FANTASIA OBSCURA: This is Not a Drill… or is it?
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, you have more to worry about than whether or not this is a drill…
Ladybug Ladybug (1963)
Distributed by: United Artists
Directed by: Frank Perry
Ladybug!
Ladybug!
Fly away home.
Your house is on fire.
And your children all gone.
All
except one,
And that’s little Ann,
For she crept under
The frying pan.
If you remember this old rhyme, you have a pretty good sense of what’s going to happen in this film…
As the credits play, accompanied by the main theme from Bob Cobert (his first time composing for a drama), the image underneath the titles comes into focus. It’s a stopwatch, being used by Principal Calkins (William Daniels in his first theatrical credit), as he gives assessment tests to the sixth grade in his school. He gets questions from some of his students, Sarah (Marilyn Rogers in her only theatrical credit), Gary (Doug Chapin), and Steve (Christopher Howard in his only credited role), which lets you know that the issues with standardized testing we’re all dealing with go back to at least 1963…
While he’s proctoring, we watch Joel (Miles Chapin), who’s been sent to the principal’s office, stopping by to talk with the lunch lady, Mrs. Maxton (Jane Connell in her first theatrical role), before going on to speak to the school secretary, Betty (Kathryn Hays in her first theatrical role). We gather from Joel’s conversations that he’s a repeat offender, which apparently schools back there were more tolerant of.
Just then, the art teacher, Mrs. Hayworth (Jane Hoffman in her first credited theatrical role), comes to the office to wait for Principal Calkins. She’s has all of a few seconds to talk with Betty and Joel before a yellow light set up in the office goes off, accompanied by a long high-pitched buzzing.
The light is on a box set up by Civil Defense to warn them of impending attack. According to the manual (according to Betty), a single yellow light accompanied by the buzzing means that there is a nuclear attack coming within one hour.
Which is not how anyone wants to begin their day…
We never see the manual Betty notes in the film, but had we seen their Civil Defense materials, this would certainly have been among them
Betty runs up the stairs (which as she’s well along in her second trimester is pretty impressive) to get Principal Calkins. He puts the school librarian, Mrs. Andrews (Nancy Marchand), in charge of overseeing the sixth graders while he goes to the office to confirm what’s happening.
After phoning the phone company (who claim there’s nothing wrong on their end), the district’s high school (who are also getting the alert), and the Civil Defense office (where he keeps getting a busy signal), Calkins makes the executive decision: He treats the warning as confirmed. He then puts into place their program to send all the kids home, because they feel that it would be better for the kids to be with their parents in their last moments.
Like any battle plan in war, especially the Cold War, this falls apart almost immediately. Part of the reason for this is Mrs. Andrews, who starts to fall apart when she realizes that the Bomb is almost here, and that it’s all over now.
With their authority figure no longer able to wield much authority, the kids have to take over to keep themselves from existential dread. For some of the time, Sarah tries to ask Steve for a date, to take place a few days later:
It looks a few scenes later like the date will take place after all: At about the half-point in the film, the school gets word that it was a false alarm, and Calkins gets ready to phone families to have the kids come back once they get to their homes…
…yeah, good luck with that…
But, this being the pre-iPhone days, not everyone finds out and is able to relax knowing that the world won’t end soon. Mrs. Andrews doesn’t get word until she gets picked up by a truck driver (James Frawley, three years before his first gig as a director on The Monkees), while a group of kids end up at the home of Harriet (Alice Playten), where without parents or word that it’s all clear, they decide to go to the shelter themselves before the adults come home, where as they wait for Armageddon the conversation gets heavy and their fears lead to tragedy…
Fear can make you do all sorts of things, such as sending kids home right before a nuclear attack. Which actually did happen to students at the Mirealste Elementary School in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The incident was written up by Paul Weeks and appeared in the Los Angeles Times on November 1s, 1962. This subsequently became fodder for an article, “They Thought the War was On!,” for the April 1963 issue of McCall’s.
Perry, working from a script by his at-the-time wife Eleanor, made this film based on the story in McCall’s as his follow-up project after the Oscar-nominated David and Lisa. The husband and wife team took the main elements of the incident, about the kids being sent home with their teacher, and went with how it could have gone wrong.
The Perrys didn’t so much make a story about people preparing for the Bomb, as much as they made a set of character studies of people dealing with fear. Other than the civil defense callbox, the film deals less with nuclear war, which we get spared from well before the end, and more with how existential dread can drive and hurt people. Not everyone deals well with the approach of their end, and we watch the ones who have the failed with their fear enrobe themselves in shame for it.
Interestingly, while the adults are prone to dark thoughts, the kids themselves seem less likely to go to those places. Many of them casually make plans for the next day, or a few days later, their innocence is their protection from hysteria. It’s only when Harriet and her cadre actually go to the bomb shelter that we start seeing the kids take this more seriously, which shows the Perrys had a strong statement to make about how our attitudes about nuclear annihilation may have been more damaging than actually getting hit with the Bomb in the first place.
Their message starts to feel preachy as the film heads for its conclusion, but given the attitudes of the time and the near-miss everyone had in October of 1962, it’s quite understandable. With Frank Perry’s direction, including lots of hand-held shots and close in angles, he gives the film an intimacy that makes people dealing with their fears feel more like a confession than a statement. And with the talent assembled, many of whom started getting more seriously noted from being part of the film and went on to iconic performances, the script gets lots of good service from the cast, who keep what could have been an excess of melodrama from overrunning the film.
Sadly, not many people ran to see this. The film was released within a month of Kennedy’s assassination, which was not the best time to go to see a depressing movie. And a month later, when Dr. Strangelove was first shown, the audience made clear how they would rather deal with their own potential vaporization.
Later technology would work further against this film. Soon after intercontinental ballistic missiles entered into use, the next step was SLBM development. As a result, time warnings about a nuclear attack would drop from an hour, to no more than 30 minutes, and far less were one in a target for device fired from a submarine.
You’re less likely to be able to deal with your fears if you don’t have enough time to walk from the room to the hall…
NEXT TIME: You remember that movie where Boris Karloff was involved with resurrection through Egyptian magic? The one they made in England…?
