The Day After was a made-for-tv movie about the effects of nuclear warfare that aired on ABC in 1983. Due to the obviously disturbing content, many cuts had to be made by the network censors, even things that had no graphic content whatsoever. The director, Nicholas Meyer (of Star Trek II fame), was unhappy with ABC’s interference. Another alteration occurred after the initial airing when people complained about the voice of the president sounding too much like Ronald Reagan. All current releases (including the DVDs) overdub the president with a generic actor.

Which brings me to the topic of this thread. I was snooping around for info about deleted scenes from the movie, when I found a “rough cut” on the Internet Archive: Link removed. Per forum rules, please don’t link directly to file downloads. – Jay

This cut is very interesting, for several reasons. I only watched the attack sequence, and already I found many differences. There are a lot of “SCENE MISSING” intertitles, and some of the special effects shots are incomplete. That being said, there are also scenes that do not appear in the final, such as a woman running while on fire.

Could this be of any interest to us? A restoration job might be difficult because the quality is terrible.