ABSTRACT
Film has been one of the most popular and influential cultural forms of the twentieth century. Coincidentally, the development of film as a public entertainment in 1895 corresponds with the discovery of the x-ray and the radioactive properties of radium, by some reckoning, the dawn of the nuclear age. American films engage the idea of nuclear disaster across a somewhat limited spectrum of formal and thematic possibilities that have nonetheless elicited a variety of critical responses. Commercial films have fit into the cycle of cultural awareness regarding the nuclear status quo outlined. Since the 1970s, the number of films that examine the possibility of nuclear destruction that corresponds to historical events and the number and types of films concerned in some way, overtly “nuclear” or not, with the “end of the world” has risen. Even low-budget, action-adventure films can be seen as more than mere exploitation of a specific set of cinematic conventions.
