Back in the early 1980s, my parents had a limited subscription movie channel called OnTV. Around about that time, our neighborhood in the county area of Hawthorne, California was wired for cable television. The cable company with the contract for our area was Jack Barry Cable.
Since I had a good job in insurance claims, I signed up for cable. Two of the channels I subscribed to were HBO and its sister channel, Cinemax.
These were the days when there were things on HBO and Cinemax worth watching. Around 1982 or 1983, Cinemax began showing The Atomic Cafe (1982), described as a "comic horror film" about the atomic and hydrogen bombs and the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
The Atomic Cafe contained a lot of archival footage of explosions of both the A-Bomb and H-Bomb as well life in the United States during those years, propaganda films, some familiar politicians (in their somewhat younger years) and news reports of the era. The movie begins with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It is presented in a dark humor fashion that is both hilarious and horrifying.
I taped the movie with my VHS recorder (I still have the tape), but my current VHS player is disconnected and will remain so until I get my entertainment center moved (it is heavy oak). I saw The Atomic Cafe for sale at Amazon.com and decided to buy it.
I just screened it and the movie hasn't lost any of its punch. It is well worth getting.
My grade: A.
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