SpecialsTarget Disturbing yet enthralling

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

rdoyle29 This is probably one of the most infamous educational films about nuclear war. An animated turtle helps tell the children this is aimed at that, in the case of nuclear attack, they can protect themselves by dropping on the ground and covering their head and neck with their hands. It's not clear why you would want to spread this ridiculous misinformation ... most likely to create a false sense of security by creating the impression that your foreign policy isn't aiming towards the complete destruction of your society ... we can all survive kids. Just cover your head!

mshaw61 African-Americans are not discriminated against, mom doesn't want to work, she wants to bake in the kitchen all day until she can attend to father when he gets home from work, there is no pain or suffering in the world and: Yes! You too can survive a nuclear blast just by following the instructions to "Duck and Cover"! This short little film is an incredibly insightful look into life in America in the 1950s (without setting out to do that, of course). Problems didn't exist because the government said they didn't exist. What is incredible in the 21st Century is that, for the most part, Americans really believed this. Maybe the 1950s were a product of those that survived the horrors of World War II. Maybe they invented the "perfect" 1950s to hide the pain from what they experienced in the Pacific and in Europe during WW II. In any case, if you want a short encapsulated view of the surreal life in America in the 1950s, watch this little gem. This should be required viewing for any course about life in post-WW II America.

Tubular_Bell 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.

janesbit1 All through grade school we did the various drills and I remember seeing the film during that time. After all that trained paranoia, it made the Cuban Missle Crisis far scarier than it looks like today in Thirteen Days.Of course the film appears comical today, but I do remember being cynical about the duck and cover drill back in 4th grade. I distinctly remember telling my desk partner (Pam) that I didn't think the drill would do any good if the bomb actually drops cause we'd all be killed anyway.It's fun to look back on this film and have a good laugh though. Even more ludicrous are the governmental lies and denials--on the second sequence they state that "thousands of lives at Hiroshima could have been saved if they had known to 'Duck and Cover'"