Rating: 
Summary: Melodramatic, but occasionally effective
Review: This is an interesting film, because while the subject matter is very modern, the movie is not. The love story between Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner is overwrought and full of cliches. Some of the characterizations are rather broad, such as Anthony Perkins' dim, hysterical wife. I believe the movie is somewhat miscast. Gregory Peck is excellent as the submarine captain, and Fred Astaire is good as the car racing scientist, but Ava Gardner isn't, and none of the Americans playing Australians sound as if they're from Australia. The movie is also overlong.The good news is the subject matter is scary as hell. And while the scientific premise may be unrealistic, the idea of a wall of radiation slowly and inexorably killing everything in its path as it travels south is very frightening. Some of the larger touches are very well done such as the revival meeting which gradually shrinks as the die-off begins, and the haunting song "Waltzing Mathilda" adds to the atmosphere. The scenes of dead American cities are appropriately haunting. A sense of impending doom permeates the film. While the book is much better, this is a good stab at an end of the world movie. The idea of everyone - the entire human race - dying off is scarier than any vampire movie.
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent movie, of it's own era.
Review: I suspect that the reason so many ... customer reviews of On the Beach are negative is that the expectations of today's audiences, particularly younger audiences, are entirely different from when this movie was released, in 1959. The movie is based quite closely on Neville Shute's excellent novel, with just a few differences. The rather strange denial of impending death, shown by most of the characters in the book, has been wisely omitted from the movie. The scientist, John Osborne, has had his name changed to Julian in the film, and is given more depth, beautifully played by Fred Astaire. I think today's movie goers have difficulty relating to this movie because it is not an action movie and it is not a science fiction movie. Yes, it deals with the last survivors of a nuclear war as they await their own deaths. But the genre of science fiction films requires that the heroes and/or heroines confront the Problem and conquer it, whether that Problem be giant ants, invading Martians, or mutant carnivorous plants. In On the Beach, it is made plain from the beginning of both the book and the movie that there will be no triumph or escape. Instead, the theme is the maintaining of human decency and integrity in the face of imminent death. This is not the sort of stuff for young audiences raised on Bruce Lee movies. I think it is important, too, that today's young movie-goers watch this movie with the idea firmly in mind that people in 1959 believed that they might very well be the last generation of human beings, before a nuclear holocaust wiped us all out. I was nineteen when I first saw the film, just after its release to theaters and long before the advent of VHS and home video. It was powerful stuff back then, and I don't think there's any doubt that it was an important element in the nuclear disarmament movement. I highly recommend this movie. The acting and direction are excellent, and it deals with powerful themes. But keep in mind that you'll be watching a film from another era, when books and movies were deliberately slower paced and the depth of characterization was considered to be much more important than fast paced action.
Rating: 
Summary: We Own It, So By Golly We're Going To USE It !
Review: I saw this long, depressing -- and excellent -- movie at a university media center a few years ago. That evening's guest star was the man who had provided the sound, including music, for "On The Beach." Numerous young movie-school college kids were on hand, and afterward they asked far too many questions (during competition to impress the professor). The music director explained that, when this movie was made, the film production company had recently acquired the rights to the song "Waltzing Matilda," which explains why we hear it played and sung throughout the film... over and over and over again, with the chorus repeated over and over and over again, to the point you are sick of it. Perhaps that was the intent -- to prompt simulated radiation sickness in the theater audience from playing a particular song until everyone wants to throw up from hearing it. If that's the case, they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. "... and his ghost may be heard, as you ride beside the billabong...."
Rating: 
Summary: I Can Sum This Up In Three Words
Review: In one word - Depressing. In another word - Bleak. In one last word - Long. I watched this only because I wanted to give Anthony Perkins another chance after "Psycho", and also because Gregory Peck was in it. Fred Astaire was a depressing drunk scientist obsessed with his Ferrari - he was much better in Top Hat. Ava Gardner was another tippler obsessed with Gregory - she was much better in The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Gregory Peck was obsessed with his dead family - he was also better in The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and even better in "Spellbound", "Roman Holiday", and "The Keys of the Kingdom". Anthony Perkins was chillingly Norman Bates-ey. I'll never think of him any other way. Only as Cornelius Hackl in "The Matchmaker" was he slightly convincing as something besides a maniac killer. Whoever played Anthony's wife mustn't have impressed me much cause I don't remember much about her. This film does have a message. "Brother, there is still time." I don't believe the world will end the way this movie portrays, but however the End Times come about, RIGHT NOW there is still time to get right with the Maker! All the same, there have to be shorter and less depressing ways to portray the same message. So there you have my opinion. In my world, On the Beach is On the Way Out.
Rating:
Summary: HEAVY HANDED BUT HAUNTING IMAGES
Review: Probably the most haunting of all movie beach scenes is in Stanly Kramer's heavy-handed 1959 anti-nuclear message movie in which a handful of characters await death via drifting radiation -- among them Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner. A lone figure running down an otherwise empty Australian beach -- on what may be a humanless world -- is a hard image to shake. Escaping to the beach does not always guarantee a happy ending.
Rating:
Summary: Still holds up
Review: Wore out my VHS now working on the DVD. I am saddened that there are not a lot of DVD goodies on their film. Maybe one day there will be a criterion version. Yes the book was written in the Cold War Era environment. Some characters are predictable or are portrayed as such so we can see how different people face or do not face the inevitable. Even those characters that change easily through some sort of epiphany can be predictable. The basic story in the book is that Albania sends a plan with a major country's markings and we retaliate. In the movie they changed it to some hotshot getting trigger-happy with a weapon that could only cause assured destruction. However the book not a pacifist (don't build bombs story). It could be a speculative fiction or just speculative. Again the book On the Beach as most books is more complete in the characterization and description of the story. One the people is a cross of characters. The captain, Dwight Towers, is well trained and loyal to the U.S. to the end. He takes the sub out to international waters, as Australia is an ally, but not the U.S. Moira Davidson realizes that Dwight is married and helps him buy a pogo stick for the kid. She also decides to make something of herself by going to secretarial school. Others plan for next year. The movie On the Beach (1959) stays fairly loyal to the feel, with a few minor changes. Some of the changes were necessary due to the difference in media. However others were a little distracting. They used major stars that overshadowed the character that they were playing. Ava Gardner was just a tad old for the part of Moira Davidson. However the movie still let the characters be real and predictable. Such as Dwight Towers, loyal to the U.S. takes his crew back to the US (not quite the book but still loyal to this command). It is worth re-wathcing. But defiantly read the book.
Rating: 
Summary: On the Beach
Review: On the beach did have interesting scientific information. BUT it didn't have an interesting plot, it is not well presented through the language...it had a good topic and a good idea however it did not appeal to me and my class. when i started reading the book, i knew how it ended... there was not enough on how people feel and react and it's more about the scientific and technical things. Also, it was not realistic on how the people reacted to the situation.
Rating:
Summary: A Frightening, yet powerful movie
Review: This is movie that I will probably never forget. It's very haunting images of a completely deserted San Francisco and it's effective use of music are just a couple of things that make it a really powerful film. I don't think I will ever again hear "Waltzing Matilda" and not think about this movie. And at the end there is the very sad salvation army type band playing a mournful "Onward Christian Soldiers." There is a sense of hopelessness and despair that make this film quite disturbing. However I found that it punctuated to me anew how important my faith is to me.
Rating:
Summary: Technology and its Relationship to People
Review: Stanley Kramer was a hard-hitting, uncompromising producer-director who specialized in "message films." His 1958 blockbuster film "The Defiant Ones" with Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis addressed the race issue in America just one year after President Eisenhower was compelled to send federal troops into Little Rock to enforce the U.S. Supreme Court's school desegregation order. One year later "On the Beach" was released and generated an immediate firestorm of controversy. The year the film was released, 1959, was the same year that Vice-President Richard Nixon had his famous "Kitchen Debate"in Moscow with Soviet boss Nikita Khrushchev. Just three years later the Cuban Missile Crisis took place, when the world hung on the precipice of a possible nuclear conflict as President John F. Kennedy and Khrushchev stood "eyeball to eyeball." "On the Beach" was a faithful adaptation by screenwriter John Paxton of a novel by Australian author Nevil Shute. It is 1964 and a nuclear conflict has taken place. All other human life is dead with the exception of those living in Australia, where the extinction of the human race is said to be five months away at the most from the ravages of nuclear fallout, which is making its ugly path Australia's way. The film covers two basic points: 1) How and why did humankind reach this precipice?; 2) How do people react in the wake of such a unanimous death sentence? In his first chiefly dramatic role, dancing great Fred Astaire is illuminating as a nuclear scientist who feels waves of guilt over his assistance in helping build awesome tools of destruction, and yet, on the other hand, when confronted at a party to explain what happened and how the cataclysym occurred, he replies by saying that the scientists signed petitions and warned governments about the destruction that would be unleashed if the weapons were ever used. As to how the conflict started, he confesses ignorance, speculating that it was "probably started by some bloke who thought he saw something on a radar screen that wasn't actually there." Submarine commander Gregory Peck, an American in Australia on naval duty, wants to start a relationship with Ava Gardner, but lives in a world where he is unable to accept that his wife and children in New London, Connecticut are no longer alive. Gardner, on the other hand, is a lonely woman given to acoholic depression who believes that life has passed her by, and hopes to secure one important love attachment with Peck before the end of the world occurs. "I wanted just once to walk on Rue de Rivoli," she tells Peck tearfully in one emotional scene. Navy lieutenant Anthony Perkins and wife Donna Anderson have a baby daughter and would, ordinarily, look forward to a long and productive family life. Instead Perkins, not wanting to expose wife and daughter to suffering, arranges to receive pills that can induce early death before leaving on an assignment to America on Peck's submarine, not wanting them to suffer unnecessarily in his expected absence. Anderson is in denial, refusing to believe that the prospect for humanity is hopeless. Eventually when the end comes Perkins is there and she feels fulfilled by his love and that she holds for her young daughter. One unique plot point is the exploration of Peck and crewmates toward possible hope of life. It comes in the form of unexpected and unexplainable morse code sounds from a point in San Diego. When they investigate they learn that the sounds result from a window shade brushing against a Coke bottle, which then pushes against the code machine. One of the cinematic highlights of the film is the last Australian Grand Prix auto race, in which the drivers throw caution to the winds, many hoping to kill themselves rather than face death through radiation or suicide pills. Astaire, who had never before raced competitively, wins in his prize Ferrari. He shortly thereafter asphyxiates himself in his Ferrari in his garage after placing his winning emblem on his car.
Rating:
Summary: Bleak and Stunning Perfection
Review: Both the novel and the film (which is extremely faithful to the novel) are moving and unforgettable. They tell the story of an American submarine crew stranded in Australia right after a global nuclear war. The atmosphere, the rain, the oceans, and the clouds are loaded with radiation that has already killed most of the Earth's population, and will eventually get them all. What do you do with your time when the world is ending? That is the question to be answered by these ordinary, decent people. They answer it to the best of their ability, and the results are a story that cannot be forgotten. Led by Gregory Peck (the submarine captain) and Ava Gardner (the Australian girl who Peck falls in love with as the world winds down), the cast does a perfect job of bringing the novel to life. Fred Astaire shows his versatility by doing a great job with his first dramatic role, and Anthony Perkins is a perfect complement to Peck and to this film. Like "Alas, Babylon", "On The Beach" takes humanity's worst-case scenario and moves forward with it. When I was a child, a global nuclear war did not seem implausible. It now seems less likely, but who can say after 9/11/01? Read or watch "On The Beach" and think. Hopefully, this story will forever remain fiction. Maybe the nobility shown by these characters will be what saves us from their situation.
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