In this British documentary, the hypothetical Chinese invasion of South Vietnam triggers a new world war between East and West. In the town of Rochester in Kent, the anticipation of a nuclear attack led to a mass evacuation. When a stray missile explodes, the ensuing firestorm blinds all who see it.
The prospect of nuclear war was very real in the Sixties, and although we now choose to try to forget it. The possibility that someone somewhere could detonate a nuclear device remains very real. This means that Peter Watkins’s hard-line view of what would happen in Kent if a nuclear bomb was detonated still carries a lot of weight more than 30 years after he fired the shot.
The fashions may have changed but the sentiment behind the documentary is as real today as it ever was. Watson struggled to get his view of the war committed to celluloid, and then, after the BBC found it had no appetite so close to home in the mid-60s, he struggled again to get them on display to the public. Watkins left the country shortly after the war games were banned.
