Brendan Fraser cuts a rug in "Blast from the Past"

Web posted on:
Thursday, February 11, 1999 5:40:26 PM EST

From Correspondent Ron Tank

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- The year was 1962, the United States and Soviet Union were close to war, and Americans were building backyard bomb shelters.

This is the setup for the new film "Blast from the Past," starring Brendan Fraser, Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Walken and Sissy Spacek. In it, characters played by Walken and Spacek go underground for 35 years to hide from what they think is a nuclear war and its fallout.

While underground, they have a son named Adam, played by Brendan Fraser. When he emerges in the 1990s, after being raised in the bomb shelter on Perry Como records, Jackie Gleason re-runs and a healthy dose of old-fashioned values, he is a grown man -- and different from all the rest. Silverstone's character, whose name is Eve, can't believe a man could be so pure.

"To have this young man be so generous and so honest and so confident about who he was and not concerned about impressing anyone or being like anything, you know, just being like a really nice guy," she says.

Alicia Silverstone plays Fraser's love interest

"NewsRadio"'s Dave Foley rounds out the cast.

But it's the senior actors who remember what 1962 and bomb shelters were like. "We talked about (having a bomb shelter)," Spacek says. "My dad marked it off in the backyard, but we were in too wet an area so it became a water-filled fort."

"And I remember sitting in my car, listening to that night ... when Kennedy and Khrushchev were facing off and it was very scary," says Walken.

Walken and Spacek, in her first comedic role, carry the first part of the film. After that, it's in the hands of Silverstone and Fraser, who sees it as more than just a love story.

"It's a tale that I believe ultimately speaks of good parenting and what it means to honor one's parents," says Fraser.

If audiences get that message from this film, they'll probably also believe you can live underground for 35 years.