You could say that the anti nuclear theme here came a bit late to the party, The Day After was from '83 and Dr Strangelove from '64, but it was probable brought back by the '86 Tjernobyl disaster. I was twelve and can vividly remember the fear of the nuclear fall out, the radiation cloud that suposedly drifted through Europe. But I can't remember the idea of building fall out shelters like they make out in this Italian film.

Maybe this should be more seen as an psychological or social experiment like the Stanford Prison Experiment (1971) or the much later Big Brother reality TV shows (1999).

A group of diverse people locked in a single location and with a pressure cooking situation that brings out the best and worst in people. I'm thinking Lost, Lord of the Flies, Dark Star, Breakfast Club. There are so many.

This one does a fine job of making you dislike all the characters because of their stereotypical behaviour. The actors are unable to do anything interesting with their parts and the lack of direction makes every scene like something taken from an amateur filmschool. Burt Lancaster's part is probable the only interesting and most convincing character. But he's not used in most of the movie.

Sadly, there are no surprises, the plot is thin but not all bad. It is barely watchable. Only interesting for people like me who enjoy cult and b-films or are interested in vintage scifi and disaster movies or cheap direct to video flicks.

And to Spaghettify it some more, there is some music by Ennio Moricone.

In the final credits it says that Philip G. Zimbardo served as scientific adviser for this film. Not only the author of a world-famous introductory book on psychology, Zimbardo was also professor at Stanford University and in this position responsible for the infamous "Stanford Prison Experiment" that was later, among others, turned into a decent film by German director Oliver Hirschbiegel in the 90s. "Il Giorno prima" has some elements of that particular experiment. Whereas back in Stanford volunteers were given the roles of guardians and prisoners and stuck into an improvised prison, "Giorno" has a bunch of people residing in an atomic bunker for two weeks to explore the psychological difficulties that may arise from such a situation. In Stanford, things went wrong: The "guardians" used their roles to punish and humiliate the "prisoners", displaying raw violence in a surrounding that was only to be taken "as if"; Zimbardo had to stop the experiment in order to save the participants' lives. The "Stanford Prison Experiment" gave an insight on how people behave under extreme circumstances. This is repeated in "Il Giorno prima", this time located in a German bunker, with Burt Lancaster in a sort-of "homage" to Zimbardos own original role. As one would expect from an experiment (though the inhabitants of the bunker are not so suspicious),stimuli from outside are brought in, thereby creating arguments, discrepancies and finally even violence. The "moral", so to say, is not surprising, and the acting isn't so great, but the main fault is the very naive script. Then again, it still is an entertaining flick, well worth a look – but probably not two.

So Ben Gazzara is locked in a nuclear fallout shelter with Euro trash. This'll be a fun 90 minutes.

Burt Lancaster hires people from all over Europe (I guess that explains why there's no token minorities),and Ben Gazzara to spend twenty days testing out a nuclear fallout shelter. They'll receive a bonus if they can all stay in for the full time period.

This means we have to sit through endless comments from everyone about how nuclear weapons are evil and how evil America is. Ben Gazzara is too nice to remind them they'd all be speaking German right now if it wasn't for him!

Actually Gazzara makes the moves on the most attractive women.

Predictably they receive news reports of a rogue nuclear missile headed in their direction. Gee, wonder if this is part of the test? Of course you're not wondering because it's obvious it is!

Rioting and looting are rampant and the rioters want inside the nuclear shelter.

Those inside are afraid and decide to gun them down with the M16s they have lying around. So the shelter can withstand a nuclear blast but not people banging on the door with their bare hands? That's when it's revealed it was all just a test.

The production quality gets into real Chester Novell Turner territory. I thought this was made for TV until I heard the F bombs.

Give this one a pass.