The War Game (1966) on Netflix
China invades South Vietnam, and America answers with tactical nuclear weapons. As Moscow threatens West Berlin, Britain declares a state of emergency and moves children and mothers to Kent.
- Netflix2.7/5
- IMDb7.9/108,275 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes93%
Trailer
Plot summary
Britain relies on V bombers armed with nuclear weapons to deter an attack. On 15 September, Washington clears its forces in South Vietnam to answer a Chinese invasion with tactical nuclear weapons, and Moscow and East Berlin threaten to move into West Berlin unless America changes course. A day later Britain declares a state of emergency, with regional commissioners taking over the country's day-to-day running. Emergency committees begin moving children, mothers and the sick to safe areas including Kent, where homeowners must take evacuees in under threat of imprisonment and empty properties are requisitioned. Rationing starts, booklets on preparing for a nuclear attack are handed out, and sirens are tested, giving an estimated three minutes of warning. No government shelters have been built, and private ones are held up by a shortage of building materials.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The War Game (1966)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The BBC pulled Peter Watkins's film before its planned screening date of 6 October 1965, saying the effect had been judged too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting. It caused dismay inside both the corporation and the government.
- The block came from the top: the Postmaster General ordered the BBC not to put the film on television because of its subject, and as a compromise the British government allowed it into public cinemas with the required certificate.
- American television kept it off the air as well. Like the BBC, National Educational Television banned it over its theme, and it traveled through events such as a Philadelphia peace rally in August 1968 where nearly 250 people watched it.
- The pro-nuclear remarks the film puts in the mouths of establishment figures, a bishop among them, were not invented. Watkins said those outrageous statements were based on genuine quotations, staged so as to break the illusion of media-produced reality.
