A waste of 90 minutes of my life

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

I've got a friend who once, during a temporary moment of stupidity, remarked that "when a bomb goes off, the best place to be is next to it." Yes, an atomic bomb. His comment remains the worst piece of survival advice I have ever received. Now meet the runner-up! 'Duck and Cover (1952)' is a fascinating window into American society in the midst of the Cold War: when nuclear holocaust seemed, not just a possibility, but an inevitability. The narrator (Robert Middleton), in his no- nonsense fatherly way, introduces a rosy-cheeked cub scout with the words "Tony knows the bomb can explode any time of the year, day or night." I can't imagine living under such a monumental national threat. Air-raid drills draw an immediate response, the camera lingering dramatically on the discarded baseballs and skipping ropes.'Duck and Cover' explains, in childish terms, the actions one should perform in the instance of a nuclear attack. Number one on the agenda is the titular "duck and cover"; that is, throwing yourself to the ground - preferably against a wall, beneath a desk, or under the wheel of a moving tractor - and covering your head and neck. The inanity of this premise was memorably lampooned in the early 'South Park' episode "Volcano," in which citizens duck and cover in the path of an approaching lava flow, to little avail. All things considered, it's not terrible advice. In such a position, you're certainly less likely to catch flying shards of glass or other debris. It all depends on your proximity to ground zero: if the atomic bomb lands on your school, for example, ducking and covering is not likely to improve your survival chances. In 2004, 'Duck and Cover' was added to the National Film Registry, and for good reason. It captures the insanity of an earlier era, when civilisation nearly destroyed itself.

"Duck and Cover" is something of a mystery to me. Looking back now, over fifty years later, the suggestions seem fairly absurd that one could protect themselves from a nuclear blast with a blanket or stop their neck from being burned by putting their hands over the back of their head.Now, some folks will say that bombs in the 1950s aren't what they are today and that the radius of a blast wasn't as far, so if you were on the outskirts of the explosion, these rules and suggestions might actually be useful. (Although, one suspects that if you have to wait for a Civil Defense worker to tell you to get up, you'll be waiting a long time.) But another thing I found interesting is that people seem to get the message backwards on this short -- they think it takes a realistic fear and makes it seem trivial or quaint. But, for me, it seems that it takes something that is rather rare and makes it one more thing to fear. Even during the Cuban Missile Crisis (and Cuba didn't even turn "communist" for another seven years after this film) the risk was small. For those of us in the Midwest, the threat is essentially nil, both then and today. There are many other threats that would be better to warn us about.Whatever the case, this film stands as a piece of history that will remain rather interesting and grow in the coming years, hopefully being beyond "surreal" or "absurd" at the 100-year mark. We live in an atomic age, but should we go about fearing it? There's little need to fear much of anything if we properly assess the risks involved.

That the "Duck and Cover" technique would be virtually useless in the event of a nuclear attack, I guess we all know. But the real question in this is whether the movie was a honest, genuine attempt at saving lives; a worthless but effective way of soothing down panic; or, more cynically speaking, a way of building fear of child-eating-commies in school children back then. We, in our modern 2000's in which we sit before Pentiums in comfortable chairs in air-conditioned rooms, can just chuckle and enjoy nine minutes of campy entertainment on YouTube or Google Video, but it makes you wonder how watching this must have been back then. This is a flashback from a dramatically different era, in which you'd expect a nice gentleman to cordially point you the way to a fallout shelter as if he was showing you the way to the movie theatre.Of course, stranger aspects arise when you realise that the only black kid in the film is given focus when the narrator talks about "dangers that are around us all the time". Just noticing that and wondering whether it was an intentional, almost subliminal notice, or the nastiest goof one could make, is already worth the price of admission alone.And if you are more interested in the scarier, more fatalistic aspect hidden behind the friendly cartoon turtle and the smiling kids training "Duck and Cover", check out the British "Protect and Survive" series from the 70's and its evil synthesizer jingle.

I'm sure the atomic bomb scares caused them to make this film to ease children's fears of an incident, by giving them hope that by covering their head and neck, they'd have a chance of survival. But, it's hilarious- there's no way those who made the film could have believed what they were saying, and the way things are acted out make it even funnier.