Continuing the series in which our writers revisit childhood movie passions, our film critic finds that mid-Atlantic
bomb thriller Juggernaut from 1974 still gets his palms sweating
Do you cut the red wire or the blue wire? One renders the explosive mechanism harmless. The other causes everyone to die in an almighty explosion. And you make your decision as the sweat pours off your forehead, and makes your fingers holding the pliers slippery, with the traditional, sadistically pointless digital clock installed in the device inexorably counting down to zero … red wire? … blue wire? … red wire? … blue wire? … tick, tick, tick.
Talk about being triggered. In 1974, while the nation went into stoic semi-denial about the IRA bombing campaign, I went into a trance of excitement about the bomb-disposal suspense thriller Juggernaut, which was showing at the Watford Odeon in the school holidays. The cinema had just been split into three screens: a big one upstairs in the former balcony, and two small screens downstairs created by partitioning the rear stalls. My memory is that I was in one of these boxy “minis”.