Films

Ground Zero - The Essex Secret

This short video is about the two bunkers in Essex that are open to the public: Mistley and Kelvedon Hatch.

It begins with archive footage of the Manhattan project and the atomic attack on Japan at the end of WWII, and the beginnings of the cold war after the Soviet Union got the bomb too.

Most of the rest of the tape consists of interviews with the curators of the two bunkers, James Fox and Michael Parrish, about the history and role of their sites. It also contains a brief description of the role of the Royal Observer Corps, a bit of one of the animated Protect and Survive films, and discussion of the possible role of stone quarries near Bath as a bolt-hole for central government.

This video is quite nicely directed, and with generous usage of archive film it probably wasn't cheap to make. However, it aims to cover an awful lot of ground in less than 24 minutes. The result is muddled and superficial and it is difficult to see what it achieves or even what audience it is aimed at.

VHS PAL, stereo, 14:9 letterbox format.

The tape is available for £14.99 (including postage and packing) from:

Clear Light Productions Ltd
176 West Grove
Woodford Green
Essex
IG8 7NW

(RL)

Protect and Survive

This 90 minute tape contains three short films. The first is a full set of the famous Protect and Survive animated videos. These recordings were prepared in the 1970s in secret. The idea was that if a nuclear attack seemed inevitable, they would have been broadcast on UK television. They provide the elementary advice of the time about do-it-yourself civil defence sheltering, based on the official booklet of the same name, including the notorious `lean-to' shelter made out of doors leaning against an internal wall.

The second item is a 1951 recruiting film for the Civil Defence Corps, called The Waking Point. It is made in the unashamedly propagandist style of the Crown Film Unit at that time. If judged by today's standards it seems quite paranoid. (Black and White.)

Sound an Alarm - the motto of the (defunct) United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation - is a 1971 film about the work of that organisation. It covers the same subject matter as an earlier UKWMO film, The Hole in the Ground. Slightly soapier in style, the newer film looks at the organisation through the eyes of a doctor who visits an UKWMO `sector control' bunker on his rounds, just in time for the beginning of World War III.

Available in VHS/PAL from DD Video.

(RL)

The Atomic Cafe

Although first released in 1982, this film still retains its original impact, especially when viewed from today's post-Cold War perspective. It consists of 89 minutes of official US training and propaganda newsreel footage from 1945 to about 1968, set to a period soundtrack. By clever editing and compilation, it tells its own story. Highlights include US soldiers watching a nuclear test and then walking into the cloud, and Bert the Turtle telling kids how to ``Duck and Cover''.

See Jayne Loader's Public Shelter for more on The Atomic Cafe.

(AE)

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