Wonderful Movie

Expected more

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

In 1951, my 12-year old brain knew the Chinese hordes would soon be swarming over our little mountain town. Never mind the big peaks to the west. After all, hadn't these same hordes just a year before forced our best fighting force, the Marines, into headlong retreat in Korea. Only one thing could stop them-: we had the bomb, so let's use it. Better a nuclear war than Chinese hordes.Seeing the movie now, 65-years later, is somewhat painful. I never saw the short then since we didn't have TV. But my cousins in Denver told me about getting down and covering. My surmise now is that govn't was more interested in conditioning us than in actually preparing us. After all, how much good would D&C do in an actual radioactive explosion. About that, the short says little. It does imply an effectiveness beyond just going through the motions. I'm glad I didn't see it then as it would have only added to my foolish beliefs.I wish I could laugh at the cartoon silliness now, but I can't. For younger folks, there remains the idea of what hung heavy over many of us of the time. But more importantly, the dangerous nonsense still has lessons for our own nuclear age.

"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.

Being too young to have been in school in the '50's, I had the privilege of viewing this little gem in US History.Starting off with a very catchy song about Burt the turtle, "Duck and Cover" describes how ducking and covering will make you safe in a nuclear blast. Needless to say, it's very amusing.I also liked it just for its '50's vibe (i.e. "Little Timmy knows what to do!"). This combined with the government's reassurance that a nuclear blast is not that big a danger made me utterly love every second of it, however ludicrous it might be."Duck and Cover," however, is also an interesting look at government propaganda. Again, very amusing for its not-so-subtle approach in this department.So if you have some time, check it out. It can be viewed on the internet (http://www.archive.org/details/DuckandC1951), and it's 9 minutes where you can just shake your head and laugh.So remember children, when you see a flash, DUCK AND COVER!