Need Info about 70s "End-Of-World" TV Movie, Please!

[Philip Portelli]

Since I've gotten sucked up into The Walking Dead (thanks Guys!), I've been remembering a TV movie from my youth about another cataclysmic disaster. It was about a plague, too but it killed, I think, 90% of the population while the rest were immune to it. What stuck with me that after you died, your body turned to white dust. I vividly recall clothing on the floor with the dust where the head and hands were. It was very neat, no corpses, smells or flies.

 

Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Any help would be great!

 

(Hopefully, I'm not imagining it!)

[Luke Blanchard]

I found it through a list of ABC Movie of the Week movies at Wikipedia. It was called Where Have All the People Gone?, and starred Peter Graves (its IMDB page mentions the white powder element).

[Rich Lane]

I remember that one. There was a family that went spelunking and didn't get affected by the solar flare that caused it, right?

[Philip Portelli]

You guys are amazing!! Thanks a lot!

I didn't think it was that old (1974). I can't believe that 9 year old me watched something like that but since Peter Graves was in it and I regularly saw Mission: Impossible on the weekends, it makes some sense. The IMDB mentioned that it was probably a pilot since it doesn't have a real ending so it could have been an early version of today's mystery shows. It also said that it was put on DVD.

Funny but as soon as I read the brief synopsis, one scene just popped in my head of Peter Graves and his two children finding his wife's clothes on the floor with the dust. She didn't share the right gene.

But why was I thinking about Jason Robards? Oh well...

Again much thanks!

[The Baron]

Philip Portelli said:

But why was I thinking about Jason Robards?

Well, I think that most right-thinking people spend a certain amount of time thinking about Jason Robards on a regular basis. As for myself, I like to ponder how, in The Day After, even after the nuclear war, Robards' character always had such spotlessly clean white shirts.

[Philip Portelli]

The Day After!!!!!! That's why! Wrong apocalypse. Thanks, Baron!

The Baron said:

Philip Portelli said:

But why was I thinking about Jason Robards?

Well, I think that most right-thinking people spend a certain amount of time thinking about Jason Robards on a regular basis. As for myself, I like to ponder how, in The Day After, even after the nuclear war, Robards' character always had such spotlessly clean white shirts.

[ClarkKent_DC]

I remember my father complaining that The Day After wasn't real enough.

[Mike Williams]

It wasn't - for that, you want Threads



ClarkKent_DC said:

I remember my father complaining that The Day After wasn't real enough.

[Rich Lane]

Or Testament.

Mike Williams said:

It wasn't - for that, you want Threads



ClarkKent_DC said:

I remember my father complaining that The Day After wasn't real enough.

[Lumbering Jack (M'odd-R8-Tr)]

At first I was going to say that it sounds like "Night of the Comet," and then I see on the IMDB page about "Night of the Comet" that it's been suggested that "Night" may have been inspired by "Where Have All the People Gone?"

"Night" is a hoot, by the way.

[Dagwan]

Lumbering Jack said:

At first I was going to say that it sounds like "Night of the Comet," and then I see on the IMDB page about "Night of the Comet" that it's been suggested that "Night" may have been inspired by "Where Have All the People Gone?"

"Night" is a hoot, by the way.

It's the original "Hot Chicks with guns alone against the undead" movie!

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