Ladybug Ladybug (1963)

A group of young American school children are sent home from their rural school following the sounding of a nuclear attack alarm. The staff are unable to determine whether or not the alarm is false.

The camera stays with a group of children being led by teacher Mrs Andrews (Nancy Marchand) to their homes along the country roads.

Along the way, the kids speculate on whether the alarm is genuine or a false alarm and the possibility of annihilation in what they believe to be an imminent nuclear holocaust.

The tension is bolstered by what they find at home.

JoAnn (Linda Meyer) is told she can’t go to the “dirty basement”, so crawls under her bed with her goldfish; Don and Trudy’s mother (Elena Karam) kneels in prayer with her children; and Luke – used to playing games with his dementia-ridden grandmother – cajoles her into the cellar on the pretext that Indians are about to attack. Sarah (Marilyn Rogers) runs off in a panic when she finds her house empty.

Most of the youngsters wind up in a private air raid shelter, where Harriet (Alice Playten) asserts herself as an obnoxious disciplinarian (shades of Lord of the Flies), rationing food and refusing to admit a hysterical Sarah.

Of course, the alarm is eventually found to be false, the result of faulty wiring, but that doesn’t stop the panic from running its horrific course.

Some of the sequences are excellent. One focuses on the frantic efforts of Steve (Christopher Howard) to escape an approaching plane (pictured).

Another spotlights the distraught Mrs Andrews, freed of her charges, who faces the moment of truth when a truck driver (James Frawley) gives her a lift.

The heartbreaking finale is possibly the film’s most effective sequence, involving a deserted junkyard, an abandoned refrigerator and the unnerving spectre of a bomber plane flying overhead.

Shot entirely on location in suburban Gradyville and Newton in Pennsylvania, Ladybug Ladybug tells a fascinating story but completely fails to entertain.

Steve
Christopher Howard
Harriet
Alice Playten
Brian
Donnie Melvin
Sarah
Marilyn Rogers
Joel
Miles Chapin
Gary
Doug Chapin
Luke
Alan Howard
JoAnn
Linda Meyer
Don
David Komoroff
Trudy
Susan Melvin
Pattie
Jennifer Stone
Peter
Bozo Dell
Jill
Dianne Higgins
Mrs Andrews
Nancy Marchand
Principal John Calkins
William Daniels
Mrs Maxton
Jane Connell
Don and Trudy’s Mother
Elena Karam
Luke’s Grandmother
Judith Lowry
JoAnn’s Father
Richard Hamilton
JoAnn’s Mother
Estelle Parsons
Mrs Hayworth
Jane Hoffman
Betty Forbes
Kathryn Hays
Truck Driver
James Frawley

Director
Frank Perry

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