Episode 756: Panic in Year Zero! (1962)

The Projection Booth Podcast

The Projection Booth

Film Reviews, Film Interviews, Film History, Tv & Film

4.8 • 686 Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2025

⏱️ 79 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mike is joined by Emily Intravia (The Feminine Critique) and screenwriter Howard A. Rodman for a sobering descent into Panic in Year Zero! (1962), directed by and starring Ray Milland. Loosely inspired by Ward Moore’s chilling short stories “Lot” and “Lot’s Daughter,” the film imagines a Los Angeles family thrust into chaos after a nuclear attack decimates the city. As Henry Baldwin, Milland leads his wife (Jean Hagen) and children (Mary Mitchel and Frankie Avalon) on a desperate quest for survival in a world unraveling by the hour.

With Cold War dread baked into every frame, Panic in Year Zero! is an eerily prescient slice of apocalyptic Americana—a proto-survivalist tale that predates The Road and The Walking Dead by decades. We unpack its moral ambiguity, its place in the post-bomb canon, and why it remains a startling relic of atomic-age anxiety.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hold your ears, folks. It's showtime.
0:08.6	People pay good money to see this movie.
0:10.9	When they go out to a theater, they want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in the projection booth.
0:17.3	Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
0:20.0	Shut it off.
0:25.6	Turn it off.
0:27.6	Turn it off. After all these years, I thought I knew you, but you turned out to be a stranger.
0:48.3	We are fighting for our lives, Anne. My family must survive. Yes, the most ... experience of their lives doubly shocking because it can happen to you stay
1:16.5	away my trailer what are you gonna do call the cops they're busy with the new
1:22.5	highway patrol the lawless are on the, making it necessary for law-abiding citizens to make their own law.
1:33.3	When I get going, fire a shot over the heads. Maybe that'll upset them.
1:36.3	Right. There are no civilians. We are all at war.
1:51.0	Give me a gun. I'm good with a gun.
2:03.6	I'll stay here and I'll kill them.
2:05.6	This is civilization's jungle.
2:08.6	After the jackals of society have ruthlessly ravaged it,
2:12.6	ending the world of decency.
2:14.6	Oh, world of decency. No! No! No! No!
2:18.3	No!
2:19.3	I killed two men. I killed two men. I killed. No! No! No!
2:37.0	I killed two men. I tried to kill them too, but I missed.
2:40.0	I just wasn't a good enough shot. Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your host, Mike White.
	...

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