Threads (1984) Dir Mick Jackson

In my formative high school years, I received a film education through my local library, which was the only place you could find movies from before 1975 (and found Blockbuster, Video Update, or other now extinct chains to be the enemy). Simultaneously, I obsessively used the library to mine the archives for "samples" to powder the rudimentary basement electronic music I was making at the time (examples of this will eventually be posted here). So I decided to check out an innocuous-seeming BBC drama called Threads from 1984 hoping to find a few cool sound samples and expecting little else. As any one alive when it first aired in the UK can attest, it is one of the most disturbing, terrifying films ever made. Going into scientific and horrific medical detail of what the fallout of a nuclear assault on Britain would be like, it's no surprise this was required watching for a country in the grips of the cold war. That the threat is no less plausible now should be a good enough reason to revisit this one.