Why Threads is still the most terrifying film ever made

As we inch ever closer to Halloween, the inevitable lists of the scariest films ever made have already begun to crop up. Whenever these lists are compiled by people who actually know what they’re talking about, there’s invariably an honourable mention of a small budget, in-house BBC production which aired on BBC 2 and was never shown in cinemas.

It was written by the author of Kes and directed by a man who would go on to make Hollywood fodder such as L.A. Story and The Bodyguard. Yet when novelist Barry Hines and a director with the BBC’s science department, Mick Jackson, collaborated on Threads, they created what is now widely regarded as one of the disturbing, if not the most downright terrifying, films ever made.

Celebrating – if that is the appropriate word – its 40th anniversary this year, Threads is being aired by the BBC for the first time in decades tonight at 10.15 p.m. on BBC Four. It will be preceded by a quick interview with the director at 10 p.m.

What made a film with such humble beginnings so traumatising that it moved the respected Guardian film critic, Peter Bradshaw, to declare it ‘the most frightening film I have ever seen’? There are two obvious explanations – content and context.