This Is Not a Test

A 1962 American low-budget science fiction film directed by Fredric Gadette, produced at the height of the Cold War. Deputy Sheriff Dan Colter (Seamon Glass) receives orders to block a rural road leading into an unidentified city as a nuclear attack appears to be underway. He detains a group of motorists — an elderly man and his granddaughter, a newly rich man and his alcoholic wife, a trucker, and a hitchhiker who turns out to be a psychotic murderer. As the countdown to the missile attack continues, the group desperately tries to convert a supply truck into an impromptu bomb shelter while civility and the deputy's sanity unravel. A genuinely disturbing film whose low-budget ineptitude unintentionally conveys the helplessness of facing atomic annihilation.