworths) and hope goes with it, forever. The grating roar of poison wind sets in. This packs a punch, and when the film finishes, you'll want to open the window and breath fresh air, quite honestly. Back in the 1980s, I'd already turned off. Watch it now - as history lesson, science fiction, or powerful drama.

The most moving and disturbing film of all time
Threads is a no-holds barred, no punches pulled account of the horror of nuclear war. There are scenes still burned into my mind, despite the fact that I last saw it over a year ago. The milk bottles melting on the doorstep when the fireball hits, the woman peeing in terror at the sight of the mushroom cloud, and the devastated hospital full of dead and dying babies hit you for six.

Threads is not a slick, polished Hollywood producton, but a narrated documentary style "play" which depicts the human tragedy of nuclear war in the most horrifying, and presumably realistic way possible.

The government, police, armed forces, schools, hospitals, power, food and any resemblance of organised society are wiped out with the blast. In the shattered remains, people kill each other for scraps of food. Babies are stillborn and deformed. Bodies lie charred in what remains of the streets, and kids grow up unable to speak in a non-existent society. The ruling authorities are gone, and 13 years on, the city looks the same as it did 10 minutes after the Bomb. It's terrifying and numbing, yet holds a grim fascination.

This film doles out shock after shock, yet despite the sheer unadulterated horror, it is not gratuitous gore and violence in the Hollywood sense. Instead, it's the work of a film-maker depicting one of the most horrible subjects known to man, in a way that leaves the audience under no illusion as to the realities.

The most powerful, gripping and shocking film ever made. Everyone should see it at least once.