Staff and students at a rural school react to a warning of an imminent nuclear attack, not knowing whether it is real or mistaken.
Jane Connell William Daniels James Frawley Richard Hamilton Kathryn Hays Jane Hoffman Elena Karam Judith Lowry Nancy Marchand Estelle Parsons Doug Chapin Miles Chapin Bozo Dell Dianne Higgins Alan Howard Christopher Howard David Komoroff Donnie Melvin Susan Melvin Linda Meyer Alice Playten Marilyn Rogers Jennifer Stone
USA
USA
As somber as it is unambiguously direct, Perry's urgent subversion of an American utopia. A nuclear alert, children pondering their destruction, the film ventures into a bleak sermon. Hamstrung by some wobbly teleplay logic, the looming, heavy dread persists. An anxious, unsubtle "What if?"
"Ladybug Ladybug" is a 1963 drama directed by Frank Perry. As Perry was a formulated duo with his wife Eleanor, who wrote this film, the pair assembled many dramatic features that instill a bit of surrealism in their seemingly formal application of narrative. This factor exemplified within "The Swimmer" (1968) which is a favorite of mine within the pair's workings, with its seemingly instilled an underlying slow build of a nightmare built into a suburban story in such nightmarish fashion. "Ladybug Ladybug" is the pair's feature directly a few years prior, which at face value of who was involved in the project completely enthralled me to blind pick up the film for purchase and viewing. The easy gamble paid off,…
Collabin' with Stephen! Check out his review too!
The bookends of Ladybug, Ladybug parallel Sidney Lumet’s Cold War thriller Fail Safe. The images are presented in slightly different manners but both evoke a sense of chaos, destruction, and panic amid the throes of paranoia & war. Frank Perry’s film somehow predates Lumet’s film, which subsequently was overshadowed by Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (something was in the water in 1963 and 1964, eh?), however, Perry’s film grapples with one aspect much different than those war-thriller classics. Where the 1964 pair takes tone in opposite directions, they both deliver scenarios as adults coming to the table. Perry instead poses the idea of seeing war through the eyes of children.
A smidge of thematic content from Lord of the…
A little bit of a theme forming with watching these Kino releases so far this month--so many of these films are such time capsules! I don't mean that description is a disparaging way at all. There is something to be said for some films that are seemingly timeless, while there are other films very much of the time in which they were made. So many times I see films being basically dismissed for having an aesthetic so closely tied to the time. But shouldn't film, like any other art, represent the time in which it was made? I'll answer my own question with a resounding yes.
I was born in 1975, so I missed all of the 60s…
"I will never forget you as long as I live."
-I felt bad for Mrs. Andrews feet. That woman walked miles in those heels to take all the children home from school.
Surprise surprise, what a rare gem. I have never heard anything about this film from any movie fan before which makes me believe this is either overlooked or just forgotten about. Thanks to my dude Erik for posting a great review on this particular film that I decided to give it a watch.
This is a drama that will give you a sense of paranoia cause at the time of the 60s, they were unprepared and not certain on how to handle a possible nuclear attack. It can…
The emotional reactions of a group of children and a teacher who is leading them to their homes from a rural elementary school after an alarm goes off signifying imminent nuclear attack kind of captured in an intense black and white 1960s psychological style of closeups and dialog. The teacher wore high heels that day and the long walk is killing her feet. You can feel her agony. Between her ordeal and the kids half understanding what's happening and half processing it as well as they can as kids, you can see an evolution taking place from childhood fantasy to tragic grasping that the nukes might come at any minute. Relentlessly paced while nothing happens yet you're drawn into it like you might have been with a classic kid based film like Stand by Me. Something about seeing kids deal with this stress that makes Ladybug Ladybug hit hard.
When I read the teaser summary for Ladybug Ladybug ("Panic sweeps through a rural school in the early 1960s when an air-raid system sounds, warning of a coming nuclear attack and resulting in tragedy"), I expected some starchy cautionary docudrama about the importance of heeding the warning system in a calm and efficient manner, with all-knowing adults smoking pipes and possibly wearing lab coats who save the day by leading disorderly children to a fall-out shelter where they discuss the importance of 'preserving the American Dream from those gosh-darn, no-good Commies' and finally emerging from the drill with a sermonizing lecture about keeping a cool head under pressure if (God and Lady Liberty preserve us) the worst case scenario actually…
Very ambitious, well acted and a strong black and white look but it really hammered the same nail throughout. I do reserve some critique to the time it was put out and the anxiety ratcheted up to this material and what it fundamentally wants to do but it really works in that well oiled mitt. Should have taken the title Children of the damned before it was used a year later. It wasn't terrible but I grew weary even though it has a short running time.
Mini-collab with Ziglet_mir. Please check out his review here
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was a Cold War resurgence in the US of fear of nuclear attack. It was the era of the Cuban Missile Crisis, national Civil Defense Alert drills for Americans to “take cover”, and the marketing of consumer home bomb shelters, supported by the Kennedy administration. This dramatization by Frank Perry – written by his wife/collaborator Eleanor Perry – captures this in a depiction of children and adults’ reaction to an alarm in a rural school that signals a nuclear attack within one hour. It’s chillingly effective in its portrayal of the unease and paranoia that grows during a normal school day.
What’s masterful…
![Erik [Auk]](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e29f7c74cb1d4a3859a3511566e4040e?rating=PG&size=80&border=&default=https%3A%2F%2Fs.ltrbxd.com%2Fstatic%2Fimg%2Favatar80.ccc31669.png){kind=small}
Ladybug, Ladybug is an absolutely harrowing film about a school of elementary age children and what happens after their school's nuclear-attack alarm starts ringing and won't stop.
Whilst a drama, on some level this film plays like a horror movie. It's scary to think of something similar happening today, let alone how the film must have played to audiences of 1963. In the opening credits, this story purports to be inspired by a real event and the movie does reveal halfway through that the principal believes the alarm short-circuited. Despite this revelation that comes halfway through, it's left in the air whether this is actually true and the ending is a lot more ambiguous over whether there might actually be…
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𝟐𝟒. 𝐀𝐏𝐎𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐘𝐏𝐒𝐄 - 𝐧𝐮𝐜𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫/𝐳𝐨𝐦𝐛𝐢𝐞/𝐬𝐮𝐛𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐢𝐝/𝐰𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐝. 𝐓𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐤.
I started this movie a long time ago but had to turn it off for some reason, several years have passed and it's hovered in the back of my mind. I've thought about it a lot as I've caught up with a lot of Frank Perry's other work. The cliffhanger made me think that revisiting it finally would be more exciting than it ended up being. We get some exceptional child performances, which I'm always delighted to see, especially in drama/trauma/horror (this isn't horror but it's horrifying). I like seeing children in films put…
Small scale Cold War docudrama that despite significant limitations of scope, budget and acting, does succeed in creating an uncomfortable mood, heavy with portent. Based on a magazine article about a school during the Cuban Missile Crisis of the year before, the normal rhythms of the school day are interrupted by a civil defence alarm that is not a test. Nobody can be reached at the nearby army base, and in the information vacuum the teachers decide to send the children home, back to their equally oblivious parents. In this very intimate and rural consideration of what a nuclear attack could look like I was put in mind of the not-for-kids animated feature When the Wind Blows (1986). The best…
