6/13/07: Panic In Year Zero (1962)This’ll be our last posting before Father’s Day, and it was a coin-toss between honoring Alley Oop and Ray Milland.
Panic In Year Zero is certainly one of cinema’s most shining tributes to fatherhood—and Ray Milland had the necessary ego to direct himself as a man who truly deserves that “World’s Best Dad” coffee mug.
The film opens as Milland and wife Jean Hagen are getting their teenage kids out of bed at 4 in the morning. Frankie Avalon and Mary Mitchel aren’t miserable, though, so Ray’s been raising them right. They’ve loaded up the camper for a fun family fishing trip up to the mountains. Those plans change once there’s a big flash in the sky. That’s what it looks like when Los Angeles gets nuked in your rear-view mirror.
Ray can’t get anything but static on the car radio. The daughter’s hip enough to ask if he can get
CONELRAD. There’s a massive mushroom cloud over the horizon, but Ray agrees to head back home and check on his mother-in-law. Along the way, the family notices that it’s become Death Race 1962 amongst the cars speeding away from L.A.
Things start falling apart quickly, as Ray sees one man slug a gas station attendant because he doesn’t have $4 for a tank of gas. Milland has to pay before pumping. “If business is going to get this tough,” says the oblivious attendant, “the price of gas is going up.” The family stops at the Saddle Peak Lounge for a bite to eat, and learn that profiteering has already begun.
Ray decides that his mother-in-law is out of luck. “For the next few weeks,” he tells his family, “survival is gong to have to be on an individual basis.”
His wife is pretty upset that Ray’s turning his back on civilization. “When civilization gets civilized again,” he explains, “I’ll join it.” He adds that his family might be the ones who’ll have to do the recivilizing.
The family goes off the main road, and finds a small grocery store where the owner has just awakened. Ray buys up $190 in assorted goods, and advises the baffled storekeeper to lock up and keep the rest of the food for himself. Ray then hits the hardware store next door. He pays cash for everything except some assorted firearms. Ray offers to write a check for those. The owner of the hardware store explains that state law requires a 24-hour waiting period. Ray doesn’t have time for state law.
A struggle ensues, but Frankie breaks things up with a shotgun. Milland still insists on leaving his payment for the firearms. He’s no thief.
Amazingly, his wife is still nagging at him back in the car: “Intelligent people just don’t turn their backs on the rest of the world.”
“In these situations, intelligent people would be the first to try.”
It’ll turn out that the Russkies took out several American cities with a nuclear attack. Frankie’s happy to be free of rules and regulations, although Ray tells him not to go writing off the law. “It’ll come back,” Rays says. “I just want us to be around when it does.”
Then it’s back on the NASCAR circuit as Ray joins the speeding masses heading for the hills. He stops for gas, and is charged the outrageous price of $3 a gallon. This means it’s Ray’s turn to punch the attendant—before leaving a fair payment at the pumps. Frankie’s put in the trailer with a shotgun and the women. “Don’t get trigger happy,” says Ray, “but don’t be gun shy, either.”
Frankie isn’t the problem. Ray is soon almost run off the road by some overage juvenile delinquents. “We’re the new highway patrol,” they explain. “Someone dropped the bomb—crazy kick!” One of them grabs Ray’s pistol, but Frankie drops the creep with a shotgun blast to the shoulder. Ray checks the hoodlum out to be sure he’s okay—“You just caught some buckshot”—and sends the hoodlums on their way.
Then he turns to Frankie: “You almost missed him. What happened?” Turns out that Mom interfered with Frankie’s clear shot. “He was going to kill that boy,” she complains. Yeesh. Ray still takes a moment to lecture Frankie about how the kid better not get to enjoying any gunplay.
Ray finally gets the family to an isolated spot with a very nice cave. They settle in for dinner, with Ray saying grace. Then he leads a family discussion about maintaining their sense of values.
Unfortunately, those young hoodlums are maintaining their own sense of values. They end up hanging out near Ray’s cave, and attack his daughter. Mom hears her screams and comes running with a shotgun. Her aim’s bad, but she scares them off. Welcome to civilization, Mom. The good news is that Ray’s a better shot as he tracks down two of them. He's learned that the hoodlums have killed the owner of that hardware store from before, so the death penalty's definitely in order.
Frankie’s along for the hunt, and discovers a hot babe that the creeps had been keeping as their own. He wisely talks Ray into letting her come back to the cave. Later, Ray feels kinda bad about shooting the young perverts. “I tried to kill them, too,” consoles his wife. It’s nice when a couple that’s been married a long time can keep finding things they have in common.
The emergency radio says that the war is over, and some people are returning to their towns. Ray wants to wait for a while. Frankie is out chopping wood while his new femme friend is holding a rifle and watching him in an admiring manner. This allows the last of the original three hoodlums to sneak up on her. That’s why guys like us shouldn't let girls watch as we chop wood.
Anyway, Frankie ends up with a leg wound after he tosses an axe at the hoodlum—and the gal obligingly grabs the rifle back and finishes off the creep. This medical emergency finally gets Ray and his family out of the cave and back on the road. They get lucky when they find a doctor who’ll take a look at Frankie. “Watching you work,” says Ray, “is like raising your head out of the mud and slime, and watching civilization again.”
The doctor does what he can, and the family heads off to find Frankie further assistance. The happy ending comes when they get a warning shot from some military men in the area. The soldiers take Frankie to a medical compound, and Ray knows that civilization is back in fashion.
The family—and Frankie’s new love interest—walks off as a soldier comments that everyone in the mountains managed to avoid radiation sickness. You know why? Because Ray didn’t go back for his mother-in-law. This movie’s so great that it could’ve been an episode of
Married With Children.
Make it your own: Fortunately,
MGM’s fine transfer of
Panic In Year Zero is one of their Midnite Movie editions that remains in print—and it pairs the film with
The Last Man On Earth, which is a direct forerunner to the patriarchal brilliance of
The Omega Man. You can’t improve on that as a Father’s Day gift.
