Undeniably tense and frightening, an extremely low budget film that is a clever combination of fantastic Air Force and Civil Defense stock footage with effective, chilling special effects. This is quite an achievement of creativity overcoming limited resources.

The movie is a sleeper. It is underrated and ignored. But you could bill this with Dr. Strangelove (1964), and Fail-Safe (1964), and screened with the right attitude it would fit in quite nicely as an example of a Primitive Art entry in the Doomsday genre.

This is a heart pounding picture that pulsates with despair and a drumbeat of dread that is missing from most of it’s fun and fanciful 1950’s Sci-Fi/Horror cousins. This is a dead serious scenario that is creepy and its pseudo-documentary style will have you diving under your desk as the radiated missile makes it’s way around the Earth destroying everything in its path.

There is also an enormous amount of some rarely seen stock footage that has got to be of interest for military history buffs. It lends an eerie atmosphere of atomic paranoia that persisted in the early days of the cold war that dissipated somewhat after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

On a lighter note. There is ONE scene that cannot be forgiven and is a minor flaw in this otherwise attention to detail scare-fest. It cannot be imagined that a Woman would go into labor and give childbirth without her or someone else removing her earrings.

Maybe this was left in to give this otherwise incredibly intense movie some levity in a wink, wink, nod, nod kind of way that says this is just fiction. Let’s give these filmmakers the benefit of the doubt. They deserve it for this fine effort.