Milland directed with a sparse realism and his visualisation of such a doom-laden mass-ordeal is actually quite stylish and quietly gripping in its inward-looking tone of despair, pragmatism and renegade retribution. Like The Road (which this film has a lot in common with), the reason for this cataclysmic destruction is not precisely pinned-down - some vague war against an unnamed enemy - and just as with John (The Proposition) Hillcoat's adaptation of the great Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, the threat comes not from some irradiated mutant strand of life (Them!) or some alien pestilence sweeping away mankind (The Monolith Monsters), but from fellow survivors, themselves, and the lawless depths of depravity that many will sink to in order to make it through each day in the new wasteland.

Made in 1962 and released just before the tension of the Cuban Missile Crisis, on a shoestring budget and with Ray Milland both directing and starring in it as the practical-minded but terrified survivalist father who takes his family on a dangerous road trip to find safety in the hills once the sprawling Los Angeles gets blown sky-high, the film was something of small-scale cause celebre at the time and, like Roger Corman's eerie The Day The World Ended, Sidney Salkow's faithful adaptation of Richard Matheson's “I Am Legend” in The Last Man On Earth, with Vincent Price, went on to gain a limited cult appeal. ”Īt a time when post apocalyptic movies seem all the rage again - we've had the animated “9” and the FX-showpiece of 2012, and both The Road and The Book Of Eli are now making that trek across the terrain known, universally, as Armageddon - it seems appropriate that we can now take a look at the newly released score for Ray Milland's own startlingly grim Cold War treatise on the collapse of civilisation and the end of the world, the hard-nosed black-and-white drama, Panic In Year Zero. “ Civilisation? Some civilisation! All our friends are probably dead.

Zero cold war soundtrack