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PANIC IN YEAR ZERO
April 12, 2017  | By David Bianculli

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

 

This low-budget 1962 movie is called Panic in Year Zero, but might as well have been titled Panic During the Cold War. Imagine it as The Walking Dead without the zombies: Los Angeles has been wiped out by a nuclear attack, and a local family far enough away, on a fishing trip, to survive has to tend with all the unexpected post-nuclear threats: not only fallout and radiation poisoning, but opportunistic thugs roaming the countryside, looting and raping. This frightened little film stars Sixties teen idol Frankie Avalon, in the first of five of his movies shown tonight on TCM. Most of the others, including 1963’s Beach Party (10 p.m. ET) and 1965’s Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (2 a.m. ET), are much, much lighter in tone. All three, in their own ways, though, are disaster films… but nevertheless fun to watch, more than 50 years later. Ray Milland co-stars, and also directs.

 
 
 
 
 
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