The War Game

1966 48 min ★ 7.7 War, TV Movie

A hypothetical Chinese invasion of South Vietnam triggers a new world war between East and West. In Rochester, Kent, the anticipation of a nuclear attack leads to mass evacuations. When a stray missile explodes, the ensuing firestorm blinds all those who see it. It's not long before the fabric of society is ripped apart from radiation poisoning, a lack of infrastructure and rioting for food and other necessities.

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Cast

Michael Aspel

Commentator

Kathy Staff

Interviewee (uncredited)

Peter Watkins

Documentist (uncredited)

Peter Graham

Commentator

Dave Baldwin

Schoolmaster / Interviewer (uncredited)

Details

Director

Peter Watkins

Tagline

"BBC TV's film about a nuclear attack on Britain"

Status

Released

Original Language

EN

Production

BBC

Reviews

G

Gimly

April 5, 2020

★ 6/10

Great, genuinely hard to watch, eminently memorable and absolutely no fun at all. But that's really important I think, so much media really tries to sort of paint this candy-coated filter over subjects like war, when in reality, war, especially nuclear war, is pretty fucked. There's nothing wrong with making those other movies, the ones where the heroes win the day and good guys triumph, those wil...

C

CinemaSerf

August 2, 2025

★ 7/10

I couldn’t decide which was the scarier prospect from this docu-drama? Finding somewhere safe to shelter from the eye-watering megatonnage of uranium enriched warheads or to emerge afterwards to a society that is truly dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest, with no power or food or water or just about anything else - except, perhaps, some semblance of a military dictatorship run by the few lucky en...