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Blu-ray Film Review | Radiance

Panic in Year Zero! (1962) • Limited Edition Blu-ray [Radiance] — post-apocalyptic misery from before it was fashionable

In 1960s California, a family fights for survival after a nuclear attack.

Barnaby Page
Frame Rated
Published in
12 min readJan 8, 2025

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DDifficult as it might be to believe today, there was a time when our screens weren’t full of post-apocalyptic stories. From big-name TV shows and movies like The Walking Dead (2010–2022) or I Am Legend (2007), to smaller and often better ones like The End We Start From (2023) or Leave the World Behind (2023), to verging-on-arthouse fare like Time of the Wolf (2003), the iconography of collapse–looted supermarkets, abandoned cars, overgrown buildings–has become almost wearisomely familiar. But the genre only really became widespread in the 1970s, and perhaps only escalated to the level of mass obsession in the current century.

Still, the actual end of the world came as close as it ever has to reality in 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis, and so it’s appropriate that one of the first films that can be described as fully-fledged post-apocalyptic, Ray…

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Barnaby Page
Barnaby Page

Written by Barnaby Page

Barnaby is a journalist based in Suffolk, UK. By day he covers science and public policy; by night, film and classical music. He has also been a cinema manager.

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