To anyone old enough to remember “duck and cover’ or “the arms race”, the atomic bomb remains a very real fear. These apocalyptic companions live on in great numbers in our current world. The environment may be degrading, terrorists may be behind every door, but nuclear weapons are the one threat that could end the world in one fell stroke. They are also the physical manifestation of the darkest recesses of the human soul. “I Live In Fear” is a Kurosawa movie made after World War II that reflects the paranoia of the only nation to have experienced the destruction of a nuclear attack. The central character of the film lives with the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki haunting his every day. He spends the movie trying to get his family to move to South America to avoid the effects of the inevitable use of nuclear weapons. To me, this movie is the ultimate “horror” film because it displays the ruins of a man who has lived through true terror. Aliens, vampires and zombies to the rear. Here comes the big one. “I Live In Fear” is not movie making history in terms of direction or production. Yet, it is the only movie that deals with the man made monster that must, one day, be confronted and destroyed – the “H” bomb. I shivered through the entire running time. Toshiro Mifune plays an old man while he was a young man better than anyone that comes to mind. See it. This is a fear we should all have.
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