"On the Beach" -- Sat., May 20 at 3PM

Starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire and Anthony Perkins. (1959 -- United

Artists -- 135mins. -- Not Rated, but not recommended for children.) Although there had

been "doomsday dramas" before it, Stanley Kramer's On the Beach was considered the first

"significant" entry genre. Released in 1959, the story was set in the then future of 1964,

when most life on Earth has just been destroyed by radioactive fall out. The population Australia

is still alive, but only until the inevitable arrival of the fallout "down under". Much of the population

resigns itself to doom or goes mad, while some individuals desperately try to figure out how to

survive. The film captures the now half-forgotten fear of inevitable, if not imminent nuclear

holocaust that gripped the civilized world in the late 1950s and '60s, and is a harrowing

experience.