The War Game (1965 - extract) | BFI DVD

Peter Watkins Academy Award-winning drama on the devastating consequences of a nuclear attack on Britain returns to BFI DVD on 28 March.

The War Game is Watkins’ 1965 Academy Award-winning television drama-documentary depicting a nuclear war, written, directed and produced by Peter Watkins for the BBC’s The Wednesday Play anthology series. The film shows the prelude to, and immediate weeks of the aftermath, of a Soviet nuclear attack against Britain. Told in the style of a news magazine programme, the cast was made up of non-actors, with narration by Peter Graham and Michael Aspel reading quotations from source material.

Watkins is known for pushing boundaries to the extreme with his documentaries and his films continue to inspire today.

[rabidrabbitshuggers]

The thing I love/hate the most about Watkins was how merciless he was, yet still tasteful and tactful when necessary. That's the hallmark of a good director.

[davidmunday]

We were made to watch this in secondary school in the early 70's .
Frightened the life out if me, kept me awake that night i remember !

[Lerequindemort]

Jeezus we Brits know how to do a low budget horrific realistic nuclear war documentary drama. Threads anyone?

[sylviapingleton]

Remember when this came out when I lived back in Leeds and I couldn't sleep good after watching this frightening, and never know in this day and age. Yes Lesley Chilling,

[Rapscallion]

I remember being a kid in the 80s and my contemporaries were often bragging about how they'd seen a horror film. Which usually consisted of guys in rubber masks running around whilst someone threw Kensington gore over them. You really wanted to be scared? - you watched this, or "Threads". Laugh at the production values if you will, but a nuclear weapon is a much more real threat than a vampire. I always hated horror films, but I have a lot of respect for this movie.

[CathyKitson]

I can see where the makers of "Threads", 20 years later, got their ideas from. The two films are SO similar.

[talesfromtinpanalley-thedo]

Lucky to have met Director Peter Watkins at the Edinburgh University Film Club in 1979

[CathyKitson]

"At this distance the heatwave is sufficient to cause melting of the upturned eyeball." Shit.

[michaelking]

what got me scared the most when the heat flash melted the eyes of the two people and full retina burn of the little boy

[williamanthony]

I bought this from a seller on Amazon. Supposedly a Blue-Ray/DVD copy of The War Game/Calloden. Unfortunately, the seller didn't warn me that the DVD copy was a Region 2, and wouldn't play on my machine here in the USA. Good luck trying to find a Region 1 DVD of this film. At least the other sellers were kind enough to point out they were offering Region 2 copies.

They showed "The War Game" to us high schoolers in the 1970s. Finding "Treads" is fairly easy, and I have a copy. In my opinion, however, "The War Game" is a vastly superior film. If I had a copy of it, I would show it to every youngster in my sphere of influence. Even after nearly fifty years, this film still stands out in my mind. It is probably the best argument against nuclear war ever put on film!

[somethingelse]

Out of threads, when the wind blows and this, this is the most terrifying

[pelagicboreas]

I was reading earlier about how hypersonic nuclear delivery systems under development by the U.S. and Russia raise the risk of a world-ending miscalculation dramatically, simply because of their speed and how hard they are to track. I only saw this film once years ago, but after I was done with that article, I immediately thought of it. Between Threads, The War Game and When The Wind Blows, the British have made high art out of the unthinkable. These movies get under my skin in a disturbingly important way.

[gangstalkerhunter]

This type of film creates the conditions for an awareness that excludes ideologies such as nationalism or racism from the outset.

[bigroy]

The Silent Night part always kills me.

[raymondyee]

This scene was just the start of the nightmare in this docudrama.

[fratercontenduntocculta]

The worst scene is watching the police kill the patients outside the hospital who were beyond help to free up room for the ones that could. It makes me wonder how this is not on youtube now in full. I watched it years ago on here once

[JohnJackson-mnts]

We’ve come pretty damn close a time or two, but thankfully this has not become a reality... yet.

[lesleymalouin]

Studied this in college, still chilling to me!

[brycepunk]

Rented this many times from the old local video store. Amazed it has not popped up on youtube so many years later. Movie was fucking crazy. Upsetting.

[johnmilner]

there was a local fair in the late 70s where i went with my parents. the red cross and similar organisations had some tents at the market square. they had an exhibition tent with all kind of tools and flyers. in the background was running a super-8 movie on a mobile screen: 'the war game'! without being warned i accidently watched a few minutes of this. terrified! frozen! scared to the core! it is still haunting me, the scene with the man in his mask dying on the street. i was like 7 years old.