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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Postapocalyptic Sci-Fi is waiting for you on The Criterion Channel, an independent streaming service that brings you films and curated collections in a unique and thoughtful way. Our friend Clyde Folley from Criterion has curated a new series that takes viewers on a journey of Cold War cinema from the '60s to the '80s. From the lawless streets of abandoned New York Cities in 1990 Bronx Warriors to the blazing deserts of Mad Max. You can watch the imagined ways humans might cope with the end of life as we know it, like in this classic, The Day the Earth Caught Fire.

Speaker 1: The time is now 10:51, nine minutes before countdown. Nine minutes. Nine minutes before countdown. Nine minutes while the world waits and wonders. Share if you dare the unbearable suspense of men and women who have never in their lives faced greater peril. The Day the Earth caught fire will burn itself into your memory. Is it fiction or is it fact?

Alison Stewart: [unintelligible 00:01:16] Clyde Folley joins me now to walk through the list which is streaming now through The Criterion Channel. Listeners, we want to hear from you. What's your favorite post-apocalyptic film? What's a doomsday movie you would like to recommend? 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can call in and join us on air or you can text to us. People are texting already, Clyde. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC, call in and join us on the air, or text to us at that number. Your series begins in the 1960s. Why do we start seeing post-apocalyptic movies being made around that time?

Clyde Folley: I think the answer is pretty simple, and it has everything to do with the invention of the atomic bomb. There were a scattering of post-apocalyptic films before 1945, but 1945 really changes the game for everything in the most horrifying way imaginable. It's like a slow transformation to get to 1960 because in the 1950s, the bomb starts manifesting itself through a wave of atomic monster movies, Godzilla being the most prominent example, but there are several others. Then it's not until about 1960 when people start wrestling with the nuclear bomb and trying to navigate a post-apocalyptic landscape.

Alison Stewart: What are some elements that a good post-apocalyptic film should have? Two or three that are cornerstones.

Clyde Folley: Well, I preface my answer with the fact that there are a couple of different strands of the post-apocalyptic film where there is the post-apocalyptic action film, which is best exemplified by Mad Max, The Road Warrior, that sort of thing, where it's an action film that set in the exciting world where anything can happen and the stakes are as high as possible. Then there's the other thread of post-apocalyptic film, which is just the most horrifying bleak warning about what would actually happen if the bomb were used or if society would decline. These are cries to try to prevent these things. I would say these are the two important threads of this series.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk about New York movies on your list. One of the most famous 1980's Escape from New York from John Carpenter, the director, Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef. Kurt Russell's on the poster. I remember this poster, wearing an eyepatch, flowing hair, carrying a big gun. What's the setup for Escape from New York?

Clyde Folley: The setup for Escape from New York is that it takes place in a future where the island of Manhattan has been completely abandoned and turned into a large-scale prison. Air Force One crashes in the Manhattan prison and the President goes missing and they send in "Snake" Plissken, Kurt Russell, in arguably his most iconic role to go in and get the President out.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a listen to a little bit of the trailer from Escape from New York.

Speaker 2: 1988, the crime rate in the United States rises 400%. 1991, the United States police force is formed. 1997, New York City is a world maximum security prison. John Carpenter's Escape from New York.

Alison Stewart: A quick question about the New York films, given what we just went through, every time I see video of April 2020, and the streets just quiet and desolate, I have a physical reaction. Are these movies going to be hard to watch for people who lived through the pandemic or some of this is so ridiculous that it's just fun?

Clyde Folley: That's a great question. This is something that I was wrestling with too while putting this series together because I was very conscious of the fact that there are some rough hangs in this series. I was very conscious of the fact that "This series can't be all of that. It has to be a mixture. We need some palate cleanser in there. In addition to the bleakest films imaginable, we need the fun stuff too." I would definitely say that there's a certain order of going through these films that is perhaps the wrong order. I would say, mix it up. Don't front-load it with the most difficult ones, I beg you for your own mental health.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Clyde Folley, a curator of the Postapocalyptic Sci-Fi series on Criteria Channel. Ed from Manhattan is going to join the conversation. Hi, Ed.

Ed: Hello.

Alison Stewart: What's your recommendation?

Ed: Can you hear me?

Alison Stewart: Yes, what's your recommendation?

Ed: One was Belafonte from 1959; The World, the Flesh and the Devil. That was very good. Again, it's racial overtones. Another Australian one called The Quiet Earth. Another good one where the last three people on Earth are one Black man, one white woman, and one white man, and all of the tension that has to come along with. A more fun one from 1984 was Night of the Comet, which I really enjoyed. That was one back in my youth.

Alison Stewart: We got three nods from Clyde on that list. This is funny text. "28 Days Later is my personal favorite. Why shouldn't zombies sprint instead of shuffle?"

Clyde Folley: Perhaps I'm not best equipped to answer this. I'm certainly not a doctor or any sort of scientist, but I'm open to these things. Slow zombies, fast zombies, whatever speed is fine.

Alison Stewart: I want to finish up with our New York films, a trio of films from Italian director Enzo Castellari. 1990, The Bronx Warriors, 1982, Escape from the Bronx, The New Barbarians from '83. Also, the first few minutes of 1990, The Bronx Warriors have people fighting with machetes on roller skates. That's not a joke. That's true. What is the picture of the Bronx painted in these films?

Clyde Folley: Well, I'm so glad you brought up these films because, first of all, these veer towards the more fun, less serious end of the spectrum, but they also highlight another part of this series I was trying to capture which is, in the '80s, post The Road Warrior, post Escape from New York, there was this wave of films cashing in on those successes, on those hits.

In the 1980s and the 1970s, there are fewer people better at making knockoffs than the Italians. 1990 Bronx Warriors especially, is a favorite of mine in this thread, where it's basically you watch it and the movie is basically saying, "Hey, you've seen Escape from New York, you've seen The Road Warrior. Well cool, I'm going to put some football pads on a guy and put some mime makeup on someone, and we're just going to run around the burnt-out Bronx in the 1980s." You know what? It's good cinema.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about Postapocalyptic Sci-Fi series on Criterion Channel. My guest is Clyde Folley. If you'd like to get in on the conversation, if you have a post-apocalyptic film you love, give us a call, 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. We'll roll it back to the 1960s and we'll hear about some Cold War era films after a quick break and we'll take more of your calls and texts. This is All Of It.

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You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest in studio is Clyde Folley. He has curated the Postapocalyptic Sci-Fi series on Criterion Channel. We're getting a lot of good texts, Clyde. Planet of the Apes, the Charlton Heston film, was screenplayed by Rod Serling, amazing still. Best movie, Children of Men 2006. Underneath the main story, it presents an image of warning of where our fears of immigration are taking us. I wanted to get to the 1962 film Panic in Year Zero! It's on your list. You wrote this, "Atomic Age nightmare stands as one of the bleakest and most sobering of the Cold War era disaster thrillers." Why is it particularly bleak?

Clyde Folley: It's a film about struggling to survive, but also to my knowledge, it might be the first film that is about people trying to survive. The scenario of the bomb goes off and everyone is scrambling and they're trying to take shelter and they're trying to find any place that's safe. It is directed by and starring Ray Milland, the actor perhaps best known for films like The Lost Weekend.

This is a decidedly more like down-market affair. It's on the lower budget spectrum. I also think that gave him the freedom to make something that is mean and nasty. It's about a family getting ready to go for a weekend of fishing with their Airstream trailer outside of Los Angeles, and then the bomb goes off, and then immediately everything changes. It's about Ray Milland just trying to keep his family alive as society falls apart.

Alison Stewart: There's a British flick, The Day the Earth Caught Fire from director Val Guest. We heard a little bit of the trailer at the top. This one involves the earth hurdling towards the sun. What happened? Why is the earth hurdling towards the sun, Clyde?

Clyde Folley: You know what happened in this movie? There were simultaneous nuclear tests by the US and the Russians, where they set off atomic bombs at the same time, and it tilts the earth's axis and also, it's orbit and it starts drifting towards the sun. I actually rewatched this film this weekend, because I hadn't seen it in a long time. It's dynamite. It's really great. It's got wonderful black-and-white scope photography. The other thing that's unsettling about this film is that it's really about the post-nuclear nightmare. In the age of global warming, this film has extra horrifying residences.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Madeline or Madeleine calling in from Stanford, Connecticut. Hello, you're on the air.

Madeline: Hi there. Hi. I'm calling in and I don't normally call into things, because in the '80s, I was a teacher in Greenwich, and we had to show this film called Threads to our students. It was made in England, and it was about a small town in England after nuclear war, and what happened. It was pretty intense. What was happening was that they didn't prepare, I think the students well enough, but that's besides the point.

Anyway, the reason it was called Threads was because the children are given the job of taking scraps of fabric found in the rubble and separating these little pieces of threads in them so that they can remake more fabric or use them in-- Put lots of different bits together to make bigger pieces of fabric, whatever because all manufacturing was destroyed and pretty intense.

Alison Stewart: Thank you for calling in. Threads is on your list Clyde.

Clyde Folley: Threads is on the list. I'm glad that you called in to mention it, because this is a film that I hadn't seen until I was preparing the series. This is truly-- it's one of the bleakest films I've ever seen. It's horrifying on a scale that is unparalleled.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a listen to the Trailer From Threads by Mick Jackson.

[Trailer From Threads by Mick Jackson]

Speaker 4: We are confident that the Soviet Union will take note of our resolve, and will desist from its present perilous course of action.

Speaker 5: There's growing evidence overnight from scientists and observers in many countries that there have been two nuclear explosions in the Middle East.

Speaker 6: In response to today's news of the outbreak of hostilities between vessels of the United States and Soviet navies--

Speaker 7: The Ministry of Defense has announced it's sending more troops to Europe to reinforce the British commitment to NATO.

Speaker 8: This time, they are playing with at best the destruction of life as we know it, and at worst, total annihilation, you cannot win a nuclear war.

Alison Stewart: We're getting a lot of texts about On The Beach, another film about aftermath of Nuclear War. Testament is on your list. We're getting texts about the film Testament, featured an Oscar-nominated performance from Jane Alexander based on a short story by a woman named Carol Amen, and a female director. Is the focus different?

Clyde Folley: It is different. Testament I think-- I've been using a lot of grand descriptions of a lot of these films in terms of the scale. Truly, and I mean this with all sincerity, Testament is the saddest film I've ever seen because it's small scale, it's entirely about one family, and it's a mother trying to take care of her children in the aftermath of a nuclear explosion. It's a film where everyone is just slowly dying of radiation poisoning. More than any other film this is a film about loss and mourning. It's about mourning the lives that people had before the bomb.

It's about mourning the lives people won't have. I would say that definitely it has not just a woman's touch, but a mother's touch in the filmmaking.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to a little bit of the trailer from Testament.

[Trailer from Testament]

Speaker 9: It was a day like any other. Televisions glowed, radios blared. Breakfasts were being served, children were playing. Everything was as it should be, when suddenly it could never be that way again.

Alison Stewart: So creepy. Let's talk to Serena from Florida. Hi, Serena.

Serena: Hi there. Fast Color. It was filmed from 2019, and it is a post-environmental apocalypse. There is no rain, and one young woman has this superpower to be able to take things apart to the atomic level and put them back together again. She can do this with the atmosphere and with clouds and earthquakes and stuff. She's learning how to control her power so she can save the world.

Alison Stewart: Serena, thank you for calling in. This dovetails nicely into the part of the genre, which is The Last Man on Earth stories. What's the Last Man On Earth film people could check out?

Clyde Folley: The Quiet Earth, is the Last Man Earth film in this series. It's a New Zealand film from the 1980s. It is about a man who wakes up and just realizes that no one is left. It's a movie I've loved for a long time. It's quietly haunting. I can't recommend that one enough.

Alison Stewart: We have a question for you from Caroline, from Brooklyn. Hi, Caroline. What's your question for Clyde?

Caroline: Hey, Clyde, big fan of your programming on the channel. Been following your series very closely for some time now. My question is, how has going through and programming a series of apocalyptic films or post-apocalyptic films changed your existential outlook? Has it been depressing to go through these films or invigorating? Can you tell me a little bit about that process?

Clyde Folley: Caroline, thank you for calling. I would say that it's a bit of a rollercoaster ride. I feel even being on this show right now is a rollercoaster ride. When I sat down, I was so amped up by all the clips that Alison had queued up. Then by the end, I was just slowly feeling the weight of what a nuclear apocalypse might be. I think these films really can put things into perspective, perhaps. It can make you worry about what might be around the corner in terms of disaster, or it could just make you savor every day. I feel like right now I'm going to go outside and just enjoy the sunshine and maybe hug a stranger. I don't know.

Alison Stewart: The name of the series is Postapocalyptic Sci-Fi. It's on Criterion Channel. By the way, I do want to give a shout out to an event you have coming up. Clyde will be co-presenting a screening of '90s action film, Live Wire at Nighthawk Cinema Prospect Park in Brooklyn on January 24th, so you can meet Clyde in person there.

Clyde Folley: Thank you for plugging that. Thank you for having me on the show. It's always a pleasure being here.

Alison Stewart: We love your curated list, so we'll have you back.

Clyde Folley: All right, thank you. Thank you for my colleagues at Criterion for allowing me to put together a series as this.

Alison Stewart: Coming up in All Of It, tomorrow, actor Jeffrey Wright. He plays an author in the new dramedy, American Fiction who finds success elusive until he writes a pandering novel under a pseudonym. That is happening tomorrow. That's on our show tomorrow. Coming up next on Fresh Air, you can hear more about this film with actor Sterling K. Brown, who co-stars in American Fiction. It's synergy, everybody. That's All Of It for today. I'm Alison Stewart, I appreciate you listening, and I appreciate you. I'll meet you back here next time.

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