The Day After (1983)

Artwork by Noppadol

Cold War anxieties over nuclear annihilation were candidly exploited in The Day After. On November 20th, 1983 more than a third of all American household's sat down to watch this made-for-TV, no-punches-pulled depiction of what would happen if political brinkmanship advanced beyond rhetoric to a punch of the shiny red button. No folks, there's no happy ending in this one. All the film's protagonists succumb to radiation poisoning, or other painfully slow ends.

The Day After was one of the all time most watched events on television and had an impact that allegedly reached the highest level of government. Ronald Regan later admitted that the film and the collective reaction to it factored in to his detente with The Soviet Union.

Elsewhere in the world, The Day After was given theatrical release, where it spawned similar doom-and-gloom anxieties among those who saw it. 

In Thailand, Sahamongkol Films purchased the distribution rights and hired the rising star artist Nopphadol to do the artwork. The result is as unsettling as the film itself. All the gritty details characteristic of Thai poster art find depiction in a mound of death, destruction and anxiety, fire-toned and capped off with an enormous nuclear mushroom cloud.

While lacking the blood and guts factor common to many Thai posters, the graphics have a chilling starkness to them that makes this poster ever more terrifying, if only because of how close we've actually come to this scenario over the years. 

This is one that will eventually go up on my wall.