Alas, Babylon

I am rereading "Alas, Babylon" because the last time I read it was in 1970. This will be the third time I read it. The book is great and should be considered a classic. While reading it now, I realized that I had seen it and sure enough, I found it on IMDb. One of the other reviews I read confused it with "The Stand" which is similar, but I still find that Pat Frank's novel to be superior. I would be a good movie for today. Hollywood seems to be rehashing old ideas. "Alas, Babylon" should be considered for that honor. It is time for Hollywood to wake up and do some original stuff. I was born in Pensacola, Fl when I returned there for my last year of High School, this book was required reading. Since I read it before, I did not mind. Read the book. I don't know if you can find on DVD or not.

I was all of thirteen when I saw this Playhouse 90 presentation. The details escape me now, though I recall that it was chilling and scary. It still leaves an impression over a half a century later. Not sure if in this era it was presented live or whether it was done on video tape, which would have been fairly new then. It was done at CBS Television City in Los Angeles, so it might have been on tape. I recall it had the same ominous feeling as the motion picture "Fail Safe," a theatrical release about the Cold War done just a few years later in 1964, and filmed at a studio in New York City, paradoxically. My ranking compares this show to TV of that era, and it would likely stand up dramatically today, even though dated technically. Shows like this are why TV's Golden Era is called the Golden Era. In retrospect, there were only a handful of this caliber.

A live teleplay based on the novel by Pat Frank about the ultimate horror coming to your neighborhood. Don Murray is a lawyer in a small town in rural Florida. Life is simple; slow and idyllic, until the unthinkable happens one afternoon. Done at a time when most people had black and white TV's and the Cold War was very real and very, very close,it had a stark documentary style and feel to it that terrified people. A truly remarkable event in TV history, that probably should be in the Smithsonian and/or on the AFI's preservation list if it isn't there already.

Most people you might ask (those who have some idea) would tell you that "On the Beach" starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins and Fred Astaire is the most sobering movie made about a possible civilization ending nuclear war. They would be wrong. "Alas, Babylon" will chill you even now that the threat is gone. Andrews is a military officer on the Florida panhandle talking on the phone to his brother in southern Florida. The line goes dead. He walks outside and looks up to see a giant mushroom cloud over the city where his brother was. It goes downhill from there. The anarchy. The savagery. The beastliness of a human civilization thrown immediately back to the stone age and subjected to the cold blooded kill or be kill code in what was a few days before friendly neighborhood streets. No one's politics can overcome this stark reality.

I was 9, living at Patrick AFB when this was on TV. To say it made an impression would be an understatement. Soon after that we, the family, were issued several boxes of survival rations. Once the Cuban missile crisis had passed we ate those rations. I don't recall them as very palatable, especially the canned bread. Years later I read the book, which I still have and re-read occasionally. The book points up some racial topics that were somewhat controversial at the time, however my memory fails me with regards to how it was treated in the telecast.

On The Beach, another post-nuclear novel made into film, is probably better known. Shute's character development in the novel gives it a greater depth and feel than the movie of course.