Did Ray Milland's B-movie epic "Panic in the Year Zero" serve as an inspiration for Cormic MaCarthy's "The Road"? I'm not sure. But I do know that just ten short years after starring in "Singin' in the Rain", the beautiful and talented Jean Hagen was reduced to playing Frankie Avalon's mother (and she was only 39 at
the time- only in the movies could a 57-year old man be married to a 39-year old woman and have a 22-year old son together). A nice, California family wakes up at the crack of dawn, loads up the camping trailer, and heads out for a weekend fishing expedition. Some miles outside of Los Angeles, they hear sounds they hear sounds of thunder, but when they look back and see a mushroom cloud, they realize World War III has broken out. From then on, it's a race for survival as people become more desperate. Milland not only directs but stars as the Mad Max-ian survialist father, and Frankie Avalon plays a twerpy yet potentially homicidial teenager. The mother and daughter are almost reduced to decorative furniture (apart from an attempted rape scene) and really, the end of the world is no place for a lady anyway. It's at times a fairly dramatic and suspenseful movie and at others it delves down into the cheese, but that doesn't stop it from being entertaining none the less.
January 29, 2010
