It’s understandable that Peter Watkins’ 50-minute made-for-TV ‘documentary’ about nuclear holocaust in the town of Rochester, Kent has languished in the shadow of Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove”, which had premiered only a year prior.
Where Kubrick’s version is witty, absurd and ultimately surreal, director Watkins’s take on the possibility of nuclear combat is unsparing, brutal and thoroughly convincing. Kubrick’s vision was a fable. This, though, is a nightmare.
Beginning with a hypothetical Chinese invasion of South Vietnam, the outbreak of a “limited engagement” in West Berlin between the Soviets and NATO tenders the US authorization of surface-to-surface nuclear artillery on the battlefield following a rout.
