The Day After is an American television film that first aired on November 20, 1983, on the ABC television network. The film postulates a fictional war between the NATO forces and the Warsaw Pact over Germany that rapidly escalates into a full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. The action itself focuses on the residents of Lawrence, Kansas, Kansas City, Missouri, and several family farms near American missile silos. The cast includes JoBeth Williams, Steve Guttenberg, John Cullum, Jason Robards, and John Lithgow. The film was written by Edward Hume, produced by Robert Papazian, and directed by Nicholas Meyer.
The Day After
A scene from the film, in which a nuclear weapon detonates near DeSoto, Kansas.
After seeing the film, Ronald Reagan wrote that the film had been very effective and left him depressed.
A television film, alternatively known as a television movie, made-for-TV film/movie, telefilm, telemovie or TV film/movie, is a feature-length film that is produced and originally distributed by or to a television network, in contrast to theatrical films made for initial showing in movie theaters, and direct-to-video films made for initial release on home video formats. In certain cases, such films may also be referred to and shown as a miniseries, which typically indicates a film that has been divided into multiple parts or a series that contains a predetermined, limited number of episodes.
Stanley Adams (left) and Claude Rains in the television musical The Pied Piper of Hamelin, 1957
