Watch This Is Not a Test For Free

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

While on duty in the early morning hours "Deputy Sheriff Dan Colter" (Seamon Glass) gets an order to take his patrol car and block all access to and from the nearby city. Having done that he then stops what few cars that happen to come by and orders everyone to get out of their vehicles and gather around him. He eventually informs them that a nuclear attack appears to be immanent and that they need to unload a semi-truck so that they can use it as an impromptu bomb shelter. While all of this is going on the individuals within the small group become more restless as time passes and certain individual personality traits become more pronounced. For example, one woman named "Cheryl Hudson" (Mary Morlas) is an alcoholic who constantly needs a drink to calm her nerves. Yet another woman by the name of "Karen Barnes" (Carol Kent) suddenly develops an attraction for the truck driver named "Al Weston" (Alan Austin) even though her husband, "Sam Barnes" (Norman Winston) is right there and can't help but notice. And the longer they wait the more dramatic it gets. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie I will just say that this film tended to capture the feeling of many Americans at this time of the Cold War. That said it's quite possible that some viewers who weren't alive during this particular period may not be able to relate to a film of this type. Even so, while it certainly isn't a great movie by any means, I didn't think it was necessarily that bad either and I have rated it accordingly. Average.

Sheriff Dan Colter is a highway patrolman conducts a roadblock on a desolate stretch of rural America . Several cars stop then Colter hears over the radio that the country is under attack from a nuclear strikeThere's a good idea in here somewhere . You had to have lived through the cold war of the late 20th Century when tensions between East and West often seemed at breaking point . Dramas featuring nuclear paranoia were never entertaining but they were always memorable . Someone of my generation often has no difficulty of saying the 1984 docudrama THREADS was the scariest thing they ever saw on television and burnt its imagery across a young memory . In short nuclear paranoia dramas are memorable but this drama called THIS IS NOT A TEST is very obscure It's easy to see why . It has one small setting , a small cast and doesn't concern itself with scope . In short it's a psycho-drama but for something like this to work the acting and writing must be perfect or at least very good if it's to stay in the mind and while the ending is suitably downbeat most of the assets of the patchy screenplay are let down by the cast That said the characters are sketchily drawn . You have the elderly grandfather and his granddaughter , the rich and booze soaked philistine couple , a fugitive who is conveniently wanted for murder etc . None of the characters seem more than one note and the cast do not help in the slightest who are very wooden especially Seamon Glass as Colter who constantly talks in a dull monotone which is frankly distracting and considering he's effectively the lead character does tend to pull the film down

This is more of a stage play than a blockbuster movie, and has the elements of drama that make it rise.It deals with a policeman, or a deputy as he calls himself, armed with shotgun and pistol, performing his duty at a road block. Blindly, he carries out his orders, and seems to be part of a system, but we gradually find he is a tyrant who is making up his own system.It turns out that the road block is because of an impending nuclear strike, and the setting is well over 25 miles away from the city and strategic military centers, but also smack dab in the center of them.The other characters come across as clichés to the naive, but they aren't. In fact, neither is the officer. Unfortunately, this is still the way people panic, trying to appear sensible, but in fact like chickens with their heads cut off. Those who laugh the most at the silliness mark themselves as most likely to crack themselves. Only by facing the reality of Fear can someone hope to be as sensible as the trio who actually have a chance of escaping a horrid fate.SPOILER HERE: Three characters, local people, soon realize the mania of the cop and devise their own survival plan. Two of them obviously survive the ending, and even in 1962 it was obvious they survived. This steps on a lot of people's toes, because these two don't fall into the mode of what modern hate mongering audiences like to see survive, but sorry, those are the facts. This comes across as a very intriguing drama. And the characters only seem far fetched to those who've never been in danger. They are frighteningly realistic. Even the events aren't that far fetched today. This is a highly underrated piece. And the lesson to learn isn't so much how to have a chance to survive disaster (although that is shown also), but how to survive the lunacy of those who have authority.

This Is Not a Test (1961) ** (out of 4) Somewhat cultish film about a group of passengers thrown together as the threat of a nuclear attack causes fear and panic. I had heard several good things about this film but none of the hype really lived up. The film has an ultra low-budget so we never leave this one location, which is good for the story but the director and screenwriter do very little with the characters. They fight, panic and have a little sex throughout the movie as we await the ending to see if the world really does come to an end. When the ending does come, we see what happens to one character yet ever other character is just forgotten including a younger couple who had the most interesting story.