Name of movie about escaping nuclear missiles

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runner's Avatar
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07-13-09
I've been trying to find the name of this movie I saw on "The Movie Network" (a Toronto movie channel), back in the 1990s. Most likely, it's not a film that was in the theaters. And no, it's not "Miracle Mile" starring Anthony Edwards - the setting it too old.

All I remember from the movie is: a man in the city finds out that nuclear missiles will hit in a few hours. I don't remember how, but he meets up with a group of people to escape. At some point they procure a helicopter but one of the group wants to stop, at an apartment I think, to pick up his mother. I don't remember why, but they are fail to escape. The last scene is a shot frozen in time of a man in the street looking up at the sky with nuclear missiles in sight.

Anyone?

Thanks!



Holden Pike's Avatar
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One Ornery Sumbitch
07-13-09
I think your mind may have conflated two separate things there.



Everything about the plot except for the last shot is Miracle Mile (1988), and if its not then somebody ripped it off good. The last bit about the missiles frozen before destruction is the memorable final shot to one of the best episodes of "The Twilight Zone" when CBS brought it back to prime time in the 1980s.




The second half of the first episode in the 1985 revival of "The Twilight Zone" was called "A Little Peace & Quiet", directed by Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street). Melinda Dillon (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, A Christmas Story) starred as a housewife who was overwhelmed by her hectic life in middle America. One day when digging in the garden she finds an amulet. It turns out to have magical powers, and if she says the words "shut up" while wearing it the whole world just pauses all except for her, until she says "start talking" and everything begins moving again. This allows her to get all of her menial chores done and have plenty of quiet time for herself. She's quite enjoying this power, but she has also been ignoring the news reports about brewing hostilities with the Soviet Union. In the conclusion of the episode she is able to yell "SHUT UP" just before the incoming missiles detonate in the skies above. Thus she is doomed to either live in a frozen world all by herself or know that the instant she says "go" again that the world will essentially be plunged into a nuclear armageddon. The final shot is her walking through downtown with the townspeople frozen in panic with the missiles above, and she wanders through the crowd crying.


So unless somebody ripped off both of those plots for something different, you may have combined the two in your mind's eye after all these years.



"A Little Peace and Quiet" is available on R1 DVD, in the first season set of the 1985-1986 season (disc number one, if you're going to NetFlix it).
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Last edited by Holden Pike; 07-13-09 at 08:39 PM.



runner's Avatar
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07-14-09
It definitely isn't Miracle Mile. And I don't think I'm mixing it up with an episode of the Twilight Zone, I didn't watch that show.

I guess it's a Miracle Mile ripoff. But I'd still like to figure out the name.