WHERE HAVE ALL THE PEOPLE GONE?

US, 1974, 74 minutes, Colour.
Peter Graves, Verna Bloom, George O' Hanlon, Jnr., Kathleen Quinlan, Michael- James Wixted.
Directed by John Llewellyn Moxey.

Where Have All the People Gone? is a popular telemovie of the early '70s. It takes a theme popular in the '60s, the nuclear scare and the dropping of the bomb. It shows a family surviving the nuclear blast and trying to adjust to the new situation. While there was an urgency in the films of the '60s and again in the films of the '80s, the nuclear theme was not so prominent in the mid-'70s and this kind of telemovie stands out as a rather isolated example of the genre. It was designed especially for the broad American television audience and so uses the devices of the popular film and the soap opera for its impact. The film's director, John Llewellyn Moxey, has made quite a number of telemovies, especially with horror touches.

1. The quality of this telemovie? Television styles? Themes for a home audience? Entertaining, frightening?

2. The purpose of the documentary aspects of film? Human nature, nuclear scares, fright? Survival and isolation? The tone of the title?

3. How credible was the situation: the solar experience, radiation, death? So many involved in dying? Was this situation plausible? The people who were not affected? Scientific explanation?

4. How plausible were the deaths consequent on this solar experience? The ordinary world as we experience it, people dying within this world, disappearing and the world remaining? The survival effect for those who lived? Their capacity for surviving, their fears, fright? The emotional reactions to so many deaths, the change of the world? Human nature and its capacity to cope, physically, psychologically, emotionally? So many people who survived were city types and not used to the countryside, food, cultivation? The importance of memories in those who lived?

5. Immediate identification with the Anders family? Holidays, the nether returning, work, the experience and the puzzle, Clancy and his illness and his dying and the effect on them? Isolation, the ignorance of what had happened?

6. The journey turning into a quest? The repercussions on each individual, in their interactions? Clancy's death? Their fear for the mother and going to her? Their experience with the car, the man on the highway robbing them? Food and testing it out? The discovery of Jenny, Michael, the suspicious man and his explanations? The cross-section of people who survived?

7. The personality of Jenny, her fear, the gradually breaking out of fear with the dogs, the importance of her story? Her going along with them?

8. The discovery of Michael, his fear, his story about the murders and his parents? His going along? The experience with the dogs?

9. The changes in each of the people, Anders as a character, his son and his coping, Deborah? Their griefs, joys, survival? Their coping? Their return homo and their grief at their mother's death?

10. The experience with the dogs and the touch of the horror film? Why so frightening?

11. The decision to build for the future? What alternatives were there?

12. How plausible was the basic situation, the characterisation, the behaviour? The pessimism of such destruction, the optimism of building for the future? The revelation of fear, the capacity for coping, human nature as resourceful and resilient?