Down "On the Beach"

In April of 1957, a four-part story series entitled “The Last Days on Earth” appeared in the London Sunday Observer. Written by Nevil Shute (the pen name of author Nevil Shute Norway), it told of the end of the world thanks to nuclear war. That same year the series grew into a full-length novel entitled On the Beach. The innocuous-sounding title comes from the T.S. Eliot Poem “The Hollow Men.” The ending stanza starts with a reference to standing on the beach of a river. The last lines of the poem predict the world would end: “Not with a bang but a whimper.”

Shute’s scenario is downright scary. In the year 1962 nuclear weapons laced with cobalt have proliferated. Just about every nation in the Northern Hemisphere has at least a few in their arsenal. Suddenly,  a brushfire war between Albania and Italy witnesses a nuclear exchange. Then a nuclear weapon is deployed by apparently Arab forces in an Arab-Israeli conflict which wipes out Tel-Aviv. Egypt is supportive of this.  

To try to curb the conflict England and the United States send a massive flight of military aircraft over Cairo. The show of force backfires with tragic consequences. Equipped with Soviet Union-supplied long-range bombers, Egypt attacks London and Washington, D.C. Both cities are laid waste by nuclear bombs. Instead of Cairo being vaporized in retaliation, however, retaliatory attacks fall on the Soviet Union.   

The Egyptian bombers had been delivered so recently the Soviet markings had not been replaced. Soon Russia is not only at war with the N.A.T.O. countries but also Communist China. Soon the entire globe north of the Equator has been devastated by over four thousands nuclear weapons.   The nations south of the Equator are doomed to die slow deaths as the winds bear the radiation further and further south.  By September of 1963, it will be all but over for life on Earth.

The war has been so hard on the U.S. Navy the only operable vessels left are two nuclear submarines.   One, the Swordfish, is in South America.  It hopscotches from Rio to Montevideo as the radiation chases it south.   The other, the Scorpion, is in Australia. It calls Melbourne its new home port.  There is a smattering of surface ships up at Brisbane, but they are starved for fuel.

Dwight Towers, Scorpion’s skipper, is one of Shute’s main characters.   The others are Aussie naval officer Peter Holmes, his young wife Mary, an Australian scientist named Julian Osborne, and an ex-flame of Julian’s named Moira Davidson who soon befriends Towers.  

Peter and Julian are soon attached to the Scorpion for two exploratory probes she makes during the course of the novel.  What they see is a chilling preview of the fate that inevitably befalls Melbourne at the end. However, Shute grants his characters dignified exits with each one last seen alive.  He does not dwell over their lifeless corpses.  He even grants them a peaceful way out due to the Australian government offering free cyanide pills for those who wish to die healthy. Most of the main characters go this route except for Dwight, who chooses instead to scuttle Scorpion and stay aboard. So the world ends with a whimper in Shute’s chilling vision.

Image courtesy Wikimedia.

On the Beach quickly became hot property for Hollywood. Producer/director Stanley Kramer snapped up the rights before the book appeared in stores. Soon Kramer and an all-star ensemble arrived in Melbourne to commence filming. Starring Gregory Peck, Eva Gardner, Anthony Perkins, and Fred Astaire, the film was released in 1959 to critical acclaim and commercial success. Some changes were made to the story, however.  The causes of the war were left vague, and humanity surviving in the Southern Hemisphere was condensed to just Australia.  In the novel Moira and Dwight are just good friends.   He wants to stay faithful to the memory of his dead wife and children. Moira accepts this, but Stanley Kramer did not. Thinking audiences would not believe Gardner’s Moira to be resistible he decreed that she and Dwight fall in love. Shute did not like this change. Neither, apparently, did Peck, who had taken the role not only because he hated nuclear weapons but also was fascinated with the character of Dwight Towers. Their final parting, however, is memorable: She watches from shore as Dwight takes his boat homeward at the request of his men. They wish to die on home soil, not in Australia. This change was a bit better than the fate of Dwight and the sub in the book.

Despite these and other changes, the film captures the tone and mood of the novel chillingly. The only off-note occurs when the sub (which takes the name Swordfish in the film) tracks down a radio signal emanating from the United States. In the novel, the officer sent ashore is badly shaken by what he sees. This is (understandably) toned-down in the film, but the officer sends a dryly jovial message to Australian high command when he finds it in the movie. Honestly, how can you joke when you are in the land of the dead with your final destiny right around the corner?

Nevertheless, On the Beach (1959) is a classicmovie; by contrast, On the Beach (2000) is one of the worst remakes ever.  Clocking at a whopping three hours and fifteen minutes, this adaptation was based on both the novel and 1959 film.    Starring Armande Assante as Towers, Bryan Brown as Julian and Rachel Ward as Moira, it was nothing short of grotesque.  In this version of Shute’s story, in 2006 China and the United States nuke each other over China invading Taiwan.    Somehow this spreads nuclear fallout around the Northern Hemisphere and then promptly starts its march south.   This is an incredibly improbable scenario, given how China had achieved not only détente but friendship with nations around the world by 2000, including Taiwan, that bastion of the Chinese Nationalists.    The reasons for doing a remake thus cannot be justified by then-current events.   Rather, it was simply something from the “we’re out of ideas” department.  

Much worse was the script, directing, and special effects.    All the characters do is mark time, explore a little, talk (and chomp the scenery) too much, and then die.   Shute’s well-nuanced characters are reduced to empty, aggravating caricatures.  Here the tragedy is not that they die.   It is that they don’t die soon enough!   Especially Tower’s crew (now manning a 668i class sub named the Charleston); they cheer, laugh, and exclaim things like “Oh no!” in the manner of a brainless audience.  Gregory Peck’s guys were way cooler (and sympathetic) than them.

The remake is also crammed with graphic sex, corpses in irradiated cites, and some of the worst special effects ever.   Its depiction of a devastated San Francisco might be more in tune in Shute’s novel (it is intact but lifeless in the 1959 film) but it looks like a badly done matte painting when seen.   Finally, there are absurd touches more worthy of Airplane!   For example, when Towers takes his sub out to find out where a broadcast is coming from in Alaska, members of the crew watch the sub flick Run Silent, Run Deep at one point.   A crew that is all but doomed by an apocalyptic war watching a war flick?  Who was the movie officer, Ensign Ted Stryker Jr.?  

On The Beach (2000) is perhaps the worst remake of all time. It must have made Nevil Shute turn in his grave. It was so bad it gave me a pain in the back of my head I only felt when watching James Cameron’s Untrue Lies. (Oops, I meant Titanic).  At least we will always have the 1959 movie, and Shute’s timeless novel. One that the leaders of North Korea should have read before recently making threats of nuclear attacks on the United States; it could make any world leader think twice about nuking someone.  On the Beach also is my candidate for best post-apocalyptic novel ever written.  What's yours? 

Main image courtesy Wikimedia.