Jar Of Eyeballs

I first saw this movie about ten years ago, when we went to a video store and my dad recommended it. It’s a war movie about a nuclear war between the USA and the Soviet Union and the aftermath in a town near a missile base in Kansas. It starts with the Soviets surrounding West-Berlin in order to intimidate the USA and force them to leave. When the USA doesn’t give in, the Soviets invade Europe and things quickly escalate. The USA launches tactical nukes to stop the advancing Soviet forces, who in turn react with a nuclear attack at the NATO headquarters. The buildup of tension of brought mainly as news clips throughout the movie.

As tensions continue to rise, a full-scale nuclear exchange is launched between the USA and the Soviet Union. It is delibirately kept unclear who actually initiated the attack. Residents of a town near a missile base watch in horror as missiles start taking off all around them, realizing the same thing is happening at the other side of the world. Half an hour later, nukes start raining down on the city. It starts with a single high-altitude bomb wich disables all electricity, followed by the main attack.

The nuclear attack scene consists of real footage from nuclear tests and views of the mushroom clouds. These had to be custom made for the movie, since they didn’t get permission to use real footage of actual nuclear explosions. They were made by injecting oil into a tank of water. The effect is quite convincing and even terrifying, although some other effects look quite weird. The entire scene is plain and simply horrifying.

The most disturbing part of the movie, however, takes place after the attack, when the survivors are confronted with the devastation. With all water, electricity and communication destroyed, they are left in a nuclear wasteland, plagued by starvation, radiation disease and chaos. The movie ends with a survivor trying to contact someone over the radio, without succes. After the credits, a message is shown saying a real nuclear war would probably be much worse than the scenes shown in the movie.

This is a movie everyone should see. It may look dated, but it’s probably the most realistic movie about nuclear war ever made.

IMDB entry for The Day After

This is one of my all time favorite movies. It’s a scifi-horror movie, starring Sam Neil and Lawrence Fishburne. Although it was quite a box office failure, it more or less achieved cult status later. When you read reviews of this movie, there are two possible conclusions. The reviewer either loved it or hated it. It’s one of those movies you either watch once and then never talk about again, or watch over and over again.

So here’s the story. Spoiler alert is up, so be warned! In the mid-21st century, the research ship Event Horizon is exploring the solar system. When it reaches the orbit of Neptune, it disappears without a trace. Officially, the ship’s reactor exploded. Unofficially, the ship was testing an advanced propulsion system that allowed faster than light travel. Seven years later, it appears again and sends out a radio signal wich only contains screams. A rescue team is sent to the ship, along with a scientist who designed the ship.

When they arrive at the Event Horizon, they find the crew dead and horribly mutilated. When one of the crew members explores the engine room, he gets sucked into the engine’s core (wich contains an artificial black hole) and a violent explosion damages the rescue craft. He is recovered from the core, but is in a coma. Soon, everybody starts having terrifying hallucinations. After the person who was sucked into the core wakes up and throws himself out of an airlock without a spacesuit, someone comes up with a theory: the ship is haunted by something it brought back from wherever it had been for the past seven years.

The crew manages to repair the rescue craft, and when they are about to leave things really go wrong. The commander intends to destroy the Event Horizon after leaving, but the designer of the ship won’t let it happen. Posessed by the presence that haunts the ship, he plants explosives in the rescue craft, killing several crew members. The survivors then decide to blow up the Event Horizon and use the crew quarters as a rescue vessel, but the now insane scientist activates the engines. He tells the commander what had happened. The propulson created a gateway to another dimension, wich he describes as a “dimension of pure chaos”. The entity that took posession of the ship caused the crew to go mad and kill each other. Now he wants to go back and take what’s left of the rescue crew with him. After a fight the commander manages to set off the explosives, splitting the ship in two and sacrificing himself.

This definitely isn’t a movie for the faint of heart. It contains a few incredibly bloody, gruesome scenes. The first one is when the rescue crew recovers a video log entry of the original crew’s fate. It shows them mutilating each other, almost ripping each other to pieces. You don’t really see what’s actually going on, wich leaves a lot to your imagination. The second one is even more brutal. During the fight between the ship’s designer and the commander, he is shown a vision of what awaits them in the “dimension of chaos”. What follows is a short burst of incredibly bloody shots of him and his crew getting tortured and mutilated. It’s one of those gore scenes that makes you jump up and go “Holy crapfuck what the hell was that?”. If your guts can take it I recommend watching it in slow motion.

In my opinion, Sam Neil’s performance was the best of the entire cast. He plays professor Weir, who designed the ship. At the start of the movie, he’s a quiet, depressed person, troubled by his wife’s suicide. Throughout the movie, he transforms into a mad scientist, ending up as a posessed maniac. Towards the end he becomes a very, very terrifying, almost demonic, character.

Two things that bothered me a bit. When they arrived at the ship, they noticed the explosives in the corridor that connected the engine room to the rest of the ship. Professor Weir tells them they are meant to split the ship in two in case of an emergency, wich makes it very obvious how the movie will probably end. Second, when the commander tells one of his crew members about an accident where he had to leave someone behind to die in a fire he tells him he swore he would never leave someone behind again. A dead giveaway he will sacrifice himself!