I might have to see if I can find the workprint version and maybe give the movie another shot. It's possible I thought it didn't age well because since seeing this I've seen other harsher and "grittier" depictions of a hypothetical nuclear war. That, and the first time I saw it the possibility of an exchange with the Soviets was a real threat and the second time I saw it nuclear war was more of a bad memory we were trying to keep in the past.
By now the only parts I remember very clearly are the girl being upset she was losing her hair until the boy showed he was losing his, too, and the nuke sequences themselves. The one part I remember that I do still find haunting is the scene of some airmen or farmers watching the first salvo of missiles take off and they have a brief conversation about how if we're launching our missiles the Soviets must be about to launch theirs if they haven't already done so.
I don't remember a freaky birth scene, though. I'm not sure if maybe you're remembering the scene from Threads, or if the birth scene from that was messed up enough that it overwrote my memory of a similar scene in Day After. If you haven't seen Threads, think of it as the British version of The Day After. I've heard people say it's "scarier" and I do seem to remember it having a bleaker outlook, but it didn't scar me the way Day After did. Probably because I saw Day After during the cold war and saw Threads in the mid 2000s or 2010s.
I might have to see if I can find the workprint version and maybe give the movie another shot. It's possible I thought it didn't age well because since seeing this I've seen other harsher and "grittier" depictions of a hypothetical nuclear war. That, and the first time I saw it the possibility of an exchange with the Soviets was a real threat and the second time I saw it nuclear war was more of a bad memory we were trying to keep in the past.
By now the only parts I remember very clearly are the girl being upset she was losing her hair until the boy showed he was losing his, too, and the nuke sequences themselves. The one part I remember that I do still find haunting is the scene of some airmen or farmers watching the first salvo of missiles take off and they have a brief conversation about how if we're launching our missiles the Soviets must be about to launch theirs if they haven't already done so.
I don't remember a freaky birth scene, though. I'm not sure if maybe you're remembering the scene from Threads, or if the birth scene from that was messed up enough that it overwrote my memory of a similar scene in Day After. If you haven't seen Threads, think of it as the British version of The Day After. I've heard people say it's "scarier" and I do seem to remember it having a bleaker outlook, but it didn't scar me the way Day After did. Probably because I saw Day After during the cold war and saw Threads in the mid 2000s or 2010s.