#dystopian films
(Watch the whole movie here on YouTube)
(spoiler alert, the guy on the cover is only in the movie for like, a minute, tops)
Boy, did i watch a dumb movie yesterday.
I was in the mood to watch something end of the world-y since I’m sad all the time. I was looking for the movie Testament, but couldn’t find a free copy. I saw a recommendation on YouTube for movie Without Warning. I remember it on like, a list of end of the world movies, but I thought it was a nuclear movie.
No.
Just a lot of busy dumb events. It plays off as breaking news in real time, but a made for TV movie. Like you’re watching people play end of the world pretend CBS news time:
They were basically doing a War of the Worlds for 1994.
I made screen caps on my iPad while I watched. as visual notes.
The movie starts out looking like any other Sunday night CBS made for TV movie from the mid 1990s. Then the “local news” cuts in with this lady. I’m going to tell you right now, she is only one of two convincing news reporters in this entire movie, and she only gets 5 seconds of screen time.
OH. did I mention that some of the news reporters in this movie are real deal reporters. Yes, real reporters for a fake news movie.
Like him, Sander Vanocur. He’s real. It bugs me immensely that this movie aired on CBS, and used many of the same-ish graphics CBS news used at the time. Let me try to pull something up as an example at the time.
I found the CBS Evening News from about a week before this movie aired. Hey, Connie.
Here is another example:
Movie.
Real deal CBS Evening News. Hi Scott.
I guess I should explain what’s going on. Three asteroids hit the earth at the same time, one in Wyoming, one in France, and one in China. The one that hit remote China looks like a cat’s butt. w2go, graphics department.
John DeLancie who just finished playing Q on Star Trek the Next Generation is in this movie playing a reporter in Wyoming … for some reason. Come on, John, you’re way more talented than this movie. In the YouTube comments for another copy of this movie everybody was like, “I knew it was Q all along.”
So the news reporter in the newscopter (who is a real journalist) finds this little girl near the crater in Wyoming. The little girl speaks in content aware scale.
The commercials are in this copy! Here are some decaf coffee teabgs. mmm
All cleaning products in 1994 had to be potpourri scented. You know, dried flowers.
These would pop up before the movie resumed after each commercial break.
Malcom’s mom/the mean lady judge on the Simpsons, Jane Kaczmarek is the science correspondent for this faux network. She puts in the only good acting job in this entire film. She outperforms the real journalists. I like to image she watched a lot of news to study.
The first footage of the asteroid hitting was taken while these kids were getting ready to go trick or treating. They’re ok.
This bug-eyed creature was a guy that worked at NASA that the government flew to Johnson Space Center in a jet shortly after the asteroids hit. Why?
…because he’s some sort of experts in aliens, he was in an organization, that searched for extraterrestrial intelligence. Something with aliens.
(mm. The reporter in Houston at Johnson reminds me so much of Cliff from the final seasons of Matlock.If you know you know. )
When I saw that, I was like, give me a break. I almost closed YouTube and forgot about even writing this entry. I thought this was a plausible disaster movie, not an unbelievable alien movie.
Boston Chicken has a new vegetable pot pie with a mashed potato crust. It didn’t look good.
There was a political ad for someone named Frank Mascara.
They drug BILL into this movie. They didn’t make up a fictional president. They said that he was at some conference in Paris. I’m not really cool with them dragging real presidents into their budget made for TV film.
Jane mentioned this meteorite that several people filmed back in October 9 1992. I thought they were making it up, but it really happened. Hit a lady’s car.
I thought this weather and channel ID was part of the movie! Nope, that’s just the local affiliate.
Kimberly is the little girl the newscopter found. I had to laugh at this sign. Why do you love her.
Maybe the aliens are bringing us this sweet Oldsmobile Aurora that was in a commercial break.
Ohhh! The episode of Dave’s World when his son was hit by a car on halloween. I need to watch that episode.
Bug eyes is going against nasa protocol and telling us that more asteroids are coming, and the aliens are bringing them?
Do ‘yall remember that music video with Sting and the silver cowboy aliens. That’s how I imagine those aliens looked like.
There is a plot point that gets swept under the rug. The people in this little town just vanish.
MCI Pam Beesley
…did Continental pay for this? I think they diiid. Jane and Sander bring up how this Continental Lite was one of the last flights to take off because the aliens are interrupting radar.
I didn’t make a screen capture, but at this point, Air Force jets are coming to the North Pole to shoot down those other asteroids that are heading for more populous areas. Right as the jet pilots launch the missiles, the aliens kill em–the pilots saved the day though.
So, the correspondents are watching these missiles blow up the asteroids and they’re obviously trying not to freak out, try not to cry, try not cry while saying goodbye to family members. The guy in the lower left corner sniffles while saying that his 28th birthday is tomorrow. It’s soo cheezy, when the missiles destroy the asteroids all three of the reporters tell him happy birthday.
They need one last report from “Cliff” at Johnson Space Center. uh, Cliff?
It’s either a video game or the aliens are shooting off more asteroids. There’s radio signals all over stating that major metropolitans are gone. How do they know the towns are obliterated though. Maybe they just lost signal.
Most of these movies leave me scared afterward . Not this one. Maybe because we all had our own near end of the world experience this past year with the virus.
Of course, someone fell for it:
On Sunday night, minutes after the vidpic ended, KCBS newswoman Penny Griego stated on the 11 p.m. news, “Dozens of calls came into the Channel 2 newsroom.” 1
A CBS movie about an asteroid striking Earth triggered hundreds of phone calls nationwide Sunday night from confused viewers concerned the depicted events might be true.
[…]
WCCO-TV, the CBS affiliate in Minneapolis, apologized during its evening news to viewers fooled by the movie, which immediately preceded the newscast.″CBS broadcast disclaimers at every commercial break, but in spite of that we got almost a hundred calls from people alarmed, upset, some in tears,″ said anchorwoman Amy Marsalis. ″We called CBS network. They said they had very few calls from alarmed viewers across the nation, but for those of you who called here, we’re sorry for any bad moments.″ 2
Some 30 viewers phoned Channel 7 during and after the CBS Sunday night movie Without Warning, either to find out if, indeed, the earth had been struck by fragments of a gigantic asteroid or to complain about the network’s audacity.
Although it didn’t match the panic caused in 1938 by Orson Welles’ radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, some viewers were genuinely upset, according to WHIO-TV station manager Don Kemper.
“One person said, "It scared my mother to death’,” Kemper said. “And (others complained about) the fact that it was irresponsible. But I think people were upset they didn’t know the difference between fiction and reality.”
CBS superimposed a disclaimer saying “None of what you are seeing is actually happening” about every 15 minutes, but the calls still came.
Channel 7 finally added its own message, “This is a dramatization,” midway through the 9-11 p.m. movie.
“We were getting calls, so we just added that just to try to help any viewers who were confused by it,” Kemper said. “We put it on around 9:30, and then we put it on solid for the last hour. CBS had notified us there may be some calls, and I had notified the newsroom. 3
I even found a news report from October 31, 1994 out of South Bend, Illinois!
Related:
Review of movie over at We Are Cult
The movie is summarized on some sort of Halloween fandom wiki?
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1. Loynd, Ray. “Without Warning.” Variety (blog), November 1, 1994. https://variety.com/1994/tv/reviews/without-warning-1200439570/.
2. AP NEWS. “Disaster Movie ‘Without Warning’ Realistic Enough to Confuse Some Viewers,” October 31, 1994. https://apnews.com/article/8adf3a6d5aa43fd75d6aaa8c0239eb06.
3. "CHANNEL HOPPING VIEWERS UPSET OVER CBS MOVIE ‘WITHOUT WARNING’: [CITY EDITION].” Dayton Daily News, Nov 01, 1994.
