Rent Threads (1984)

4.0 of 5 from 191 ratings

1h 53min

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Synopsis:: Show moreShow less
Threads, a shockingly realistic account of global nuclear war and its horrific aftermath. It's a normal Thursday in Sheffield when East. and West stumble into war and Britain is devastated by 200 megatons of nuclear explosive. This chilling film tells the story of a nuclear strike on Britain. Through the eyes of two Sheffield families we witness the immediate after effects of the attack - the shock, grief, radiation sickness, hypothermia and starvation. In the months that follow, hideous injuries remain untreated, looters are shot on sight, food supplies run out and many die in the intense cold of the nuclear winter.
Thirteen years on reveals a depopulated Britain living below subsistence level - a devastated economy where money has no value, crops fail through lack of pesticides, no fuel and machinery, and a brutalised post war generation grows up stunted mentally, physically and emotionally.
Actors:: Karen Meagher, Reece Dinsdale, David Brierly, Rita May, Nicholas Lane, Jane Hazlegrove, Henry Moxon, June Broughton, Sylvia Stoker, Harry Beety, Ruth Holden, Ashley Barker, Michael O'Hagan, Phil Rose, Steve Halliwell, Brian Grellis, Peter Faulkner, Anthony Collin, Michael Ely, Sharon Baylis
Directors:: Mick Jackson
Producers:: Mick Jackson
Voiced By:: Ed Bishop
Narrated By:: Paul Vaughan
Writers:: Barry Hines
Studio:: Classic Drama
Genres:: Action & Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Collections:: A History of Films Set In The Future, A Brief History of Film...

BBFC:
Release Date:: 05/09/2005
Run Time:: 113 minutes
Languages:: English Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono
Subtitles:: English Hard of Hearing
DVD Regions:: Region 2
Formats:: Pal
Aspect Ratio:: Full Screen 1.33:1 / 4:3
Colour:: Colour

BBFC:

Release Date:

17/12/2018

Run Time:

285 minutes

Languages:

English LPCM Stereo

Subtitles:

English

Formats:

Pal

Aspect Ratio:

Various

Colour:

Colour

BLU-RAY Regions:

B

Bonus:

UK 2K Remaster from BBC CRI prints
Audio Commentary with Karen Meagher
Audio Commentary with Mick Jackson
Director-approved widescreen edition
PDF of Radio Times articles and letters
Documentary: Shooting the Annihilation
Documentary: Auditioning for the Apocalypse
Documentary: Destruction Designer
Documentary: Stephen Thrower on THREADS

Disc 1:

This disc includes the main feature

Disc 2:

This disc includes special features

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Reviews (5) of Threads

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Gritty and unrelenting realism - Threads review by TH

Spoiler Alert

16/06/2016

If you've always wondered what actually would have happened in the event of a nuclear holocaust in the UK in the early 80s then this is the film you've been waiting for. It was clearly well researched and there is great attention to detail. Some often acting is a bit wooden and the script is pretty pedestrian but the imagery is of its time it is very effective and brings the grim reality of nuclear war to life. Not a great date movie though...

1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.

Mushroom on the Menu - Threads review by CH

Spoiler Alert

18/03/2024

With the world in ferment, it is an urgent matter to watch this film made four decades ago, around the time of Protest and Survive.

It depicts an England, in particular Sheffield, in which one thing and another has led to a nuclear bomb being dropped.

Events are shown in all its terror as bodies moulder, buildings fall, rats roam and food is so scarce that those in search of it are shot on sight. A situation made none the easier by the local Council's Chief Executive trying to organise the place with such staff as he has been able to cajole into a bunker - not the best place for team-building, for rancour is top of the agenda.

Grainily filmed, rapidly moving from scene to scene, with some focus upon two families, including a woman about the give birth, here is a kaleidescope which goes by quickly while making one marvel ay the managing of a cast which, per force, includes many crowd scenes.

Written by Barry Hines, who is best known for Kes, it is something which draws upon, and stands out from, the tropes of dysptopian fiction, a form which aspires to truth - and one can only hope - nervously enough - that the world does not unravel as it does here.

1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.

A chastening experience - Threads review by WB

Spoiler Alert

25/12/2019

Happily Threads will be seen as a frightening might have been. It tells the story of two ordinary famlies who live in Sheffield and will be united by an impending marriage of their children. However the world is sliding towards a nuclear confrontation over a crisis in the Middle East. There is also an interesting sub ployt about local government and civil defence. Ultimately the modest budget begins to tell in the second half and the film relies heavily on stock footage. It is however an untterly unforgettable chilling experience that once watched will never be forgotten.

1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.

It Took a Nuclear Strike for Traffic Wardens to get their Revenge - Threads review by Strovey

Spoiler Alert

01/07/2021

This early effort by Mick Jackson, he of The Bodyguard. LA Story and errr, Volcano, fame is a more battered, scratchy, affair made on a budget with an edgy kitchen sink realism about it. The story and point being made are all the better for it.

We are treated to a washed-out aesthetic as everyone in 1984 Sheffield go about their lives. Drinking down the pub, shopping, going to work. All the time in the background, through the realistic medium of newspaper headlines, Lesley Judd of Blue Peter reading the news and radio announcements the creeping disaster that is the whole point of the story edges forward. It is clever and works well. The realistic drama style is somewhat counterpointed by a documentary feel with on-screen text telling us where we are in the timeline. I am not sure whether this works or clashes with the fictional tale and days after viewing I still cannot make my mind up.

Probably due to budget restraints, but I think also for realism, Jackson used a cast of relative unknowns, and all involved give great showings as ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Great writing gives all the main characters little knowledge or interest in the event unfolding, until things start to get out of hand. To balance this, we are shown the leader of the council who is designated the emergency manager being told to be ‘be ready’ to run the local area in the event of a war. It is this strand of the narrative that arguably gives us the weakest part of the film when later on we do get treated to some very stagey histrionics in the ‘bunker’ under the town hall, it is not ‘11’ but it could have dialed down a bit methinks.

Part of the morbid interest is to see what happens once the war starts, who survives, who makes errors, who is wiped out. If there is any criticism, I think Jackson and the writer, Barry Hines, who wrote A Kestrel for a Knave, so definitely knew about the northern working-class realism, were too optimistic, allowing more than a few characters to survive the initial blast. The events prior to the strike are mundane and ordinary to the point of the opening set-ups perhaps starting to drag. The unfolding news flashed about Iraq and the oilfields are both realistically made and very slowly rack up the tension.

The events of the nuclear strikes and the results no doubt were horrifying to audiences at the time but once again I cannot help feeling that the real circumstance would be more terrifying and apocalyptic and of course Jackson was certainly hamstrung by costs.

If I have any major criticism the tale of Ruth carries on way too long after the events and we are projected too far into the future and so are greeted with pure fiction and speculation. It is as if the story was pivoting around nuclear strikes on the UK but once that has occurred, the devastation is framed, highlighted, then air gets let of the tyres and we trundle to the end.

Nevertheless, is this a small complaint and if you are lucky enough to view this, not only do you get to see Reece Dinsdale in an exceedingly early role but probably the best ‘realistic’ film made about a nuclear war out of the small crop of films the popped up around and after it came out. Even today, outdated as it is, it still packs a punch.

A film that should, but never will be shown to older school children and all MPs every year. It never will because no one in power wants to people to know they are going to burst into flames or die from radiation sickness after a war that no one wins, and certainly can you imagine

1 out of 1 members found this review helpful.

A Modern Classic Written by Barry Hines (Kes) & Filmed in Sheffield 1984 - Threads review by PV

Spoiler Alert

15/10/2024

One word for this film: SUPERB. Amazingly I had not watched it all until recently, and I know Sheffield well from late 80s/90s so recognise some locations. The accents took me right back.

Written by Barry Hines (1939-2016) still most famous as the author of KES, and the book A KESTREL FOR A KNAVE. He often worked with Ken Loach.

It could be called shocking. Depends on the viewer really. Images of nuclear war then the aftermath, intercut with documentary-style voiceover with facts and figures. truly scary, esp in 1984 - a year after the USSR apparently almost accidentally fired a nuclear missile at the UK when their computers went wrong and told them they were being attacked. IT fails can cause this stuff which is even more scary, when one thinks how huge companies and banks have IT fails and how hacking happens so much.

Very timely, the fictional war here all starts around IRAN. In the news now as the cause of attacks on Israel, funding Hamas and Hezbollah too, and firing rockets at Israel AND Iran is trying to become a nuclear power and make bombs. Scary.

Imaginative too though not the first fiction to see the past in the future, a return to the Middle Ages when the power runs out or a pandemic kills everyone.

I think everyone should watch this, even though the USSR does not exist any more - they still have nuclear bombs as does China and Pakistan/India who could go to war, and Uk and France, and Israel - with Iran trying to get them (must be stopped really).

The director Mick Jackson (born 1943) started his feature film career with this, having previously made documentaries (which shows in Threads, why it is newsy and authentic-looking) then went on to make Hollywood movies like VOLCANO, LA STORY and THE BODYGUARD.

A must-see. 5 stars

0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.

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