Evengyny Thanks for the memories!

JinRoz For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

atlasmb I'm sure this purportedly educational film seems foolish and funny from the 21st century viewpoint. Aimed at children, "Duck and Cover" was apropos for its time, when the public was mostly ignorant of the real risks of nuclear warfare, but very afraid of its implications--the way it changed one's view of the world and personal safety, in general.It would be difficult to ascertain if the film accomplished what it set out to do--to give children (and their parents) a sense of security in a more dangerous world. Or did it actually make life seem scarier and more uncertain with its warning about "the bright flash" that might interrupt a beautiful day, without prior alarm, from some unseen, ominous and omnipresent source?Having been a child during that era--and the Cuban missile crisis--I can verify that there was a toll exacted by the constant barrage of warnings about the unspeakable horrors that might befall American citizens at the hands of an evil, godless entity. Thanks, government, for demonizing an entire population and producing such ridiculous garbage as "Duck and Cover".The film clearly has another agenda--one that pervades almost all government-produced films: legitimizing those in authority. The children who view the film are told "We must obey the civil defense worker". And more than once, it tells kids to ask "older people" in the event of an atomic emergency. Images remind the student viewer that teachers are in charge in the classroom, a message I am sure all educators appreciated.This film is an interesting artifact from a "simpler" time--simpler in the sense that the average American citizen rarely questioned authority. I think the average congressman in 1952 knew little more than his constituents about the effects of nuclear weapons. The naivete that pervades the film is authentic.

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.

hershiser2 I'm sure the atomic bomb scares caused them to make this film to ease children's fears of an incident, by giving them hope that by covering their head and neck, they'd have a chance of survival. But, it's hilarious- there's no way those who made the film could have believed what they were saying, and the way things are acted out make it even funnier.

Unicorn-9 Truly one of the most mind-bogglingly surreal movies I've ever seen, teaching kids that all they need to do to survive a nuclear war is duck down and cover their heads; and quite rightly satirised in the 'South Park' TV show. Watching it today it's hard to imagine that the US government could have made it as a serious training film, or that American teachers could have shown it to their kids with a straight face.More seriously, I imagine that when they first began planning the movie they were probably still in the A-bomb era where it might have made a difference: the damage from such a bomb was fairly localised so a single bomb in a major city would kill only a small fraction of the population... but by the time it was being shown to kids H-bombs could obliterate an entire city in one go, and 'Duck and Cover' tactics were utterly pointless.