PANIC IN YEAR ZERO! results when nuclear war breaks out, and Los Angeles is struck by multiple blasts. Released in 1962, between the Berlin Standoff and the Cuban Missile Crisis, this pint-sized apocalypse thriller punches above its weight with 93 minutes of grim portent and posed rationales. What would (will) you do to survive? Not just the event, but the rest of us?

“You scrape the scabs off and apply enough disinfectant there’s a chance civilization might recover.”

While on a camping trip, the ‘Baldwin’ family witnesses sudden strange daylight flashes. They soon see telltale mushroom clouds over Los Angeles, what was Los Angeles. Dodging the hordes fleeing the calamity they seek a hideout in the countryside, grabbing supplies at small town stores before they’re emptied by desperate evacuees. Father ‘Harry’ (Ray Milland, 55, also directing) is pragmatic and decisive. Wife ‘Ann’ (Jean Hagen, 39) can’t grasp the enormity of their situation. Their children react in time-honored teenager fashion: ‘Rick’ (Frankie Avalon, 21) is excited by the challenges and eager to wield firearms against two-legged predators while sis ‘Karen’ (Mary Mitchel) behaves like—a ‘Karen’, pouting “This whole thing is a bore. It’s such a drag!”

It becomes much more than that when they’re plagued by a trio of smirking punks (Richard Bakalyan, Rex Holman and Neil Nephew) who indulge in rape & murder while law & order is up for grabs. Survival and Civility face off, and as one character (aptly named ‘Dr. Strong’) lays it out for Harry “And you keep your gun handy. Our country is still full of thieving, murdering…patriots.” Written by John Morton and Jay Simms, the show may be shoestring ($225,000, 10-day shoot) and exploitative, but you can’t say it wasn’t prescient.

                          Now just add assault rifles

The skimpy budget hurts in the sets, the minimal number of extras and a dozen cars (seen again & again) serving as a “mass exodus”. Plus there is continual irritating distraction in a wailing, badly-conceived music score from Les Baxter. But the performances are mostly solid, the ‘make-your-mind-up-and-do-something-NOW’ situations instinctively relatable (keep crossing those fingers) and the injections of threat & response pretty darn bleak for the time period it was made in. Fear of violation (especially of loved ones) and the basic urge to make the violators pay lend personal immediacy to the greater collective folly drift of mankind. It had been four years since On The Beach and the international tension level was poised to go from simmer to boil.

Timeliness, the frank and jarring violence (alternately upsetting and cathartic), decent acting (except for Karen Miss Mitchel, sorry) and that bare-bones budget coalesced to make a box office success at JFK Nation’s drive-in’s: 103rd place yet grossing $1,800,000, eight times the production cost.

With Joan Freeman (a victim of the punks), Richard Garland, Willis Bouchey, O.Z. Whitehead, Hugh Sanders.

* Nuclear family ’62—in the biz since 1929, dependable pro Milland doggedly kept at it on the large & small screen and the stage for another 23 years. Hagen’s once-promising career (including an Oscar nomination for Singin’ In The Rain) was sidelined by personal problems; after this, she made just one more feature film and a handful of TV jobs. Pop music bopper Avalon had won parts in the epic The Alamo and dumb-fun Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea. Learning on the job, he showed improvement in this one. The following year Frankie nabbed four movies and five TV series. Three of the flicks (Operation Bikini, Drums Of Africa, The Castilian) are capital-D-Dopey but he lucked out with the fourth, Beach Party, spawning a wave of cheerfully goofball minor moneymakers that kept him busy, if not creatively taxed. Mary Mitchel’s acting career faded but she caught a second wind behind the scenes as a script supervisor.

Meanwhile, that Damoclean sword of atomic ecocide ticks toward midnight. To swipe from philosopher Alfred E. Neuman: “What, us worry?”

                                 In a heartbeat, creep