Threads cast and crew ‘suffered trauma’ after nuclear attack film

The creators of a documentary about the making of nuclear apocalypse film Threads say many of the cast and crew had “suffered with the trauma of being involved”.

Threads, which tracks the aftermath of a nuclear attack on Sheffield, was first screened on the BBC on 23 September 1984 and fast became a cult classic.

Now filmmakers Craig Ian Mann and Rob Nevitt have spoken to more than 50 people involved in the making of the film for their documentary Survivors: The Spectre of Threads.

Mr Mann said: “[Threads] is a film that more than any I can think of everybody who worked on it it has impacted their lives in some way or another. Sometimes very positively and sometimes somewhat negatively.”

“There are people who have suffered the trauma of having been in and seen Threads,” he told BBC Radio Sheffield.

“There’s one participant in the documentary who has become a Doomsday prepper.

“He lives in America and has a bunker and canned food and weapons and he is prepared for the end of the world at any moment and that’s because he was in and saw Threads.”

He said interviewing the man – who he did not identify – had been “almost like a therapy session” and added: “He was happy to have had the realisation [on camera] that there was a link between the film and what came after.”

Written by Barry Hines and directed by Mick Jackson, Threads charts the impact of a thermonuclear blast on Sheffield.

When it first aired many of those who watched said they had been left deeply traumatised, with the original screening date later dubbed “the night the country didn’t sleep“.

In a bid to quantify the impact of the film and to record the memories of those who took part Mr Mann and Mr Nevitt spoke to dozens of people who were involved.

The duo said they had gathered 76 hours of footage for the project, which will premiere at Sheffield’s Showroom Cinema on Saturday.

Mr Mann said: “For me it’s less a passion about the film, I think the film is a masterpiece, but I think what we’ve become invested in is recording people’s memories.

“These are memories that people have probably only shared with friends, family or down the pub, they have probably never told anybody publicly about their appearance in Threads and their moment on that set and their contribution to that film.

“It think it’s important that we record those memories while we still can and create a definitive picture, particularly of all the local people who contributed to the film, but everybody who worked on Threads and how it has impacted their lives.”

Mr Nevitt added: “It went from being quite locally focused to becoming what we hope is the definitive ‘making of’ and legacy of the film.

“We’ve interviewed a lot of people who were in in for literally a split second, but it’s impacted their lives massively. [It was] 40 years ago but they’re talking vividly, as if this was an experience that was yesterday even though they are in it for such a short space of time.”

Threads is set to be remade by Warp Films, the production company behind This is England and Adolescence, with shooting due to start no earlier than 2027.

Asked about the reboot, Mr Nevitt said: “If it’s done in the right spirit, that’s the main thing,” adding that he thought Warp were the “right people” for the job.

“Scientific advisors, who were on the original, have said if [a nuclear bombing] was to happen now, it would be 100 times worse.

“So, I think that needs to follow through in any future kind of remake – that the horror, and the truth of it would still need to be there.”

Mr Mann added: “It needs to be relevant to now in the same way that the film was relevant in 1984.”