In 1984 teachers across the British isles taped a BBC docu-drama and subsequently scared a generation of Cold War school children. Here for your amusement, the full feature film: Threads 1984

48 comments

  2. Our teacher just had us watch “When The Wind Blows” and read “Brother In The Land”. Not quite as harrowing as Threads but still grim.

  4. One of the comments from 2019 asks ‘But what does the baby look like?’ I thought the expression on the new mother’s face was one of the most harrowing images in ‘Threads’
    What DOES the baby look like?

  7. I grew up in Sheffield (the city in which it is set) and was living there when this was screened for the first time. My parents didn’t let me watch it because they thought it would be too scary. But I remember soon afterwards, some “street art” that appeared at the top of The Moor shopping street there; it was a depiction of shadows burned onto the paving stones, just like the shadows that were burned onto the sides of buildings in Hiroshima after the bomb.

    I couldn’t escape watching it though, and we had to watch the whole film in a social studies class a few years later. A terrifying film you only need to see once.

  8. Still one of the most terrifying films I’ve ever seen.

    I have no intention of ever watching it again. I learned the lesson.

  9. I watched this as an adult 10 ish years ago just out of curiosity. Honestly, it was the most frightening piece of fiction I have ever seen.

    I realise this comment is only going to make people curious to watch it themselves, but you should at least wait until the current situation calms down a bit. You don’t need this shit in your life.

  10. Thanks for posting this. Hopefully a few of the hawkish voices on this sub might realize what they the could be demanding.

  11. Saw this in school when I was 13.

    Honestly it didn’t leave that much of an impression at the time edit: mid 00s. From memory a lot of people even did the usual making fun of “old” effects that you get from the cool kids in the classroom whenever the class watched something more than 2 years old in a “video” lesson.

    Watched it a couple of years ago. Definitely leaves more of an impression as an adult. A great low budget production with a powerful message.

  13. I watched this at school, tbh didn’t hit home until I watched it again until I had left school. It’s scary as fuck.
    And this was in the 80’s long before days of the internet, I actually think it would be way worse now.

    Oh and as an edit, film starts march 5th, Putin loves history, fact it was also released in 1984, George Orwell book…

    Yeh omens aren’t good.

  15. I think many people don’t realise that my generation was brought up being told that at any moment the four minute warning could sound, and we would have just minutes to figure out what to do or where to take shelter.

    There was an early-warning siren at the local shops behind my house. The system was decomissioned in the early 90s.

  16. “I’ve been trying to get us out of common market for years!!!”

    That line bizarrely stuck in my head when I watched it first years ago. Of course…

  20. Urm, ‘teachers taped’? This was a Mick Jackson/Barry Hines thing, no idea what teachers have to do with it? Or does this mean they recorded it on tape then played it back for kids to watch? Weird title anyway. Great film. I have it on blu-ray and it’s better than I’d ever seen it before.

  21. I remember this at school scared the hell out of us at the time. I think it’s easy for younger generations to forget that most of us Gen-Xers grew up with the realistic fear of nuclear annihilation and IRA bombings. Every kid in my school was acutely aware of the pub bombings even though most of us had a only just been born when they got out city. The likes of When the Wind Blows, Threads and Nena’s 99 Red Balloons formed a large part of the Zeitgeist of our childhoods.

  22. Watched this as a kid and it scared the shit out me. I had nightmares for weeks afterwards.

    Even thinking about it as an adult it scares me.

  24. I watched this years ago and still have nightmares about it, and at the moment I am remembering it far too well and it’s giving me the creeps. Are we ready for something like in the film?

  25. I remember after we watched Threads we all asked each other who we wanted to be with WHEN the bomb dropped. We never thought it wouldn’t. It was a very scary time and it seems like we are back to that again. We were very nihilistic because – when the world is about to end – who cares about the future?

  26. Oh mate. I watched this last week and it’s haunted me every day since. I wonder if there is a Russian subtitled version?

  28. I was a young teen in middle school when The Day After first aired, and my friends and I were so scared that we asked the principal if the school had a fallout shelter. I saw Threads for the first time a few years ago and it’s way more graphic and shows the reality of what would happen in a nuclear war.

    I feel like I did back in the 80’s and it really sucks. Kids, this is how it felt like to live in the 80’s. Fun, right?

  29. It’s one of the films you need to immerse yourself in to get the full impact, don’t just watch it for the money shot.

    Turn off your phone and become the everyday people in the first part. That is when you truly realise what the film is about, it makes you think if you should go into the bunker or not.

  30. Never watched it, but it is in one of those “top 10 films about the end of the world” YouTube things. Led me to read it’s Wikipedia article, and it terrified me.

  33. You had to live through that time to realise *quite* what a paranoid era it was – most of the time we were we quietly nudged into a sense of ‘this could all end at any moment.’

    Strange days…

  36. At one time the DVD for Threads was quite rare and I’d bought a copy. I’d just made a new friend of an intelligent and inquisitive girl some ten years younger than me and in trying to explain the feeling that growing up we all thought we could be annihilated at any moment in a nuclear holocaust I suggested we watch Threads.

    She didn’t believe me at all, didn’t believe we’d all been given “protect and survive” leaflets in school, and was impatient and quite ungracious during the first part of the film, which, I must admit, is quite slow.

    She was just saying something like “Does anything happen soon, because I’m getting really bored?” when the bomb dropped. She didn’t say a word or move a muscle for the rest of the film, which I don’t think I’ve ever told her I found absolutely hilarious.

    Special mention for the first swear word I ever heard on telly. Reece Dinsdale popped my cherry with “That’s shit!”.

  37. I remember the films that told you in the event of an imminent nuclear attack you had to take the doors off their hinges and lean them against the wall for a shelter. I had five brothers and sisters and I used to get panicky thinking how we would all fit in. I also noticed there was paint all over the screws so how the hell were we going to get the doors off? I tried a knife once and knew it couldn’t be done (We didn’t have screw drivers). No wonder I suffered from anxiety.

  38. Watched this for the first time maybe last year, even though I should’ve seen it before being around the right age and that.

    It was a difficult wank.

  39. Nobody should leave school without having seen this, it should be shown once a year at prime time on BBC1.

    Politicians should be forced to watch it.

    Everyone should see this film several times until one day someone decides to remake it for a more modern audience, and then people can carry on watching it.

    It’ll scare people and give children (and no doubt some adults) nightmares for weeks, but that’s for the best. As observed during the initial lockdown when people travelled across country to go for a lovely walk up Snowdon after we were told to stay at home, leading to Boris having to go on TV and basically give us all a bollocking, sometimes we need someone to scare us into listening.

    Not a single person should be under any illusion that there is any chance of winning a nuclear war, nor should anyone be allowed to believe that surviving one is something to hope for.

    This and The Day After are the two most important pieces of television ever produced. I don’t care if people think I’m succumbing to hyperbole, I’ll die on that hill.

  40. Have people forgotten about The 60s BBC documentary “War Game”. It was withdrawn from being televised and was only shown at restricted events until 1985 when it was finally shown publically. In my view it’s dry docudrama presentation is far more terrifying

  41. It’s a grim watch! I watched it a couple of years ago and it made me very sad. It’s easily the scariest thing you’ll ever watch.

  43. I was too young to remember this personally, but I’m almost sure I read somewhere that when Threads came out they (BBC?) had to do a disclaimer before airing it due to its content. As well as the ending basically alluring to being a “happy” one because a few survived it.

    I did get round to watching it eventually.. and more recently I actually got a remaster of it on DVD but it is honestly one of those movies you need only watch once

    Another one I would suggest is Barefoot Gen, an animated piece which was I believe inspired by the experiences of an actual survivor of Hiroshima. Put the little ones to bed first though

    Too bad we don’t really teach this sort of thing over here.

  44. Growing up in Manchester during the 80s, I remember watching this at school, probably around the age of 11/12. Particularly the scenes at 50:05 point seem forever etched in my mind.

  45. I remember a few years earlier they played that fucking Yorkshire Ripper ‘Hallo George’ hoax tape in assembly. That had -in memory anyway- a way more traumatic effect, I can remember kids not wanting to walk home alone that day because of ‘the Ripper’. In Berkshire. I was 15 when Threads came out and it was more a case of ‘this is what will happen if we don’t beat the Russians’ rather than ‘give peace a chance’. Sign of the times though, it was on the back of a surge of nationalism after the Falklands a few years before and gave rise to arseholes like Sting thinking it was appropriate to release that godawful ‘Russians’. If anyones not heard it I urge you to listen and see how long it takes your rectum to turn inside out from the sheer force of the cringe.

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