The War Game

THE WAR GAME
 
 
The War Game  is a 1965 television drama-documentary film depicting a nuclear war.  Written, directed, and produced by Peter Watkins for the BBC's The Wednesday Play anthology series, it caused dismay within the BBC and in government, and was withdrawn before the provisional screening date of Thursday 7 October 1965.  Despite this decision, it was publicly screened and shown abroad, winning the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1967.   (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
The title of the album by the Wanderers, Only Lovers Left Alive is taken from an apocalyptic 1964 novel called Only Lovers Left Alive by Dave Wallis about an uprising of British teenagers against not only the authorities but the entire adult population as well.  Sitting on top of a copy of the novel on the front cover photograph is another paperback book called The War Game, a companion book (published in 1967) to a controversial 1965 faux-documentary film also called The War Game (both by Peter Watkins) about the aftermath of a nuclear war in Britain; it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary that year, though because of the bleak subject matter, it wasn't actually broadcast in Britain for 20 years.  At the bottom of the stack of books is a copy of the Christian "end times" classic The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey.
 
(February 2011)
 
Last edited: March 22, 2021