Frank Overton

Film critic J. Hoberman discusses the best-selling 1962 novel by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler on which "Fail-Safe" is based, along with the pervasiveness of nuclear paranoia in films of the sixties.

Six episodes of the original series, restored and on the big screen for the first time, and a special retrospective documentary encompass this Fathom Event.

Documentary featuring interviews with director Sidney Lumet, "Fail-Safe" (2000) producer George Clooney, star Dan O’Herlihy and screenwriter Walter Bernstein.

Because of a technical defect an American bomber team mistakenly orders the destruction of Moscow. The President of the United States has but little time to prevent an atomic catastrophe from occurring.

Scout Finch, 6, and her older brother Jem live in sleepy Maycomb, Alabama, spending much of their time with their friend Dill and spying on their reclusive and mysterious neighbor, Boo Radley. When Atticus, their widowed father and a respected lawyer, defends a black man named Tom Robinson against fabricated rape charges, the trial and tangent events expose the children to evils of racism and stereotyping.

Banner Cole is a tough sheriff's deputy who forms a small posse to go after 4 death cell escapees who killed the sheriff , along with 3 other men, and kidnapped a woman with rape in mind.

A young daughter of poor farmers is forced by her mother to ditch her young boyfriend in order to marry an old rich neighbor but the girl rebels by becoming the town's harlot.

A young bureaucrat for the Tennessee Valley Authority goes to rural Tennessee to oversee the building of a dam. He encounters opposition from the local people, in particular a farmer who objects to his employment (with pay) of local black laborers. Much of the plot revolves around the eviction of a stubborn octogenarian from her home on an island in the river, and the young man's love affair with that woman's widowed granddaughter. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation.

In Oklahoma in the 1920s, Rubin Flood loses his job as a traveling salesman when the company goes bankrupt. This adds to his worries at home. His wife Cora is frigid because of trying to make ends meet. His teenage daughter Reenie is afraid of going out on dates, but eventually makes friends with a troubled Jewish boy Sammy Golden, and his son is a mama's boy. He finally storms out of the house when Cora falsely accuses him of having an affair with Mavis Pruitt.

Jail house tensions mount as a killer's execution approaches.