Apocalypse Then: American and Japanese Atomic Cinema, 1951-1967

Your next stop-mutants, monsters, and mushroom clouds. America, the only country to have dropped the Bomb, and Japan, the only country to have suffered its wrath, naturally portray the nuclear threat through different cinematic lenses, and Apocalypse Then shows the view from both sides of the Pacific. American science fiction films of the 1950s and 1960s generally argue that it is possible to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle, whereas Japanese science fiction films of the same period assert that once freed, the nuclear genie could never again be imprisoned. With this viewpoint in mind, this book examines the genre movies of these two countries released between 1951 and 1967 that spotlight the nuclear threat, running the gamut from Godzilla to Dr. Strangelove, from The Mysterians to The Incredible Shrinking Man, from The Last War to On the Beach.