Welcome to another installment of Chair's Corner. Our department chair will use this personal message forum for a variety of purposes: important information, inspiration, and a little bit of fun.
This article is brought to you by Marilyn Wolf’s Atlanta etc. blog and channel and by the Embedded Systems Channel.
What better way to spend this time than watching end-of-the-world movies? A comprehensive survey would make a great Ph.D. dissertation. In the mean time, here are a few samples and suggestions.
I recently caught "The Last Man on Earth," the first film made from Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend. It wasn’t a superb film but definitely entertaining and watchable. Vincent Price stars in one of his more realistic portrayals (that is, if you are willing to accept that he is killed by a band of sunlight-resistant vampires).
I believe that I have seen "The World, The Flesh and the Devil" on late-night TV. Made in 1959, it is one of the earlier post-nuclear-war movies. Starring Harry Belafonte and with a score by Miklos Rozsa, it clearly reached for significance.
"On the Beach" is another interesting, high-minded treatment of post-nuclear apocalypse. Directed by Stanley Kramer, it stars Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, and Antony Perkins.
"Dr. Strangelove" or "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" is considered one of the greatest films made and the best comedy ever made. Kubrick’s key insight was that the end of the world was too big to be treated seriously.
"Night of the Living Dead" is the source of the modern zombie literature. It was made on a shoestring budget but is a very effective film. George Romero has said that it was meant as a Vietnam analogy.
One film that I haven’t seen is Danny Boyle’s "28 Days Later." AV Club provides excellent commentary. They recently reviewed two films that I would like to see: The "Earth Dies Screaming" and "Fire In the Sky."
—Marilyn Wolf
Department Chair