Taglines: After 35 years in a bomb shelter, Adam Webber is finally going outside to play.
Blast from the Past movie storyline. In 1962, Dr. Calvin Webber (Christopher Walken), an eccentric scientist who, like so many people at the time, thinks that a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union is imminent, has built a large, fully functional fallout shelter in his backyard deep underground.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, thinking the conflict could escalate, Calvin takes his pregnant wife Helen (Sissy Spacek) into the fallout shelter as a precaution. When a fighter jet flying over loses control, the pilot bails out and the jet crashes into their house, causing a large explosion; Calvin, thinking the worst has happened, sets and activates the shelter’s locks (designed not to open for 35 years). Everyone assumes the entire family was killed in the accident, as no one knew of Calvin’s secret fallout shelter.
Calvin’s wife Helen gives birth to a boy, whom they name Adam. Adam grows up being taught and exposed to all culture up to 1962, such as watching reruns of The Honeymooners and listening to Perry Como and Dean Martin. During their 35-year stay in the shelter, a small diner called “Mom’s” is built on the site where their house stood. A young man named Melcher (Joey Slotnick) works for Mom (Dale Raoul) as a soda jerk.
The diner (which later becomes a pub) is shown throughout the 1960s, 70s, and 90s, as the neighborhood deteriorates from suburban to inner city ghetto complete with abandoned graffiti-marked buildings, adult bookstores, and the homeless, prostitutes, and addicts as its residents. Eventually, Mom gives the pub to Melcher, who lives in the abandoned remains (in 1995), an alcoholic.
When the locks open in 1999, Calvin is so shocked to see how the world has changed (believing it to be a post-apocalyptic wasteland populated by irradiated mutants), he decides the family must stay underground. However, their supplies are running out, and Calvin suddenly falls ill from the stress, so Adam (Brendan Fraser) must venture onto the surface to procure more. As he leaves the shelter for the first time, he meets Melcher who had encountered Calvin in his radiation suit the previous night and mistook him for God after he burst through the floor of the abandoned pub using his elevator to the surface.
Having built a shrine above the elevator shaft, Melcher now worships Calvin and the elevator, with Adam’s words of encouragement to him being mistaken as affirmation of his new religion. As he marvels at the outside world, seeing many things for the first time the sky, a little girl, and “a Negro”, Adam eventually realizes that while purchasing supplies in bulk, he has strayed too far from the pub containing the elevator to the fallout shelter and cannot remember his way back.
Adam meets Eve Rustikoff (Alicia Silverstone) when he tries to sell his father’s classic baseball cards at a hobby shop. She stops the store owner (Bill Gratton) from trying to buy the cards for much less than their collectible value and is immediately fired. Adam asks Eve to drive him to a Holiday Inn in exchange for a rare baseball card; she takes the card and leaves, but returns the next morning to give it back out of guilt.
When Eve mentions that she must find a new job, Adam asks her to help him purchase supplies and, unaware of the value of money, immediately agrees to her request for $1,000 a week. He also asks Eve to help him find a wife from Pasadena, California (per his mother’s advice), who is “not a mutant”; he uses the term literally as meaning a mutant due to radiation from the nuclear war which never happened. Adam meets Eve’s gay housemate and best friend, Troy (Dave Foley), who is amused by Adam’s naiveté but offers advice and gives Adam a fashion makeover.
Blast from the Past is a 1999 American romantic comedy film based on a story and directed by Hugh Wilson, and starring Brendan Fraser, Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Walken, Sissy Spacek, Dave Foley, Joey Slotnick, Dale Raoul, Hayden Tank, Douglas Smith and Cynthia Mace.
Blast from the Past (1999)
Directed by: Hugh Wilson
Starring: Brendan Fraser, Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Walken, Sissy Spacek, Dave Foley, Joey Slotnick, Dale Raoul, Hayden Tank, Douglas Smith, Cynthia Mace
Screenplay by: Hugh Wilson, Bill Kelly
Production Design by: Bob Ziembicki
Cinematography by: José Luis Alcaine
Film Editing by: Don Brochu
Costume Design by: Mark Bridges
Set Decoration by: Michael Taylor
Art Direction by: Ted Berner
Music by: Steve Dorff
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for brief language, sex and drug references.
Distributed by: New Line Cinema
Release Date: February 12, 1999
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