This Is Not A Test
(1962)
Director: Fredric Gadette
Cast: Seamon Glass, Thayer Roberts, Aubrey Martin
Even though I
consider myself lucky to not only live in this day and age instead of
living in some filth-covered era like the dark age, and I am lucky also
for the fact that I'm also living in the western part of the world
instead of some third world country, I realize that my environment is
not 100% safe for me. There are dangers lurking around everywhere I can
think of. There have been stabbing incidents causing fatalities that
have happened just a few blocks from my apartment building, for
example. And in the wilderness not far from my city, there are not only
cougars but bears as well. Being aware of all these potential dangers
around me, since I was a youngster I have taken steps to reduce the
risk of danger. If I were to go into the wilderness outside of my city,
I would bring a bell or a can of pebbles to shake, which would spook
and drive away any cougars or bears within earshot. And I am also
prepared for what I would do should I bump into a cougar or bear
despite my precautions. If I ran into a cougar, for example, I would
know not to look it in the eye, a tip I learned from the TV show MacGyver.
I would then slowly step back while trying to make myself look bigger
with my jacket, which I learned from a survival book. Absorbing from
many different sources over the years, I feel I am prepared for just
about any small to medium emergency that may happen to me. I even know
what to do during one of those times when I wake up in an unfamiliar
bed with an unfamiliar
girl beside me. (While she sleeps, I go to the medicine cabinet in her
home to find prescription bottles, since they would have her name on
them. If the cabinet was empty, I would look in her living room for
magazines she subscribes to, and read the name above her address
printed on the front covers.)
Though you could name to me any kind of small or medium
emergency and I would already know what to do (or be able to quickly
figure out what I should do), there is one kind of BIG emergency that
I admit that, even after spending a lot of time over the years thinking
about it, I would not know what to do. Oh, I know what to do if there's
a flood - just stay on the third floor of my apartment building in my
suite, look out the window and laugh at the ground-level people
struggling outside. And hurricanes, tsunamis, fires, earthquakes, and
other such stuff I have already planned for just in case they should
happen. But the one big emergency I would feel helpless with would be
if there was an oncoming nuclear attack. Since I live in the capital
city of the Canadian province I live in, it seems likely that in a
nuclear attack by another country, my city would be targeted. What if I
found out that in a short amount of time, a nuclear missile would hit
my city, like Anthony Edwards found out in the underrated movie Miracle Mile?
I'd be really in a tough spot. First, I don't own a vehicle of any
kind, not even a bicycle. Yes, I could "Grand Theft Auto" a passing
car, but I've forgotten how to drive. Getting out of town would
obviously be very difficult, and I might have to take public
transportation just to get far enough out of downtown to put plenty of
distance between myself and ground zero. What would make the situation
even more difficult would be that almost certainly other people would
know about the oncoming missile. There would be chaos in the streets,
and even if I got on a bus, the streets would probably be gridlocked
and I wouldn't get out of the downtown area.
It's quite possible that with the missile on its way, I
would simply give up the idea of trying to get out of town, and stay at
home and watch Turner Classic Movies until the missile hits its target
- since I live downtown, I would be instantly annihilated, and I would
be free of the multiple problems people who've escaped from my city
would have then living in a post-holocaust world. Anyway, that's my
opinion coming from an ordinary Joe living in this particular
situation. But what if I was far away from a nuclear strike zone? What
if I was in a position of power, like being a policeman? What would I
do if I were married and my spouse and myself heard that nukes were on
the way? These questions popped up in my mind as I was watching This Is Not A Test,
a "what if?" movie with these situations in mind. The movie starts off
in desert country, in what appears to be somewhere in southern
California. In the wee hours of the morning, highway patrol officer Dan
Colter (Glass) gets a high priority call on his radio. He is ordered to
set up a roadblock and prevent cars coming from either direction from
proceeding. After blocking the road, Colter stops several drivers and
passengers during the next few minutes, including a middle-aged couple
on their way to Mexico, an elderly chicken farmer with his daughter,
and a beatnik couple. Colter can't tell them at first
why he's been ordered to stop them, but eventually the reason is
clearly stated
by his commanders on the radio for everyone to hear - atomic missiles
are on their way to
prime targets scattered around the area. Colter was told earlier on the
radio, "You're on
your own," and now it's up to him to maintain order and assure the
survival of the civilians around him before and after the missiles hit.
But can Colter maintain order? More importantly, can he or anyone else
in the group think of a way to survive the missile strike as it
happens, or what to do to assure survival in the post-nuke world?
Doing some research on This Is Not A Test,
I came across several sources that revealed that the movie never got
the theatrical release that was intended for it, and that instead it
was quietly released to late-night television. That might make you
think that the end results were dire enough to perhaps make the
producers lose confidence in the movie. I personally thought the movie
as a whole was fairly engaging. However, even though I liked the movie,
I could see why perhaps those in charge didn't have faith in their
creation. The biggest reason probably comes from the fact that This Is Not A Test
is a low-budget movie - make that a very
low budget movie. Because of this, the movie doesn't have that many
visual hooks. The entire movie basically stays at the same desert
location,
instead of hopping around place to place. Aside from bringing in the
actors and several vehicles to this particular location, that's all we
get for
what would be labelled "production values" - no sets were built, and no
already built buildings are ever shown. The general location where the
movie takes place is not shown very well, with the camera for pretty
much the entire seventy-three minute running time placed extremely
close to the characters and what they are doing. Also, the lighting of
this pre-dawn setting does come across as night - that is, amateur
night. Often a single spotlight pointed right to the middle of the shot
is used to shine on the actors working in the darkness, meaning that
the area shown on the left and right edges of the screen is dark while
the central area is blazing bright, often bright enough to make the
actors give off long and dark shadows despite the sun not being up.
Another factor that I think discouraged any idea of
giving This Is
Not A Test
a theatrical release was probably the cast that was assembled. The fact
that there were no well-known actors in the cast (B movie level or
otherwise) possibly was a problem, but I think the level of acting at
times by the cast played a bigger factor. The best the acting gets in
the movie would be labelled by most viewers as merely okay, such as
with
actors Thayer Roberts and Aubrey Martin as the father/daughter chicken
ranchers, as well as Seamon Glass as the highway patrolman (though
Glass' acting is a little crude, he does correctly try to inject a
sense of authority in everything his character does and says.) At its
worse, the acting comes across as embarrassing, mostly with Michael
Greene's beatnik character. He looks too old to be exclaiming his "hip"
dialogue, and it sounds incredibly forced coming from his lips. It goes
without saying that his character comes across as extremely dated in
this day and age. The screenplay also has some other character-related
flaws in its writings. There is one character, a hitchhiker who is both
psychotic and wanted by the police, who flees the scene as soon as he
is identified. This character doesn't travel very far, and spends the
rest of the movie hanging around in the roadside brush near the other
characters. Although he subsequently has two or three brushes with the
other characters, by the time the movie actually ends you realize that
there seems to be no point for this character being in this movie. He
could be easily be written out.
Make no mistake: This Is Not A Test
is a crudely made movie. Yet I have to admit that the flaws I earlier
mentioned, and other flaws I haven't brought up, didn't distract me too
much from enjoying the package as a whole. Although there are many
crude aspects to the movie, there are also some moments that suggest
some genuine thought went into the movie. Although the actors may not
have been professional, their characters were written to be very
interesting. They show some interesting quirks here and there, like how
the patrolman, even knowing that an atomic attack is on the way, still
takes the time to give one of the people at the roadblock a ticket for
speeding. Also, these characters are shown to be using their brains.
One character points out that people survived Hiroshima, so they could
survive... but another points out that the bomb used in Hiroshima was
nothing compared to modern bombs. Faced with facts like those, the idea
that the patrolman has for the group to survive the oncoming blast may
not be the most ideal survival plan... but what would you
do under the same circumstances? They have no choice but to cling to
even the slimmest plan for survival. They try to use
their smarts to concentrate on the preparation for what is coming
ahead, but they are still human, with weaknesses, and you see some - or
maybe even all of them - might not have the ability to make it. It
didn't take
long for me to get caught up in these characters' plight, and when I
did I was really interested to see what would happen to them. The
tension grows slowly but surely, and we feel the comfort of
civilization and order gradually crumbling around them. Then in the
final
few minutes of the movie, WHAM, WHAM, and WHAM, the movie hits us with
some surprise developments one right after another that break whatever
feeling of normality was left, leaving the audience stunned and quiet
when the end finally comes seconds later and the credits start to roll.
It's an ending you won't forget anytime soon, a gutsy and
unconventional ending that may be another reason why the movie never
got a theatrical release. But at least these particular filmmakers can
still hold their heads up high for managing to make a compelling, if
somewhat crudely made, exercise. That's better than a widely seen
embarrassment.
Check
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See also: Idaho Transfer,
No Blade Of Grass, Panic In Year Zero!
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