Original subtitles

(suspense music)

- [Protestor] You bastard!

(people shouting)

(siren wailing)

- [Narrator] This is "BBC Two," where tonight's

major drama production, THREADS,

is introduced by John Tusa.

- Good evening.

In the 40 years of the nuclear age,

we've grown accustomed to its vocabulary

and even somewhat hardened to its ideas,

- Fallout, radiation sickness,

zones of destruction,

mega tons, even mega deaths.

The phrases have become part of everyday speech.

But recently, a new one's been added

that has introduced a fresh sense

of urgency into the nuclear debate, the nuclear winter.

That's to say, the belief of some scientists on both sides

of the East-West divide

that a large-scale nuclear exchange would not only wreak

the vast destruction and death

that we all think we know about,

but would throw so much dust

and smoke into the atmosphere

that the planet's climate would be drastically altered.

The Sub-Zero temperatures

of a nuclear winter would threaten the survival

of the survivors.

This thesis is the subject of several high-level inquiries,

even one backed by President Reagan himself.

The onus, as one authority put it, is for those

who doubt the nuclear winter, now, to disprove it.

When we start tonight with the advent

of a nuclear war itself,

what would happen if Britain came under nuclear attack?

How would ordinary people survive

the impact of the blast, and the conditions

that scientists say would result from the nuclear exchange?

THREADS is a drama, but characters

and events are fictional,

and it deals with something that has never happened,

but it draws on a vast amount

of scientific information amassed over the last 40 years

on the likely effect and destructive power of nuclear war.

Some of the scenes which follow may well distress you.

THREADS was made in,

and with the cooperation of the people of Sheffield.

(birds chirping) (eerie music)

- [Announcer] When you hear the attack warning,

you and your family must take cover at once.

(explosives whooshing)

(siren wailing)

The most widespread danger is fallout.

Fallout can kill, though you cannot see it,

feel it, or smell it.

There is danger outside, so don't go outside.

(bomb blasts)

(tense music)

No one can tell where the safest place will be.

(tense music)

You are better off in your own home.

(tense music)

Stay.

(tense music)

(tense music)

Although the danger from fallout will get less

and less as time goes by,

you will never be able to judge for yourself how bad it is.

(tense music)

It certainly will not be safe for you to go outside

the house until the radio tells you.

(tense music)

More details are given in the booklet,

"Protect and Survive." (voice echoes)

(tense music)

- [John] Sheffield, city on the move.

Sheffield, Yorkshire's largest city, is one

of Europe's cleanest industrial centers.

(bus droning) (water spraymg)

(water trickles)

(bus engine accelerates)

Sheffield gained its worldwide reputation for quality

and craftsmanship from her steel and cutlery industries.

Today, backed up by one of the most

technologically-advanced manufacturing research programs

in the UK. (machine whooshing)

Sheffield has widened its industrial base

to cover the most sophisticated needs of the 20th century.

- It was a time of political polarization

and social tension, really.

We see the collapse of the economic model

that has sustained prosperity in the post-war decades.

So, from the mid-1970s, we see the return

of mass unemployment.

We see rising inflation, we see decline in heavy industry,

and manufacturing, and that was causing real problems,

particularly in Northern England

and Central Scotland and South Wales.

We have the ramping up of Cold War tensions,

the renewal of the tension between the US,

and the Soviet Union.

We also see the election

of real Cold War warriors in both the United States

and the United Kingdom.

Ronald Reagan, who uses the rhetoric

of an evil empire in relation to the Soviet Union,

and Margaret Thatcher, known as the Iron Lady

for her Cold War stance.

- We must ensure that the strong defense

of the West is preserved at every step.

We must watch the strategy, watch the tactics,

and watch the presentation.

- I remember growing up in the early 1980s,

and it was grim.

(eerie music)

Awful unemployment.

There was soup kitchens, there was poverty.

Sheffield industry was devastated.

- All major centers of population

and industry will have been destroyed.

- Industry, what industry?

We ain't got no industry in Sheffield.

- Yes, and if the mayor hadn't-

(people shouting)

- The miner strike was very close to hand.

We had the steel strikes beforehand.

You know, there was lots of poverty going on.

You know, people from my kind of background were affected.

- That bred, that sort of feeling that we'd been left behind

and that Mrs. Thatcher had sort of deliberately targeted

this part of the country because of the fact

that we were elected Labor MPs.

- I presume this is to enable us

to sweep Britain clean of socialism.

(everybody cheering)

- Sheffield is very much a labor city, a trade union city,

famously known as Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire.

And there was a sense that local areas, cities,

local councils had to be at the forefront of resistance

to Thatcherism or to try

and create alternative political spaces.

- The campaign for nuclear disarmament,

which had been in being for a quarter of a century.

But back in the 1980s, when the tensions rose again

between the Soviet Union

and the US in particular, there was a feeling

that there really did need to be a strong campaign

to warn people that we were, once again, drifting

into the danger of a potential nuclear war.

- We see protest marches,

and protest events with six-figure numbers, 250,000 people.

We see a reinvigoration of feminism in the 1970s.

Many parts of that Feminist Movement were deeply interested

in peace and sort of taking on the militaristic

and patriarchal establishment

and were deeply committed to anti-nuclear policies.

And famously, they protest at Greenham Common, which is

where the US cruise missiles were gonna be based

in the UK.

(lively music)

(lorries hovering)

- [John] There are four missiles in the first lorry.

The buttons which fire them in the second.

(lively music)

In time of nuclear alert, they will set off

to secret launch sites deep in the English countryside.

(dramatic drum roll)

- I was 18 when I come here in 1980,

and I was instantaneously politicized.

Sheffield had a real vibe about it.

It felt like a kind of a place which had a bit of a mission

to look after itself and to look after the people inside it.

For us, the Political Movement was centered

around CND and the Anti-Nuclear Movement.

- In the wider region of Yorkshire,

we'd seen the US installations as part

of what was dubbed "Star Wars," and the danger

that if there had been a nuclear conflict,

our region would've been targeted

because of the nature of what was actually installed.

- I remember Ronald Reagan coming down to London,

and he was proposing that cruise missiles will come

on our soil in Britain.

- They seem to think they have a simple answer to warfare,

that if we just lay down our weapons

and stand back empty-handed,

that somehow, peace will come to the world.

They haven't stopped to figure it might be

the peace of the grave.

- [Bruce] I remember piling down and being

in Trafalgar Square,

- I remember that people were very radical about

what was going on, particularly with the nuclear concerns,

and I was certainly one of the people that went on lots

of marches, CND marches, which were fantastic.

I mean, there were huge, unprecedented marches.

I think I felt even as a young person then,

that I could make a difference,

and one person multiplies into millions.

Then hopefully, we can, it's a shame

that not more people are doing it today,

given the threat that we have.

- At that pivotal point, it was absolutely crucial

to get those cruise missiles away from the UK

and not to be used as a launchpad.

- Radical local authorities across the country were saying,

"How can we get this debate going?

How can we ensure that people are warned

of the real dangers?

And arising from that came the idea

of so-called, in quotes, "Nuclear-Free" zones.

Well, of course, they weren't nuclear-free,

and they weren't zones,

but they certainly got a lot of debate going.

- They had the resonances of the kind

of the '60s folk music,

which even in my time, felt a little bit old-fashioned.

So they would always,

any sort of like demonstration you have,

we'd have a fellow called Roy Bailey,

who was a folk singer.

You know, almost doing the...

P We shall overcome P

Type things, which, well,

I've never liked that sort of thing.

I could tell it was like,

"Oh, they've been going on a long time saying that,

we're like new people to your movement."

P There are bottles with crossbones and skulls P

P In rows, very tidy and clean I'

P A war where no triggers are pulled P

P Very tidy and dean P

I' Though it's very new to me P

P War without mutiny P

P War without soldiers and war without fight P

- Growing up in the '80s, I was very aware

of political protest around nuclear war and nuclear weapons

because I came from quite a politically charged family.

My mom and my sister went to Greencon,

and my clad was a political folk singer.

- We had a lot of news

and information about a possible nuclear holocaust.

- If you go to a concert, there were CND flags everywhere.

I went down to Glastonbury, it was (IND-sponsored.

Britain didn't feel like a cohesive kind of unit.

It had that us-and-themness.

People weren't seeing the potential problem that were there.

So when THREADS comes on the telly,

and actually shows a nuclear bomb blasting over Sheffield,

that was very like, well, this is what could happen.

And again, that must have opened a lot of people's eyes.

'Cause again, if you're not in that kinda world,

that little bubble, you probably weren't quite as aware

of what was going on.

- Obviously, I was a kid in the '80s, so I don't remember

how adults felt about it.

My life was as much, you know, hanging out with my friends

and watching telly, and messing about.

I don't think I was thinking about nuclear war (laughs)

In the 1980s.

I think I was aware of it as a background hum.

- The threat of nuclear war hung

completely over my childhood.

If you met a child now in 2024

that had the same level of phobia about nuclear war

and about world events that I had in 1984,

there would probably genuinely be some kind

of help offered or intervention.

- I just stopped being an undergraduate in 1984,

but I remember fellow students,

their nightmares were about nuclear attacks

and many people really felt it was a reality

that it was going to happen.

- To be honest, I can't remember the actual politics

of the time, but I know we were afraid

of a bomb being dropped.

- There was an inevitability about it

that you thought it could happen,

and you know, we couldn't stop it.

There was nothing we could do to stop it.

- I was aware of it,

but I'm also conscious of the problems

that were caused in the early '60s

when we had the Cuban Missile Crisis,

and my mother, who was an Irish Catholic,

you know, we used to be on us knees every night,

and seeing the rosary.

- I was in school when that happened,

and there were quite a few of us that had problems

with anxiety attacks about it.

- We're pretty down-to-Earth people, aren't we,

in Sheffield?

And we'd take things, you know, it'll be right, you know,

that kind of thing, (laughs)

So you know, and I suppose

that's how a lot of us reacted, really. (laughs)

- It became an everyday occurrence.

You heard about it on the news.

You heard about the nuclear fallout and what would happen,

and you know, the disaster it would cause.

- It was very frightening, really.

You know, we were aware

of it really at too young an age.

- We all knew about the four-minute warning.

- There was this idea that, you know, you had four minutes

when the rockets were fired, and the bomb would go off.

- I had no religious background whatsoever.

And yet, when I discovered, I think around the end of 1983,

that there was a possibility of this huge, terrifying,

all-encompassing global conflict.

When I found that out, I started to pray every night in bed

to a God that I had no relationship with at all.

And I can remember it word for word.

So every night before I went to sleep, I said, "Dear God,

please don't let there ever be a nuclear war, Amen."

- And even now, where am I, I'm sort of late 50s.

I can still sort of remember

all those things quite distinctly

and the sort of feeling of anxiousness.

- Very much like in the film THREADS.

- It was just that thing in the corner in the TV

in the corner of the room, the things we heard.

- People think I'm exaggerating when I say this.

I spent 18 months to two years

of my life worrying every single day.

Would this be the day that we get wiped off the map?

- By 1984, it's just absolutely inescapable.

- You had to resort to alternative media, i.E., music

and magazines and comics,

and that kind of thing, where you did get discussion

often in a sort of a bleak way.

- 2000 AD is my favorite thing ever.

First week of 1982,

there's a huge Judge Dredd story called

the "Apocalypse War,"

where the Sovs, as they were called, invade Mega City One,

and press the button and wipe half the city off the map.

- You can listen to the pop charts, it's there.

You've got "Frankie Goes to Hollywood" singing,

"Two Tribes Go To War."

You've got Nena singing "99 Red Balloons."

You've got Nik Kershaw singing,

"I Won't Let The Sun Go Down On Me."

It's just absolutely everywhere.

(singer vocalizing) (eerie music)

- "Protect and Survive" was a series

of short information films

about what you do in nuclear aftermath.

It was made between 1974

and 1980 wasn't intended for public consumption,

it was very much intended as we'll release these

if and when this happens, and people will know what to do.

But it was leaked by Panorama in 1980

and people got to see it.

And then, the accompanying booklets were sent

to households in the UK.

- I distinctly remember

the "Protect and Survive" leaflet coming through the door.

And I just remember reading it

and just thinking how flimsy it was.

- The advice that was being given

from the British Government was, frankly, risible.

- It's literally take a can of baked beans

and hide under your kitchen table,

and you, too, can outlive a nuclear winter.

- You're supposed to paint your windows white

to reflect the blast.

You're supposed to hide under a staircase or...

And pack it out with mattresses and that sort of thing.

- [Paul] Another good place for a refuge is

a cupboard under the stairs.

- One of the most memorable bits of advice is

to prop some doors, wooden doors, against the wall,

and kind of make a kind of nest with cushions

and mattresses or whatever you can find.

- [Paul] Strong boards or doors taken

from their hinges are quite good.

- There were lots of bits in these videos

about how far the nuclear blast zone would be,

and when radiation poisoning might kick in,

and what to do when people get sick.

- [Paul] If anyone dies while you are kept

in your fallout room,

move the body to another room in the house.

Label the body with name and address,

and cover it as tightly

as possible in polythene, paper, sheets, or blankets.

- Really horrific stuff,

but presented in a really matter-of-fact,

almost children's cartoon kind of way.

- [Paul] If you cannot reach home in 10 minutes,

take cover in the nearest building.

If there is no building nearby,

try to find some solid cover.

- It was just so ridiculously stupid.

Didn't even for a minute take it serious.

- [Paul] If there is no solid cover,

lie flat in a ditch or a hole,

and cover your head, face,

and hands as fast as you can with some of your clothes.

- This is just all acceptable bollocks, you know,

because it just, you ain't gonna survive that.

- This is a weird idea, like, can you survive the blast,

but also, do you want to survive the blast?

Nobody that I knew wanted

to survive the blast, they'd rather be dead

than live with that.

- It's that blitz spirit, isn't it?

The idea that if we all get together

and sing happy songs around a campfire,

we'll somehow be fine, and we'll get through it

because we're British,

and like, no, Britain will be a radioactive smoking ruin.

(fire gushing and whooshing)

(survivor sobbing and sniffing)

(survivor coughing)

(survivor rumbling and sobbing)

- Oh. (fire gushing)

Oh, oh, please.

Oh, (indistinct) Bobby. (panting)

- We also got a leaflet produced

by the city council called, "You and the Bomb."

I remember it being printed in red

and it basically set out the fact

that they were opposing nuclear weapons,

but that we had to prepare for the eventuality.

- Everyone knew that a nuclear explosion would wipe out

a city such as Sheffield, and of course,

TH READS was designed

to just show what that devastation would mean.

- I didn't buy this myself, I didn't pay 80 pence for it.

This was given to me by a friend

who bought it in Leeds, in I think, the very early 1980s.

It's called "How to Survive the Nuclear Age."

It's almost the "Anti-Protect and Survive."

If "Protect and Survive" is all about,

"You can survive a nuclear war by taking your doors off

and hiding in the shed."

"How to Survive the Nuclear Age," ironically,

basically says, "You can't.

You are absolutely doomed."

The answer is basically to protest

as it says on the final page, "Protest and Survive."

- Protest and Survive" is a really strong message

in THREADS.

In a way, the film could leave you feeling,

"This is really terrible.

What on Earth can I do to try and help this never happen?"

And I suppose the CND rally that we see is

a really important consciousness-raising device.

It is down to individual people in the city to try

and get governments to not build up warheads

and put forward nuclear deterrence as a reasonable strategy.

- According to the American spokesman, the warhead-

(channel scratching) (lively music)

- Hey, I'm watching that.

(speakers talking over each other)

- Here's the thing, do you trust people

with the truth about nuclear war?

Most governments would say, "No,"

even though they know nothing about it at all, nothing,

nothing about nuclear war.

Keep it from them, it's much easier.

Just after the war,

Second World War, Churchill instructed the BBC in secret

that they should never mention nuclear war.

No talks, no discussion programs, no documentaries,

nothing ever.

And that lasted until the 1960s.

- [Paul] 12 seconds later, the shock front arrives.

(people shouting)

(walls crashing)

- As most people know, the BBC reluctantly agreed

to let a brilliant filmmaker called Peter Watkins make

a movie called "The War Game"

about a nuclear attack on Britain.

The BBC saw it and were very worried

and showed it to the Home Office, the Government.

The Government were very worried, but very cleverly,

they didn't ban it.

They just said,

"We will be very relieved if you don't show this."

Putting the wrap on the BBC and the BBC caved,

and said, "We're not transmitting it.

Too horrific for the medium of broadcasting."

- The BBC's relationship with "The War Game,"

to some extent, determined its capacity

and desire as an institution to engage

with the THREADS project.

- The sense of shame inside the BBC was amazing.

People felt they'd been betrayed.

The BBC had betrayed them by caving,

and it became a no-go area for the next like 10, 15 years.

You didn't even talk about it, but it was a kind of stain.

Fast-forward to the 1980s.

Something was, you know, brewing up,

and nobody still knew anything.

I thought I saw an opening.

- [Paul] We should look firstly at the options open

to a couple living in the North London suburb

of Finsbury Park.

Their street is between three and four miles

from St. Paul's, mainly Edwardian Terrace Houses.

Joy and Eric live at the southern end.

He's a musician.

She works for a bank.

What could they do for protection?

- There was a new BBC One series pop science called "QED."

I thought I'll dip a toe in the water.

I will make something which is ostensibly

like a consumer test, a witch guide,

which fallout shelter will protect you

the best for the money.

- [Paul] It's a shallow 18-inch trench

with built-up Earth walls held in place,

initially, with wooden doors.

These are later used for the roof.

(board clattering)

(hammer tapping)

At the end of the first day's digging,

the trench started to fill with water.

By the following morning, this had happened.

(birds chirping)

- Ah, damn.

- That raises the question, protect against what?

So it's a way of dealing with heat, blast,

and radiation in a very stylized way, but very powerful.

- [Paul] The booklet has another design

that's more resistant to blast.

It's a kit of parts obtained in peacetime

and assembled in a crisis.

It's designed for indoors, for a basement,

or ground-floor room.

(bricks clacking)

It's claimed that it will withstand

a two-story house collapsing on top of it.

(bomb blasts)

But although the shelter itself survives at three miles,

it's right in the center of the fire zone.

This is the area where almost everything

that will burn is on fire.

Even after the blast, the fires burn up available oxygen.

Inside your shelter,

you might not only be roasted but suffocate.

(fire gushing)

- The BBC transmitted it, it was apolitical,

it was totally scientific-based on scientific research,

and they got away with it.

You know, the Earth didn't open

and everybody fall into it, and it kind of relieved them.

And I said, "Okay, that's the first step.

What it doesn't do, deal with, there's the fourth thing,

you know, heat blast, radiation, trauma,

and social effect."

And you can only do that with a drama.

- Mick, at the time, was a producer

with the science and features.

He'd been working for, I think

about two and a half years on the whole notion

of nuclear winter.

- I spent a better part of a year traveling the UK

and the US, talking to 40 50 scientists, strategists,

agronomists, doctors.

. My memory

of my first meetings with Mick Jackson and the crew was

that they didn't have a working title at that time.

It was described as we want to do something equivalent

or similar to "The War Game."

Mick and others became more

and more familiar with that second phase of research,

which is what it takes to keep a society functioning.

That THREADS were being cut of a resilient society.

And so my memory is that to get

this THREADS theme clear in his mind became a big thing

later on.

- I took a lot of this stuff from Owen Greene's book.

What happens in the movie is closest to his scenario H.

He has various scenarios for attack patterns on Britain.

The entire resources

of the British Health Service could not cope

with this one bomb on Sheffield, came from him.

I know he got it from the BMA,

but that's a line that sticks in your head.

- As the THREADS project emerged, it became very important

that this was about ordinary impact on ordinary people.

People that would be taken as being ordinary by every,

all of the audience in the UK.

- I mentioned to somebody in passing,

"How would it be if we took the cast of Coronation Street

and put them into a nuclear war situation?"

And after five minutes, I thought, "That's a terrible idea."

You don't want people to see their friends going

through this.

You want 'em to see themselves going through this.

- Jackson felt that some affinity with, or representation

of everyday working class life was important

in terms of using that language of the soap opera,

that language of the kitchen sink to create that sense

of a bridge so that people could empathize

and see themselves and recognize

everyday people could recognize themselves in the characters

and situations evoked in THREADS.

And that's where Barry Hines comes in.

- There was no other choice but Barry Hines.

I admired the films he made with Ken Loach.

I thought this, "This is a guy who has a passion

for the ordinary person,

and he can give me a cast of characters,

and I can subject them to whatever awful, sadistic things

the laws of physics subjects them to

when there is a nuclear attack."

- When I took on this job, I mean,

I considered it very seriously.

I mean, it wasn't something I'd even thought

of writing about, and Mick approached me with the idea,

and I had a good hard think about it

because it's such a serious issue.

But because I do write about contemporary social issues,

I thought I ought to have a go at this

because it's the most important

of them all, and that's why I took it on.

- I think perhaps the idea of having

to research it in the way that he always did research stuff

for his books, probably filled him with horror.

- I wanted it to be unlike anything you ever saw before.

So, there's no music, no star actors, no heroic speeches,

no people emoting in front of the camera,

just ordinary life.

We asked the Government if we could go

and watch an exercise

where they train local council officials

on what to do if this happens.

So we went to what was then called the Home Defence College

in Yorkshire Easingwold.

- Good afternoon, gentlemen. - Afternoon.

- Hope you had a pleasant journey.

Will you please go into the second door on the right?

- Good afternoon. - Afternoon.

- Second door on the right, please.

(footsteps crunching)

Good afternoon.

- It was eye-opening.

Easingworld is an ex-country house.

Lovely setting, lawns, fields, woods.

You have a decent breakfast.

The accommodation is a little spartan,

but it's quite comfortable.

And you go in and do the exercise,

and then you break for lunch,

and then you go and do the exercise again.

In the evening, you retire to the bar, and talk about it

and have a drink, and nothing like it would be.

There's no kind of stench of the mobile toilets.

There's no worry about leaving your wife

and kids behind while you are down.

None of that stress, it's totally artificial.

- I was able to observe what happened at firsthand,

you know, as a research and as a writer,

just to see how it worked.

And so, I was able to use all that information

in the bunker scenes, but I think we felt

that it was just a little...

They were a little bit optimistic.

- I wanted Barry to go into that

with the knowledge of people and human nature.

And what I would do is add this other element,

which was the voice of Paul Vaughan,

who does BBC narration on science documentaries.

- [Paul] In an urban society, everything connects.

Each person's needs are fed by the skills of many others.

Our lives are woven together in a fabric.

- It seemed to bury the most abominable thing to do.

And he and I fought about it the whole time.

- [Paul] Britain has emergency plans for war.

If Central Government should ever fail,

power can be transferred instead to a system

of local officials dispersed across the country.

- That voice is relentless.

It's saying, "This is what a nuclear weapon will do.

This is what this temperature will do.

This is what this amount of blast will do.

This is what breaks down.

This is what you don't have there anymore."

All that stuff.

It was a tempestuous relationship in a good way.

At one point, I think we were the two

of us arguing in the lobby

of a hotel about a particular scene

and what should happen in it,

and shouting at each other.

And eventually, the manager of the hotel came to us

and said, very tactfully,

"Gentlemen, I assume you were rehearsing a scene,

but the other clients are kind of objecting to the shouting.

Could you keep it down?" (laughs)

The main idea that Barry

and I came up with was, this wouldn't be just the attack

and the day after to coin a phrase.

It would be what happens after that and after that,

and after that, because it goes on, it doesn't stop.

- We got the go-ahead to start researching

and developing the project through Mick Rhodes,

as Head of Science and Features.

I doubt very much that he had any conversations

with anybody else above him.

I don't think they had an inkling

that we were making a program called THREADS.

I remember many production meetings with me saying,

"We still don't have enough money to make it."

And one of the decisions I did was to say to Mick,

"We're not gonna make it out of London."

So I had some very early discussions with BBC Bristol.

Bristol turned out to be a little bit of inspiration for us

because there was more flexibility

with how things were done.

- As a member of the BBC Makeup Department

at that point, I was just told I was gonna be doing it.

I was just allocated to it.

- I heard about this show called THREADS, so I asked

to be considered for it,

and I went to be interviewed by Mick Jackson,

and I was terribly enthusiastic,

and I was sort of, "Well, I'm an ex-boy scout, so I know

how to do bonfires and hunting and shooting and fishing."

And he said, "No, it's none of that.

There is no happy ending in this."

- With the team assembled, obviously,

we made some original kind of overtures

to Sheffield City Council.

- The emergence of the idea

of filming THREADS in Sheffield came

as something as a surprise.

This wasn't something we went out to seek.

- I didn't show anybody on the council the script,

and would not show 'em.

I said, "Trust me, I'm gonna get this right,

but I need your help.

I need loads of extras to appear in the crowd scenes.

I need access to something we can destroy

and turn into ruins, all kinds of other stuff.

Will you help us?"

And they trusted me.

- My memories of it are, "Yes, very welcome.

Please come to us, we'll cooperate in any way we can.

We'll make facilities available,

and by all means, film in the City Center."

- There was a council estate

that was clue to be demolished.

I said, "No, don't demolish it.

Let us do that for you. (laughs)

And you could clear away the ruins afterwards."

- They were literally in the process

of pulling them all down.

And I think we were, at that point,

some weeks away from filming,

so we made a request for them

to stop pulling down the back-to-backs.

- It's perverse, really,

because promoting your city by making it the center

of a nuclear holocaust is not my idea, now,

of a particularly good way of selling the city.

- And I was the first person

that Mick Jackson saw for the part.

It was the only time I've ever said to a director,

"I would really like a part in this,

regardless of what that part may be."

Because I knew that the content would be close

to my heart, I suppose.

- I was doing a play at the Royal Court, ironically,

the play was set in Sheffield.

I was playing a young Sheffield lad,

obviously, somebody from THREADS must have seen it.

And I got this call from my agent saying

they were interested in me for a role

in this drama documentary called THREADS.

And I was like, "Really?

A drama documentary?"

I'm visiting things like, you know,

a reenactment on "Crime Watch"

or something, you know, something terrible. (laughs)

I don't wanna do that, thank you very much.

Of course, the clincher, when he sent me the script

before I met them, was written by Barry Hines.

- I first worked with Barry when Ken Loach came to Sheffield

to do two films called "The Price of Coal."

- Come on, you said you're gonna be late.

(door thuds)

- Here, cut these.

Beautiful, hey, love? - (indistinct) yeah.

Put 'em on the sink, and I'll see to 'em after.

(cutlery clacking)

- He didn't want proper actors,

and he didn't want just people from the street.

He wanted club acts, and I was a club act, I was a singer.

- Barry Hines, to me, was godlike.

The film "Kes" was just the most wonderful film.

It was like a rites of passage film

for any Yorkshire kid.

(light flute music)

- That prefect's looking all over the school for you.

- Well, I went out there, sir, for a breath of fresh air.

- And where are you going now?

- Employment Office, sir- - Field interview?

Well, get off then, lad.

And God help your future employer.

(footsteps crunching) (light flute music)

- [Paul] What makes Billy Casper the way he is?

What's wrong with the boy?

(light flute music)

Perhaps, perhaps it's a secret,

a secret shared only with Kes.

(light flute music)

- I never auditioned.

I was just asked if I would do the part of Mrs. Kemp.

So, I think Barry just wanted me.

- Once I got over the fact

that halfway through the character was no longer speaking,

(laughs) that was like,

but apart from that I'm like, "This is great.

This is really good.

I'd like to meet them very much for this."

- As always with Barry,

he wrote about ordinary people in extraordinary times.

And Ruth, the character, was somebody that everybody went

to school with.

She was everybody's friend, sister, daughter,

rather than hold you at arm's length

as somebody who's watching it, it draws you in

because all of those characters are people that we know.

And that's what I think made THREADS so visceral.

- As I started to prep THREADS,

the BBC Library got hold of a book,

which had photographs in it that were taken

after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

So the minute you start looking at something like that,

you realize how horrific it was.

- [Paul] This is Hiroshima.

The date, August the 6th, 1945.

A single Superfortress flying at 30,000 feet,

approaches the town shortly after 8:00 AM.

(plane whooshing and droning)

(bomb blasts and rumbles)

- What I learned was that, in fact, your chance

of survival was extremely high,

and you would live,

and you would live for quite a long time,

and die rather a painful, nasty death.

- I tried to fill it with as many images

that they wouldn't forget as I could.

The melting milk bottles, the woman in the ruins

with a dead baby, all those kinds of things.

Every time some politician talks about fire and fury,

and giving a bloody nose strike,

or escalating to deescalate, all that jargon

of strategists and so on.

I want them and the people who elect them

to have these images that instantly pop into your head,

and say, "Whoa, think about it.

Back off, back off."

(eerie music)

- I remember basically putting out a call for anybody

who was interested in.

We were inundated

with people wanting to come and be part of the film.

- I remember being with my friends at school,

and us becoming aware that there was going

to be a film made in the city.

- I'd seen an advert in the papers,

but it said local equity extras.

And I thought, "Oh, no chance."

And then my friend said,

"Oh, there's an advert "Job Center."

They're wanting ordinary extras."

They're gonna be signing people up

to be extras at the Sheffield City Hall.

If you go down on Saturday morning.

- I remember it was underneath the City Hall.

We went around the back, and everyone went underneath,

and there were big sort of queues,

and then they sort of sectioned people out,

and said, "Do you wanna be in this,

and do you wanna be in that?

- We had them on actually, a very few number of days.

There was crowds at the hospital and the prison scenes.

Then there was a crowd up on The Moor and...

- The very qualities I think Barry Hines brought

to his writing are the qualities I found

in the people in Sheffield, not surprisingly,

I mean, he grew up in Hoyland, which is very nearby.

He knew these people, but everybody was so nice,

and I think the responsibility, I think everybody felt,

even the extras, especially the extras,

was to get this right.

(typewriter clacking)

- [Anchor] The clay has been marked

by a number of demonstrations up

and down the country, reflecting support for and against

the Government's decision to reinforce Europe

- Marching down The Moor, which was also shown on the...

When they blowing it up The Moor being

like the pedestrian street of Sheffield.

- My memory is that we were to chant "Jobs not bombs.

Peace not war."

- Everybody's shouting, top of their voices,

and just marching down the street,

and then you're meeting the actors,

just ordinary folk like us.

- We saw crowds of people, and they had banners,

and I thought, "Oh, this is the place,

obviously, this is where we're meeting up."

- We were all on the steps facing the City Hall

and chanting.

- They were supposed to be shouting about "Ban the bomb,"

But what did they do?

- Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, out, out, out. (laughs)

Everybody got behind it because we all felt it

really deeply at the time.

The guy with the megaphone was saying,

"You can't say that."

- I've been in protests since then in my life,

and they always take me back in a way into that scene.

- Well, our son wanted to be involved.

He wanted to be an actor, and he nagged

and nagged and nagged and nagged,

and said, "Look, you know, can you take us down?"

- My memory of going to be in the film was

that it was all my dad's idea.

- I had no intentions of being on screen at all. (laughs)

- When I talk to my family, they say it was me begging

to go down and be in the film.

- And they said to me, "Right, put this badge on.

You're a trade union leader,

but you're not allowed to speak, so you're not in equity.

So just nod your head, and look good,

and stand next to this lady."

- And at worst, total annihilation,

you cannot win a nuclear war.

(people shouting)

- The extras in the crowd scenes, the anti-war rally,

where the woman is saying, "You cannot win a nuclear war,"

they got so carried away.

They forgot that the cops who come in to try

and arrest someone are not real cops.

They're actors with Bobby's hats on.

So they're really lying into them.

We had to say, "Stop, stop, stop,

don't hurt them for real." (laughs)

(everybody shouting)

- That's what'll destroy this, man.

- But he's still trying to avert disaster.

- I remember, two crowds of people running at each other

and fighting and kicking each other.

- It wasn't intimidating for me

'cause I was up on the steps,

but if you were in the crowd, yeah,

there was a lot of pushing and shoving.

You've got to remember, they were all six-foot tall

(laughs) I was down here, so I was looking up at everybody.

- I could see him, but yeah, he was left

of his own abandoned down there. (laughs)

(people shouting)

- Please do- - I set up one

of the scenes outside City Hall.

- He said, "Cook, cook, can anyone hear that noise?"

What noise, and I can hear. (imitates drum beating)

- [Protestor] Oil refineries will have been destroyed.

All our water would've been polluted.

The soil would've been irradiating.

Farm stock would be dead, diseased, or dying.

- Fortuitously, the Salvation Army Band marched past.

So they became a sort of integral part

of that scene actually, which was just one

of those joyous moments.

We couldn't have afforded to have paid for a band.

- After the film, them doing the speeches on the steps,

he said, "Right, stop, cut, we..."

And then he moved some of the crowds,

and the cameras went down to lower down on the steps,

where there was a guy...

(people shouting)

- I think that was a really nice moment in the film

because it brings home the reality

of people are gonna have to survive after the bomb.

This is gonna happen.

(typewriter clacking)

- I was 13 years old, I was just hanging around on The Moor,

as I did as a teenager, just doing a bit of wandering

around shops and saw this film crew.

- Me and two of my friends decided

after school to get on the bus and just go into town.

- The brief from the chat was just get in there

and do a bit of pushing and shoving.

You get in there, get yourself as close to it,

and we'll take it from there.

- And we're just walking up The Moor, and somebody said,

"Would you like to be in a television program?"

- [Paul] The most widespread danger is fallout.

(siren wailing)

- We're all teenagers, we like, "Oh, yes."

Not realizing what it was for.

We stood in front of a shop window,

and we're watching the television screens.

We did know about THREADS beforehand

because everybody in the school had been talking about it.

- It makes you realize that if something like that were

to happen, we're all going,

trying to get us money our bank,

it's gonna be worthless anyway.

It's absolutely no point.

What you wanna be doing is these, as others did,

emptying shelves in local supermarket

for your necessities.

You know, getting your bread

and your candles or whatever you're gonna need.

- Hey, you haven't paid for them things!

(trolley rattles) (footsteps clomping)

- [Reporter] In response to today's news of the outbreak

of hostilities between vessels of the United States

and Soviet Navies, a special session

of Parliament has this evening passed

an Emergency Powers Act.

(typewriter clacking)

(siren wailing)

- Our daughter Lisa, who was about 18 months old

at the time, she was in a pushchair,

and there was a few takes,

and after one of the early ones, I whipped her out

of the pushchair, and the pushchair went sort

of spinning on its own wheels, and then fell over.

So by the time everybody had scarped the pushchair

I was left lying there.

And I thought, "Oh, that's got a certain sort of poignancy

to it, hasn't it now?"

(vehicles drones)

- My parents were quite political, so they took me to a lot

of protests, a lot of rallies.

So I think I was quite used to that kind of atmosphere.

- Some people were getting hold of the closed shutters.

- We went rattling these grids

and set an alarm off, which I suppose was quite atmospheric,

but maybe not what the filmmakers wanted. (laughs)

(people screaming) (alarms ringing)

(siren wailing)

That sort of gave you the sense of panic.

So then the kids did start running in a panic.

- I used to have this kind of, it was almost

like a snazzy blazer with green and red stripes on it.

I was wearing that, so it does stand out a little bit.

- I can still physically remember the lying down really cold

on the ground for ages and ages.

People would be coming around, "Could you just dive more?

Could you twitch more?

Could you kind of jerk more?"

- A scene where a guy is driving the car,

the bomb goes off, he's blinded, and drives into a wall.

In the script, he was meant to drive into a lamppost

and the car missed the lamppost, hit the back wall,

went through the garden,

and actually landed in the garden of the next house.

Later that day, someone remarked,

"Good job, you didn't hit the lamppost.

There was 10,000 volts going through it."

(wheels screeching) (people shouting)

(wall smashing)

- Bloody Hell.

- We'd got a sheet, at some point, which said, "Oh, we go

to this place, go to this place at this time and this time."

But I thought, "Well, if I'm gonna go in, I'm gonna go in.

I want all the experiences."

- They did random shots of everybody,

and obviously, the special effects were put on afterwards,

and then the lady peeing herself.

- Out of everything,

that was the only thing that stood out,

seeing that woman pee herself.

- Anne Sellors weeing down her shoe. (laughs)

- It was obviously one of the kind

of pre-thought ideas Mick had about how he was going

to depict the moment the bomb goes off.

(footsteps shuffling)

(people shouting and screaming)

(bomb blasts)

- The director shouted through a megaphone,

"Does anyone mind if we'd wet their trousers,

and we'll give them a free pair of trousers."

- When they were doing it,

they couldn't get it to work properly.

She had some sort of bag and had to squeeze,

or there was someone behind me that squeezed,

and they did it twice.

And the director was getting a bit miffed

'cause it wasn't working properly.

The language got a bit fruity, and we only need one shot,

just do it right.

- Then, she was like taken away to a minivan

to be given her free pair of trousers.

My memory is that she came back, and she was really made up

because of Marks & Spencer's trousers she got for free.

(ominous music)

- My name's Luke Sellors, and my mom was Anne Sellors.

I remember getting there and kind of being quite excited

because there was just loads of people milling around.

But then when the kind of the shooting started,

I remember a look of terror on my mom's face,

and kind of started to get really spooked out by it.

I remember the sirens as well quite vividly,

but then it was just kind of scattering,

and everybody just running,

and me just looking around,

almost going, "What is going on?"

(people shouting) (siren wailing)

(alarms ringing)

(people screaming)

It was weird to discover

that your mom's been put down on someone

that had wet herself.

I only became aware of it after my mom had passed

because we were looking up for some obituaries online,

and all of a sudden, just stumbled across my mom's name next

to the woman that had peed herself,

where clearly, it's not her.

The shot of the woman

before the scene does look fairly similar

to my mom in terms of similar height, similar size,

similar curly hair, and maybe they just put two

and two together, and thought it was Anne Sellors

when in fact, it wasn't.

She wasn't someone that took life too seriously,

and she certainly didn't take herself too seriously.

So she'd have probably had a giggle about it

rather than being offended.

My mom would've seen the funny side to it.

(fire gushing) (wind whooshing)

- I received a telephone call,

"Do you wanna help with this film?"

"What's it about?"

"Atomic attack," "Alright, yeah, fair enough." (laughs)

- We all turned up, down at the Owlerton area,

and crewed a fire engine for putting the set out, basically.

They used special gels for the fire,

like a foam.

- I can remember the milk float,

they had some colored water coming out.

I'm making it like it had been blown up.

- There were body parts stuffed about in the rubble,

which was quite gruesome,

but you know, that's what you expect.

We were all laughing 'cause we said, "We're the only fireman

that can put an Armageddon out." (laughs)

- I remember something specific about the special effects

because they used a pit prop against a wall in the kitchen,

one of the houses, and there was an actress in there

under a door, and he blew the wall out.

And to film from the interior, the explosion,

they cut a hole in the passageway in the house.

And so, there was an almighty bang,

and the wall exploded outwards.

(bomb blasts) (windows shatters)

(fire gushing)

Cameraman shot backwards down the passageway,

and then everybody rushed to rescue the camera. (laughs)

- I do remember the scene where the husband

and myself had to go out after the bomb,

and we're scrambling in all this bricks,

and there was fire all over.

And I said to director, "(indecipherable), you know,

this looks a bit dangerous to me."

And then he just went,

"Hey," and these two firemen popped a puppet wall

or football with hosepipes ready. (laughs)

- And I did come across a photograph

actually, of me wearing a mask,

because obviously, there was so much grit

and muck in the air.

- We were letting off a huge amount

of explosions and black dust.

And I remember in the middle

of filming one particular sequence,

one of the production team came up to me

and said, "I think we've got a problem.

A couple of guys here from the Environment Agency,

they said, 'We want you to stop filming.'

I said, "You can't.

Of course, we're in the middle of this production,

and David Blunkett said it's fine.

So I dunno what your problem is."

We did actually get fined a few weeks later.

(fire gushing) (people shouting)

- [Director] Somebody told me you were paid in sandwiches.

- (laughs) Well, we were open to get paid in food. (laughs)

- The lady came to us and said,

"Unfortunately, we've not catered for you.

There's no food left.

Would you like to get some fish and chips?"

There were four of us.

It's 1984, she says, we said, "Yeah."

She said, "Here's a 20-pound note, is that enough?"

I said, "Yeah, it is."

20 pound would've bought a lot of fish and chips in 1984.

(doors squeaking and rattling)

(truck beeps) (operator vocalizing)

- It was quite an eye-opener.

It was very, very realistic.

You were concerned that this could have,

this act could actually happen.

You know, the nuclear holocaust,

but you just put it to your back of your mind.

(typewriter clacking)

- All those people called for the following scenes.

Detention Center, the Food Depot, Hospital, and refugees.

"Please come dressed in your oldest and tattiest clothes,

and be prepared to be dirtied!

Also, please make sure that you do not wear yellow, red,

or white clothes.

Finally, for those involved in the above scenes,

please do not wear makeup,

do not have your hair smartly done, in brackets,

men, several days' stubble would help us to create

the right picture.

In fact, come as badly-looking as you dare, or worse!"

(people shouting)

- It said, "We want somebody to climb on the fence,

climb over to try and loot the food depot."

Nobody volunteered.

"|'ll do it."

And then, I jumped up, climbed over the fence quickly.

Well, I was nimble in them days.

I was real fit. (laughs)

(people shouting)

(gun fires)

- Come round. (indistinct)

(people shouting)

(gun fires) (People screaming)

- "Have you got your equity card?" (indistinct)

I said, "I'm not in inequity."

"Oh, can't use it."

I said, "What?" I said, there's all these people in equity

and they won't do it.

And I've done it, and I'm doing it for free."

(people shouting and screaming)

It was disappointing because I died gracefully. (laughs)

(footsteps crunching) (eerie music)

(people chattering)

- The filming started very early, and I think it may be

before the buses, so I remember we walked across the city

to get to Infirmary Road.

So it was almost like walking into the past as well,

'cause the infirmary just was kind of the shell

of what it obviously must have been.

- There were basically three of us

on the program all the time,

and I think I was allowed three more people

on the extra stays.

(chuckles) That was the call sheet from Hell.

- They must have been told to turn up in clothing,

which looked a little bit shabby,

and that's all I had anyway, so that was kind of handy.

- The makeup was absolutely amazing, it really was.

(tense music)

- The grotesque makeup and the feeling of desperation,

imagining if you were walking up to the hospital.

- I didn't leave set, and I had in my hands brown powder

and a tin of hair like a brown.

And basically, I tried to dress to camera.

- The makeup lady, actually, she wouldn't leave me alone.

She was constantly trimmin' bran flakes on me. (laughs)

The makeup was all edible.

I do remember that they used

to put it right over my mouth, and I had a wig as well.

The burnt wig, and all this side of my face, was supposed

to be burned.

When I were hungry,

I just used to whip a few off, and eat them. (laughs)

They wouldn't allow me in the bus

where they were serving the dinner

because I was gonna scare everybody.

- The first-aiders came up and did a lot of the bandaging.

I sent a message back from set to say,

"We want more wounds, we want more blood,

and guts, basically.

All the blood and guts have been bandaged

by these well-meaning people. (laughs)

So blood then had

to get slapped onto bandages and stuff.

(people screaming)

(people shouting)

- We were pushed into the operating theaters

where my daughter was in there.

They did all sorts of things to her,

like put skin on the face where it's hanging off.

Her clothes were ripped, and there was blood all over her.

And I walked into the hospital ground as we were going in,

and she's coming towards me,

obviously thinking I could recognize her,

and I didn't recognize her at all.

It was only when she smiled that I recognized her.

They poured vegetable soup to make her look

as if they'd been sick from the radiation.

She had to roll her hair in it,

and her head in it, so that it was all over.

When she got home, she smelled horrible. (laughs)

We were told that there would be open sores

and things like that, so we put blood on and wrapped

to dirty bandages, and their faces looked burnt.

Eventually, we just walked around and had to come out

because we felt so ill.

- As we were walking past,

they were already pouring blood outta canisters

onto the floor and around.

And so, it already felt a bit grim.

- They did say when we first got there that all the actors,

"I want you to go down to the costume change,

the cabins down the bottom,

and all the extras to the left,

follow that person over there."

And I said to my girlfriend, "Well, should we go down

to the actor's area?"

She says, "Oh, we can't."

I said, "Come on, let's go down."

So I walked up, and this woman was greeted people

and said, "Name, please."

Looked at a clipboard.

I gave him a name, "David Wilson-Wolfe."

She looked and said, "Hmm, doesn't seem to be on here."

And she looked at me, and said,

"Let me put it on for you."

She said, "Come in, let's get you made up."

And I had this big scar here,

and she put this ragged old coat on me, brown coat.

And then, later that clay, she said,

"Right, we're filming the...

Going into the Infirmary scene.

You, you're standing over here."

I think my girlfriend was pushed back a bit,

which is a good idea of mine.

And I was literally, as you see the camera shot,

I was to the side of her here.

(people shouting)

I think that was my main scene, you know,

I was so excited just to see myself

on camera, later on.

(survivor shouts)

(people squirming)

- He said to call out for loved ones or something.

We thought for a laugh, we'd call out

for the lad we shared the house with, called Bods.

- You! - Bods!

- Did you hear that?

- You can hear people saying "Bods."

- Could you hear that?

I mean, it's the way we said, "Bods."

"You reckon?"

"Oh, I hope so."

(people shouting)

- Help, please.

Help me!

- You can hear it.

(people shouting)

- I think it is.

I think it is. (laughs)

(survivor coughs) (people chattering)

- After the filming that day, my mate, he got a bandage

around his head and looking terrible.

He went on to a local newspaper shop to get his paper

and (indecipheral), "Oh my God, what's wrong?

What's happened to you?"

"Oh, I mean, I'm in this production

of THREADS at Sheffield," he says,

"Is it filming?" (laughs)

- Everyone had to get into the tennis courts,

and we had the traffic warden with his face bandaged up.

- We were supposed to be shouting and screaming

and to get letters outta this tennis court.

And my husband was in that,

in the film, you can hear him shout, "You bastards."

(people shouting)

Bastards!

(people shouting)

He didn't want to appear in it.

I think we talked him into it, really.

When he got in this tennis court, and we were doing all the shouting,

I think he quite enjoyed that. (laughs)

- Here I have a bit of plastic

or rubber barbed wire.

This was used at the detention center on the tennis courts.

The barbed wire never hurt me one bit. (laughs)

- [Director] How did you get...

Oh yeah, how did you get that?

- I nicked it. (laughs)

(eerie music)

- I took a picture behind the cage,

which was, to me, very poignant to see this guy.

He stood out more than the Army guys.

(eerie music)

- I remember the "Radio Times" cover, that's kind

of become the famous picture, hasn't it now,

of the traffic warden with the bandage on his face,

and it's almost like a horror film kind

of image in a way, for me.

- That image is one of the most enduring film images

from that film, and nobody knows who he was.

- I think the reason it is such a lasting thing is

because that was dropping onto people's doormats

and it made them confront the topic.

And that's obviously quite a bold choice

by the BBC back in the day

to put that on the front cover.

- The amount of times that we're at horror conventions

and there's people dressed as the traffic warden.

- It's funny how that "Radio Times" image is, just lingers.

I would love to know who plays the traffic warden.

- Star, the star of the show.

- Was he a supporting artist, I'm assuming?

- It's a very frightening image.

It's a bit CLOCKWORK ORANGE-y, I think.

- I sat next to him when he was bandaged.

- I can see his face now, and from the hospital scene

when he got bandages around his head.

- [Director] You saw him without the bandages on, didn't you?

- I saw him without the bandages on, yeah, yeah. (laughs)

- I read rumors, it was Kenneth Branagh,

and when I looked at the picture of the traffic warden

and the bottom half of the face,

he does look like Kenneth Branagh.

So I can see why people might think that.

- I think if I was 14, 15, 15 at the time of this,

that gentleman would probably be passed by now.

Let's hope he is still alive.

Let's hope he sees this film

and says, "|'m here!" You should have a number.

Does anyone know who played him at the bottom of it?

Please contact us."

- Is it important to demystify that

or is it just keep him as the nightmare figure?

You know that you never find out who he is

because I think that's actually quite interesting.

Never finding out who he is.

- [Director] I have a suspicion we're not going to find out

who he is, but we're going to try.

- Yeah.

(typewriter clacking)

(footsteps shuffling) (wind whooshing)

- A growing exodus from cities in search of food.

- It was snowing light snow, it was freezing.

- When we were out at Curbar Edge, we all had to sort

of get into line of people.

- There was two or three coaches that took us,

it was probably 15, 20 minutes, half-an-hour drive.

- When the director came,

and the actors, I remember him saying, "Now remember,

you've walked, come all the way from Sheffield,

and you are cold."

We were absolutely freezing cold, so we didn't really need

to act that.

- There's another lady in that called Maureen,

who, she was in our dramatic society.

She was a good actress,

and I saw her up front to this crowd,

the director sort of said, "What we want you

to do is go out and you're looking for food,

and you're desperate for this, generally, things like that."

So, he said, "Action."

And the next thing I could see this Maureen in front

of me at the front, and someone was eating some cabbage

or some vegetable or something like that.

And she went up to him, and shook him outta the way,

and grabbed the cabbage off, and said, "Gimme that food.

I'm starving, you know, I've got little stuff."

And next thing, "Cut."

And this cut, and they're all go,

next thing he's leading her away,

and she ended up right at the back.

- And then, he did say, "Well, I want some of you

or one of you over there to fall to the ground."

And I went, doof, (laughs) I just dropped down to the floor.

Okay, right, not yet, get back up.

- I said, "Right, you're gonna walk across The Moor,

a government helicopter will fly over,

so we want you to gesticulate wildly

and shout at the helicopter.

There's no helicopter.

But when I shout, that's when the helicopter's coming over."

'Cause they couldn't afford a helicopter to fly over.

They alert us, so okay, the helicopter's over there.

So en masse, everybody starts going, "fuck off." (laughs)

Cut, right, okay, "No swearing."

- That was the most exciting bit.

Yeah, telling the helicopter to fuck off, (laughs)

But we didn't, we were only 12. (laughs)

How I got involved with THREADS was

my mom had a CB Citizens Band Radio,

you know, like 19 and whatever,

and you talk to people with a little clicky, handheld mics.

So she was talking to someone on there,

who said he was going to be an extra

in the film called THREADS, and Mom

and him decided that it'd be really cool if I went as well.

I was like, "Yeah, that sounds interesting."

From Mom talking to him on the radio the day

before the CB Radio, to the next clay,

me going off with a complete stranger at 11 years old.

That's normal. (laughs)

Lots of walking past cameras,

walking past people vomiting,

and then we went to a farmer's field to do some bits

where they wanted people just picking bales up

and moving things around.

I was a really small child trying to pull these bales of hay

around the field, and it was just embarrassing.

And he thought there'd still be wheat

or something in the field.

So what they did is got a wooden block drilled into it

and put loads of just bits of wheat in it

to make it look like there was something there.

And then the director came over

and asked me if I'd like to do a starring piece.

- He came home actually, full of it, he was buzzing, really.

And he said, "|t's been a great day,

but I have to tell you one thing, Mom,

and you won't like it.

I die in this film."

(wind whooshing and whistling)

- [Paul] The first winter.

(wind whooshing and whistling)

The stresses of hypothermia, epidemic,

and radiation fall heavily on the very young

and the old, their protective layers of flesh are thinner.

- I'm on IMDb as Dead Boy Under Gate

because my brother thought it was hilarious

that I was in there.

And when people ask me about it, I would just say,

"Oh, yeah, I was the dead boy under the gate."

So I'm on IMDb now.

I've not changed it, and I won't,

'cause it's quite nice really.

- There was one scene in the movie

where Bob, Jimmy's friend, meets up accidentally

with Ruth in a feeding center.

The idea was that massive crowds

of people being fed, you know, soup and whatever,

like a hunk of bread, and they meet up by accident.

And this scene, we couldn't fit it into the schedule

and it kept slipping to the next day and the next day.

Finally, we got to the last day of shooting.

We still hadn't shot this scene.

It's a key scene.

And I said, "Oh my God, what are we gonna do?

We've got nowhere we can shoot it.

We've used all the locations,

we've sent all the extras home, we've sent most

of the cast home, we've only got the two

of them and eight extras.

What do we do?"

So we had a brainwave of putting a table

just underneath the camera, putting a soup bowl in it.

So you just saw pairs of hands.

So the foreground is people's hands coming

with like a raffle ticket that's been issued,

handing that over, and soup is poured in.

Next one, and they go round behind the camera

and then the next one comes in again and again.

(people munching) (footsteps shuffling)

- [Announcer] This is the final warning.

(announcer indistinct vocalizing)

- Ruth. (metal clacking)

It is Ruth, isn't it? (cutlery clacking)

(footsteps shuffling)

I'm Bob, Jimmy's friend.

(footsteps shuffling) (cutlery clacking)

(announcer indistinct vocalizing)

We met once or twice, remember?

- There weren't thousands of people there,

but you get the sense

because of our improvisation that there were,

and it works.

I took a camera with me.

A little pocket camera.

So I could get some scenes of my own on THREADS.

And I went round taking pictures of extras

and Barry, Curbar Edge, had some copies made,

and I sent them to Barry.

I got this nice letter.

"Dear Stephen, thank you for your letter

and the photocopies of the photographs.

The filming has ended now,

and Mick Jackson has already started editing.

It should be finished by late summer.

I don't know when it will go out,

but we are hoping for an autumn transmission date.

Thank you for your help in making the film.

The scenes involving the volunteers should be

really moving and dramatic.

Everybody connected with it, put all they'd got into it,

and I think all the hard work will bear fruit in the end.

Best wishes, yours sincerely, Barry Hines."

- The film certainly had a psychological effect

on all of production.

We dealt with it with quite sick humor.

I had three human dummies made up

by the special effects team that were very intricate,

and they were used for scenes in the fire.

I do remember sticking the bodies into the back

of the Ford Cortina that Jimmy drove,

and driving it through Sheffield,

and stopping at traffic lights.

(vehicle droning) (fire gushing)

(wind howling)

- There was a little bit of anxiety about TH READS,

and I kind of vaguely remember at the back of my mind,

one or two excuses that were being looked at

by the middle editorial management about postponing it

or maybe even canceling it.

They were getting nervous.

Aubrey Singer, who was the managing director

of BBC television went apoplectic when he found out

that THREADS was being made

because Peter Watkins, THE WAR GAME,

had never been shown on the BBC.

So he was jumping up and down

and saying, "Well, why are we making WAR GAME, Mark I|?"

I remember very clearly that the transmission was going

to be August the 6th,

which as it happened, was the 39th anniversary of Hiroshima.

In those days, the summer months,

which included August, were a graveyard for programs,

particularly new programs

because there was no one around to see it.

If you made a program that you wanted the world to see,

it would've been from September onwards.

Quite clearly, to my mind, the BBC wanted to bury it.

A guy called Brian Wenham, who was the Director

of Television at the BBC, sort of came to the rescue

and said, "Hang on, what are you guys doing?

Why is this program going out in August

and not in September?"

Which would've been the very first week of a new schedule.

The other guy that was involved was Graham McDonald,

who was the BBC Two controller,

whose channel THREADS was going to go out on.

I remember Graham coming to the cutting room

and being shown the final cut.

I've never seen anyone so white in my life.

(eerie music)

- You may remember that earlier this year,

you were kind enough to help us

when we were shooting our film drama,

THREADS, in Sheffield.

(eerie music)

The program is now complete and ready for transmission.

As a way of expressing our gratitude to the hundreds

of volunteers, like yourself, who took part,

we are proposing to hold a private screening

of the film in Sheffield itself.

We'd be delighted if you were able to come along.

Without your help, the film could not have been made."

(eerie music)

"The film will be shown on Sunday,

the 23rd of September at the top-ranked suite,

and the screening will begin at 1 1 :30 AM sharp."

(eerie music)

'The film lasts for one hour and 55 minutes

and will be followed by a buffet lunch

and the chance to meet some of the members of the cast.

The film will be televised nationally that evening.

Please bring the enclosed invitation with you.

Important, because of its subject matter,

THREADS inevitably contains some scenes

which are distressing and which might upset young children."

(eerie music)

- I first saw the film when I was invited to the premiere,

which was a big dance hall in Sheffield Town Center.

- I was living in London, my dad was up in Yorkshire,

and I said, Dad, would you like to come with me?

They're showing this film I've just done, THREADS,

in a kind of ballroom in Sheffield,"

and they were showing, I thought it was brilliant

because they were showing it for all the good people

of Sheffield who'd been a massive, massive part of the film.

- I was very pleased that we had a way of saying thank you

to all these people, and say, you know, "Come have drinks

and whatnot, and watch what your efforts contributed to."

(birds chirping)

(gentle music)

- We were all excited,

and you know, thinking, "Oh, we're in this film

and we're gonna see it, and there's all this and that."

- I've never been to a film preview before.

It's like quite a privilege.

- Filled the room, camera went all over the place,

all news reporters interviewing everybody.

- CNN were there.

And they had a guy who's practicing this line

over and over again, "Here, today in Sheffield,

an extraordinary film is gonna be shown."

- It was a very jolly occasion at the time.

We sort of walked in, saw some friends there, there were drinks,

snacks, but that all changed when we started

to watch the film.

(tense music)

- I don't know how this filming went, I don't know

what else was in this film other than the ones I was in.

And although there were little shocking points within that,

which you know, changed my life in one respect,

I didn't know what it was like.

So I was expecting all sorts.

- There were total silence while we were watching it,

and you could hear people crying.

And I had to get up and actually walked to, back of room

and there were a big column, and I got behind that

because I was sobbing my heart out.

- Sometimes it was really quiet,

and then other times, there was sort of outbursts.

There could either be people laughing

'cause something struck them as funny,

or kind of gasps as well.

- There was one clip where they showed

the egg box being blown up, which was a town hall extension,

but it was a nightmare to people in Sheffield

because it was an ugly building, and that exploded.

There was a big cheer in the audience.

(building blasts) (people screaming)

- When it ended...

When it ended, there was just total silence.

It was so frightening.

Nobody spoke for ages

because it had just knocked us all for six, really.

(survivor panting) (wind whooshing)

(no audio)

- You could just feel the tension in the theater.

Nobody was making any sounds apart from the sobbing.

- And I think people didn't know how to react at all.

Didn't know what to say.

- Even gave me heebie-jeebies because I...

I'd hate to go through it, live it for real.

- It just didn't seem like anything else I'd clone.

It seemed like I was watching reality.

- For the first time, they saw the whole picture

and they saw their city reduced to this at the end.

It was awful.

- This is a film that shows you is you're fucked

if the bomb goes off.

Don't listen to any of that stupid advice.

It's obviously from this film you should get rid

of your nuclear weapons.

And in some ways, that was just a vindication,

and therefore, I don't think I felt the actual effect.

(kids sobbing)

(bomb droning)

- Jesus Christ, they've done it.

(people shouting)

(people shouting)

They've done it.

- They put out sandwiches just like,

almost like probably, you cured up ham sandwiches and things,

and I noticed after the film had been screened,

and speeches had been clone,

and people got up like to have the sandwiches,

I remember thinking, "Oh, it's quite a lot left over there,"

and I thought, "|'ll have them for later."

So I just grabbed a load, shoved them into me pockets,

and as I was walking out,

they started falling out my pockets,

and I felt that like, "Oh, N."

- I remember the people from up north, the second

the film finishes, there's this microphone under my nose,

and that was the wrong time to do that. (laughs)

They should have waited a bit. (laughs)

I've got five children,

and the thought of them suffering

in that such a manner,

now it's just, what can you say?

I think there's a relief, it was over,

but I was definitely crying.

I don't cry often, but I did that clay.

(eerie music)

- We start tonight with the advent of a nuclear war itself.

What would happen if Britain came under a nuclear attack?

How would ordinary people survive the impact of the blast

and the conditions that scientists say would result

from a nuclear exchange?

(eerie music)

- We were kind of excited because my friends were

all saying, "Oh, let's see if we can find ourselves

in the crowd."

And that was the main motivation for watching it.

- I was 12.

And it was the night that it was broadcast.

Yeah, yeah, a little bit too young, I think.

- One or two people said to me, "Did you watch

that THREADS last night?"

And I said, "Yeah, Lee was in it."

"Was he?"

- When Mom saw me dead, she actually cried.

She said, "Oh, my baby's dead, oh."

- I found it upsetting

because knowing that that could happen,

if somebody at the other end pushed the button.

(people shouting and screaming)

- Obviously, the scene where the bomb went off

up The Moor, I think that was the most visual thing

of the film.

And then it got more depressing as the film went on.

- The childbirth bit,

and particularly the bit where she has

to bite through the umbilical cord.

That is the bit that really gets me.

(baby screams and wails)

- Karen Meagher, that birth scene in the barn was

very difficult for her, but she didn't flinch.

She did it.

The cameraman, Andrew Dunn, in one scene,

he had to track Ruth

through the ruins, walking backwards over rubble,

and fire, and smoke. (laughs)

He did it without thinking about it.

Everybody did it without thinking about it.

- The scene that did stick in my mind was

the years later, the children huddled round

an old, crackly television set,

having like a lesson or something.

And this is where society

and humankind has got to at that point in a hot,

rickety old VCR, rigged up, watching telly,

and scraping around in the mud, trying to survive.

- [Lecturer] Skeletons and skulls of different creatures.

We borrowed them from the museum.

(radio scratches)

Did you recognize what some of those skeletons were?

There was the skeleton of a bird.

(radio scratches)

A bird's skeleton.

- There's not even any hope for the future is what the...

There's no positive outcome.

Even though there are survivors,

it's not looking good for them.

There's nothing good to look forward to.

Yes, maybe you've managed to survive this horrific thing,

but you might have been better off being killed

much earlier, it's kind of the survivors are

the least lucky.

- It was interesting to me that people in the film,

the actors had local accents,

but by the end of the film,

language is completely broken down.

So they're just communicating in monosyllables.

Although those are very much

with a South Yorkshire inflection.

' W.!

(fire crackling)

-One day. -(unintelligible)

Is it?

Is it?

- Bah, as also Bryan.

- (unintelligible)

- I think, locally, there was blimey, did all

that filming take place here,

and you know, we're quite pleased

that many of us took part in it, 'cause they did.

- I got loads of phone calls, day after, you know,

people saying I were good, (laughs)

But it were horrific, you know?

I suppose they had to say that, really. (laughs)

- Whatever came on that he'd done,

Barry would walk outta the room, and he'd go

and stand behind the door and then maybe look out

a bit later and things.

He never just sat down and watched it.

I think he was pleased with it,

and he was pleased with what he'd achieved with me.

- I watched it at home on my TV set.

I sat by the phone, waiting for the phone to ring.

Normally, when you work in a group of people,

who are your colleagues, like the BBC, they ring up,

and they either say, "Oh, that was great,

or "You really do,"

or they say, "|t's kind of a coded thing."

"You made some bold choices there," which means it sucked.

None of that, I was waiting for the phone to ring.

I was waiting for the phone to ring.

What I didn't find out until the next day was

that people had just sat there in the dark

or wherever they were watching it,

and some, most, a lot were scared to go

to bed in case they dreamed.

(wind whooshing)

- Ruth.

(wind whooshing)

Ruth.

Work.

Work.

Work. Up.

Oh.

- Within that moment of sheer horror of seeing

the bomb going off in my city, being wiped out,

and people being frightened in my city, in my town,

and then seeing someone weeing themselves,

and seeing babies being wiped out,

and so forth, I was, yeah, I was kind of in shock.

In a tiny, weeny little way,

I'd been part of the making of this film.

I had no idea what I was in when I was in the scene.

We just went along for a laugh.

And then when I saw it, there was a part of me

that felt kind of weird that I'd been part of making it,

kind of almost like guilty.

- I've not seen it since, and I wouldn't watch it again.

I can see it in my head every night when I go

to sleep now, so I don't need to watch it again, no.

- I had dreams myself, you know, about big cloud,

looking through my kitchen window,

and seeing a big cloud in the distance.

I had dreams like that.

- I remember thinking, "|f this happened to me,

I would probably try to kill myself,"

and I'm 14 or something at the time.

- You can remember everything in it,

and it stuck with you ever since.

Now that, to me, is a mark of trauma.

Something you can't shake, you can't get rid of.

- The mindset was, "I wanna be a survivor.

I'm not gonna lay down and just die, I will fight."

And it set a precedence in my mind that, as I am today,

that when I've got a 10-acre plot in America,

and the reason why I went for a 10-acre plot,

and my wife would agree to this, is I wanted a bunker.

- I'm always preparing for, you know, what might happen,

and I've got a plan of, you know, what would I do,

you know, if the Wind's blowing this way, where would I go?

Is there an underground car park

or something that's fairly secure?

So yeah, I think there's a possibility.

I may have been kind of trying to work through my trauma.

Really.

- (whimpers) God. (sobs)

- [Director] Are you alright?

Just memories? Yeah.

Seeing it is so, actually scary.

You'd been fed all this information,

which then it bottles up inside you. (sniffs)

When you see the film, it's going, "Oh my God,

that could actually really happen."

But we were kids, you know? (sniffs)

We never had that violence.

As kids growing up,

you didn't watch that type of violence on TV.

It was never what we saw there.

And it sinks in, and it bites you,

and it seems reality because when you're seeing

what's happening on the TV,

the news, that sort of thing, it became like, I wanna swear,

but I'm not that, it might be,

all right, shit, this could actually happen.

This is what might generally happen.

So, and hence, you know why I say, you know,

I joined the Air Training Corps.

I became a prepper because it was there for a long time.

Now I live in the States, and I'm fully armed

because I can carry a weapon.

You know, I've got weapons because I'm allowed to,

and I've got food, dried food.

And it's...

I think it's all about, you know,

if you were told off as a kid, you did something wrong,

and you were smacked so hard that you remembered it,

and you remembered, you know, you remember

that into your adult life.

That was the same thing.

(wind whooshing)

(wind whooshing)

- When the film aired in the UK,

I got immediately a letter addressed to me

and Barry from Neil Kinnock, who was leader

of the opposition saying, "Brave work, well done.

Don't be bothered by the fact that people will be inured to this more,

the more terrifying movies they see.

The dangers of complacency are greater than any risks of knowledge."

Great phrase.

It was never intended as a political piece,

except in the sense that this will give

ordinary people, who elect our politicians, a sense

of what it is they're talking about when they, you know,

use wildly provocative language.

(no audio)

- We at "Turner Broadcasting System,"

are bringing you the following program

to increase awareness about the consequences

of nuclear confrontation

and in an effort to promote world peace.

This film, produced in Great Britain, is called THREADS.

It is powerful and alarming.

However, it is not our intention to frighten but to inform.

Because the more we know about what could happen,

the less chance it is that it will happen.

- Ted Turner, who start really started cable TV ,

saw the movie and said, "This must be shown in the US."

So it was shown in the US the following January.

- We see lots of responses

by television critics in America today.

And it's really fascinating

that the way they talk about it,

almost all of them talk about it in relation

to the clay after.

Describing the clay after as optimistic, overly optimistic,

perhaps, in contrast to THREADS.

The way they talk also about Sheffield is

really interesting.

Seeing it as a city that is like Pittsburgh

or Philadelphia, seeing it as a city

that is also like Middle America.

So those ideas

around Sheffield as an everyday place,

are really interesting in that respect, too.

(no audio)

- [Narrator] THREADS is a story about nuclear war.

It relates events through the experiences of two families,

the working-class Kemps and the middle-class Becketts.

The Beckett's' unmarried daughter Ruth, is pregnant.

The father is young Jimmy Kemp,

a fact linking the destinies of the two families.

Through their eyes,

Britain is seen slowly awakening to the possibility

and consequences of nuclear war.

The story spans a period from one month before to 13 years

after a nuclear attack.

It is set in the near future

in the City of Sheffield, England.

(eerie music)

- I'm not convinced that vast swathes of children

in 1984 stayed up on a Sunday night,

on a school night to watch a two-hour harrowing drama.

What I think did happen is

that they were shown THREADS at school.

- I saw it in primary school, which seems bizarre.

- They put on a showing of it in the hall,

and which it was always great when that happened

'cause they'd wheel in this massive cathode ray TV,

and you think, "Hooray, I can put my books away.

No work."

- It was actually in an RE lesson at school,

at High Storrs School.

So I took...

I was very proud and also very embarrassed

because I wasn't aware it was happening,

and I remember my classmates turning round

and taking the piss. (laughs)

- The clay after, all the kids were talking about it,

but the main thing we talked about is the woman who weed.

- There's like almost a comedic element to that

when you're a kid, and you're a moron.

- That's the thing that the kids took away from that film.

All that harrowing darkness,

and that's all it seemed to talk about.

- Well, that woman's weeing herself.

But it was like really frightening at the same time.

- Not very long after I was traumatized the first time,

then I wandered into an English class

at Swinton Comprehensive School, which is

where I was studying at the time.

And all of a sudden, it was like,

"Right this afternoon we're gonna watch THREADS."

And I was like, "Oh, okay, here we go again."

- Right, we've got a film about a nuclear bomb going off

in Sheffield, and then a fear sort of filled the room.

- I remember wanting to leave.

I was in the middle of a kind of the seating, you know,

the school, standard school seating.

It had a fairly devastating effect on some

of my classmates.

- My wife, who I went to school with,

felt quite faint during it,

and told the teacher, and they said, "Oh, okay, Karen,

go and stand at the back of the class

so you don't have to see all the horror.

- By the time you get to the woman carrying the baby,

I think pretty much everybody in the room had freaked out.

- I was quite sort of exposed to quite a lot

of horror media quite early on, by that age I'd seen,

you know, "Cannibal Ferox," and various horror films.

But seeing it in a British context was interesting for me.

- I was more like, "What the fuck have they clone

to Woolworths when that blew up? (laughs)

I like, we're going there?"

- I inundated now with people saying to me,

"You know, I am scarred for life because of your film.

- Whichever teacher it was,

I think he probably fucked up an entire class of kids.

- I genuinely think that the lasting legacy

of THREADS and the residual trauma of it,

school teachers have got a lot to answer for.

- I think people who saw it as kids carried that with them.

God knows what trauma it gave them, I don't know.

It's part of the world we live in,

and you could argue that those kids are gonna grow

into this world and have to deal with that,

or whatever's left of it.

(wind whooshing)

(cars whooshing)

(lively music)

PBBCP

P Radio Sheffield P

- Hello, good morning.

It is Ellie Colton with you, "BBC Radio Sheffield,"

across South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire.

Let me take you back to the 1980s.

Do you remember this classic Sheffield movie?

- This time, they are playing with, at best,

the destruction of life as we know it.

And at worst, total annihilation.

You cannot win a nuclear war.

Now, on the 40th anniversary of the film being made,

two men are making a documentary about the film,

and why it's so significant to South Yorkshire.

- When the film was on television, the front cover

of the "Radio Times" featured the main image

with this really horrifying image of a traffic warden

with bandages all over his face,

and a gun over his shoulder.

And that's somebody that we've been trying to look for,

and we are really hoping that we managed to track down,

or at least somebody who knew him,

or if he's still around, if we can actually find him.

So that's one that's our main priority at the moment.

- Well, I'm sure you're wondering why we've got you both in,

and this morning, the answer is we have found him for you.

That man is Michael Beecroft.

Is here now.

He was originally a traffic warden in real life as well.

How do you feel? (everybody laughs)

- What? - Surprise, Surprise! (laughs)

(eerie music)

- My name is Michael Beecroft,

and I played the traffic warden in the film THREADS.

I was a club circuit singer.

I did clubs in Sheffield, Leeds, York, Newcastle,

just a normal everyday life, really.

I didn't do anything spectacular.

Beverly, the agent in Leeds called me

regarding this extra work for THREADS,

which I accepted.

Done on a cold, wet, frosty, sleety Sunday morning,

starting at six o'clock, which Hell of a time to start,

as you know, I was told to bang the wire with the butt

of the gun, and shout, "Get back, you bastards." (chuckles)

And that's all I said, which turned out

to be a speaking walk-on part.

So the fee went up.

The photographer came,

and we walked around the set in different places,

different locations, and he took loads of photographs.

And then the one with the rifle, I think was the last one,

he decided, "Yeah, we'll put the rifle on,

because it looks a bit sinister, and a bit authoritarian.

We're only working in the close, probably one

or two nights a week.

So, this job became available as a proper traffic warden.

I was set on March '83,

and I'd been a traffic warden for about five or six months.

I were gobsmacked when they said,

"Oh, you're gonna be made up as a traffic warden."

- [Director] Did you ever say to them,

"I am a traffic warden?"

- I don't think so.

I don't think so, no.

My agent called me and asked had I seen the "Radio Times,"

and I says, "No, why?"

She says, "I think your photograph's on it."

And I think Beverly tried to get some compensation,

but failed miserably, shall we put it that way?

I still can't get my head around it,

that it had such an effect on people.

It was just a day's work that I got.

And the reaction to people

over the years has really amazed me.

And to find out that people dress up as me for Halloween

or whatever, ah, it's just amazing.

Really is just amazing.

- [Director] You retired 22 years ago,

but for around 20 years after you were in THREADS,

people were being given tickets

by the traffic warden from THREADS.

- Yes, which of it?

I don't think a lot of them knew it.

- [Director] Well, probably none of them knew it.

- No, I don't think they did.

I don't think any of them knew it.

I was just a traffic warden.

Traffic Warden 94.

That was my column number.

(people shouting)

(gunshots) (tense music)

We were part of the police, although a civilian branch.

If it did happen, that's what I would be doing.

I would've been drafted in to do things like that,

and looking at people,

and trying to control 'em when they're

in such a dire strait.

Society, as a whole, would've collapsed.

It was a frightening prospect, I'll be honest.

And it's still a frightening prospect.

(people shouting) (bars clanking)

- [Instructor] All major centers of population

and industry would've been destroyed.

- Industry? What industry?

(speakers vocalizing)

- [Victim] Our Jimmy's getting married!

- [Victim 2] Are you?

(speaker vocalizing)

- [Victim] This is insulting, Jimmy.

(hooter honks)

(speaker vocalizing)

(tense music)

- [Survivor] Help me, help.

(tense music)

(people shouting)

- In 2017, the Paris Review

and British Film Institute voted a list of the top 10 films.

It was called "10 Films That Shook the World,"

and I think they were screened at the Barbican in London.

Top of the list was THREADS.

- This has been such a huge blockbuster of emperors

that we didn't realize it was gonna be.

To put it in context, this has been

the biggest pre-sale we've had since BARBIE.

(everybody laughs)

And it probably falls more on the OPPENHEIMER side

of that weekend.

I think the reaction to the screening

of the THREADS was very surprising.

We knew it would be popular,

but the level of popularity was astounding.

At the end, there was complete silence,

people glued to their seats,

it just seemed to really shock people into a stillness.

So that was the most powerful response I've seen to a film

before or since.

- I'd never, ever have thought I'd be sitting here,

talking about it 40 years on.

- It has always been something that I've known,

I was part of that film for however small that was.

It's been a story that's been told throughout my childhood.

- We had quite a good laugh all the time.

That's all I remember.

I don't ever remember thinking,

"Oh, look at this, what are we doing?

Oh, God."

It was just extraordinary.

It's an extraordinary, wonderful job,

and I'm very proud of it.

We had a ball with it.

Was gonna say we had a blast,

but (laughs) I'm not sure we can say that, can we? (laughs)

Yeah, we had a blast. (laughs)

- THREADS accurately portrays

the effects of nuclear war.

- There's nothing else like it, really,

for telling it how it is.

- It's a piece of state-of-nation television,

state-of-the-world television that really gets the core

of who we are as human beings.

- It feels real, it feels absolutely real.

These are real people caught up in appalling world events.

- I think its main legacy is as a sort of haunting,

I think THREADS has haunted me.

I think that's why I go back to it.

- It's part of our culture.

It's part of my culture, it's part of my history.

- It feels like a rites of passage, almost.

Like, have you seen, have you watched THREADS?

The universal message that resonates with a lot

of people is deepened because it is Sheffield,

and because you know that landscape.

- When something like that is filmed there

and there's a lot of publicity about it,

it's gonna remain there in the psyche for a long time.

- You're on The Moor, and you stood next to Debenhams,

and you know that's where the bomb went off,

and that lady wet herself, this is where it happened.

It's a film, but this is where it happened.

It felt like a real thing had happened.

- One or two of my friends have said, "Oh, I'll have

to watch it," and I said, "No, don't."

- The level of meaning that it carried 40 years ago,

it's a message that still resonates,

and it's a film that's still terrifying as well.

- If you are to judge a piece of art by its efficiency

and how it portrays its message,

I don't think there are many things that do it

as surgically efficient as THREADS does.

- If no one had taken part in any demonstration

against nuclear weapons,

I think the world may have been completely fucked.

- Watching THREADS, as I did recently,

it was almost like watching something

that's happening today.

- It's 40 years, but the danger is still there.

- It seems like very dated.

It was set in the 1980s, so there's no cell phones,

there's no internet, there's no CNN,

everything was dated, the clothes, the cars,

everything was dated.

From the moment, 47 minutes into the movie

that the first nuclear weapon explodes,

it doesn't matter.

Nothing of that.

Doesn't matter whether you had an iPhone or not.

It's the same thing.

The nuclear weapon will still do the same thing to you

as it did in 1984.

- People still look at THREADS

and think, "Well, you know, it still could happen, this."

- It still has that power to shock.

It still has that power to make you think.

It still has that power to make you think

about your situation, the political situation in the world.

I think it still has that resonance with people,

so it's always gonna be watched, I think.

- When you see it now, you think,

"I shouldn't ever have stopped worrying about this."

- I think it's as devastating as it was 40 years ago.

- I'm still shocked watching it today, it still holds up.

It's horrifying.

The most disturbing film ever made.

- I still have people saying to me, "Oh, you know,

I never slept after seeing THREADS,"

or "|t was the worst thing ever saw in my life.

I was so terrified." (laughs)

And you think, "Okay, it worked, that's good."

- It's not a POSEIDON ADVENTURE, or THE TOWERING INFERNO.

It's not a genre of horror films or action films

or disaster films.

It's a thing which it is.

It's THREADS.

(bell tolls) (lively music)

P When you attend a funeral P

P It is sad to think that sooner I'

P Or later, those you love will do the same for you P

P And you may have thought it tragic P

P Not to mention other adjectives P

J> To think of all the weeping they will do P

P But don't you worry P

I' No more ashes, no more sackcloth P

P And an arm band made of black cloth P

P Will someday never more adorn a sleeve I'

I' For if the bomb that drops on you P

P Gets your friends and neighbors, too I'

P There'll be nobody left behind to grieve P

I' And we will all go together when we go P

P What a comforting fact that is to know P

I' Universal bereavement and inspiring achievement P

P Yes, we all will go together when we go P

P We will all bake together when we bake P

I' There'll be nobody present at the wake P

P With complete participation in that grand incineration I'

P Nearly three billion hunks of well-done steak P

P We will all fry together when we fry P

P We'll be french-fried potatoes by-and-by P

I' There will be no more misery P

P When the world is our rotisserie P

P Yes we all will fry together when we fry P

P We will all char together when we char P

P And let there be no moaning of the bar P

P Just seeing out a Te Deum when you see that ICBM P

P And the party will be come as you are P

P We will all burn together when we burn P

P There'll be no need to stand and wait your turn P

P When it's time for the fallout P

P And St. Peter calls us all out P

P We'll just drop our agendas and adjourn P

I' And we will all go together when we go P

P Every hottentot and every Eskimo P

P When the air becomes uranous P

P We will all go simultaneous P

P Yes, we all will go together, when we all go together P

P Yes, we all will go together when we go P

(vibrant music)