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Our
film opens with Albert Glasser doing his
bombastic best to make our ears bleed
while the credits flash across some Art
Deco inspired buildings. We then enter
this city, New York City to be precise,
and zero in on a cocktail bar. And while
the patrons imbibe some spirits, we
overhear a TV news broadcast; something
about the Cubs winning a baseball game so
we know this is science fiction. After
the sports wrap-up, the anchor breaks out
a newsflash, saying the government denies
rumors of unknown planes sighted over
Alaska. Overall, we get the impression
that tensions between the super-powers are
at the breaking point and the Cold War is
about to become hot. As the anchor
continues about a communist uprising in
Italy, a customer in a cowboy hat tells
Tim (Tom Kennedy) to shut
him off and the bartender happily mutes
the TV.
Vince
Potter (Gerald
Mohr), a reporter for the very same
TV station, happens to be in the bar and
starts interviewing people on what they
think about these rumors of war and a
possible new draft. He starts with the
cowboy, Ed Mulfroy (Erik Blythe),
a cattle rancher from Arizona. Mulfroy
complains about too much government
interference already, with price controls
and taxes on top of taxes. When another
couple walks into a bar, Potter picks on
them next. And I say "couple"
loosely because, well, he looks like an
out of town businessman and she looks
like, well, *ahem* a lady of the
evening. Carla Sanford (Peggy
Castle) recognizes Potter from his
news program, much to the consternation of
her "date", George Sylvester (Robert
Bice), and when the reporter asks
him about whether
the draft should be universal -- both
military and workers for the war plants --
this really raises Sylvester's ire as he
relates how he runs a plant that
manufactures tractors near San Francisco.
Seems the military asked him to convert
and make tank parts but he refused because
tractors make more money. (More
money than inflated government contracts?
Man this IS science fiction.)
The military warned that the day may come
when he has no choice but to make tank
parts, but Sylvester says it'll be over
his dead body, and then rants that this
isn't Russia, free enterprise,
blah-blah-blah... When Potter asks Carla
about possible women's labor for the war
effort, she says she worked in a plant
during the last war but it ruined her
hands so she quit. Then
another patron, who was listening in,
finally speaks up. Meet Senator Harroway (Wade
Crosby), from Illinois, who'll
gladly tell you his opinion, even though
you didn't ask for it. He complains that
his constituents want to be safe from
Communism but want no war and no taxes.
At
the other end of the bar, a solitary
figure (Dan
O'Herlihy) sits with a snifter of
brandy, quietly trying to read a book but
can't help but overhear all the derogatory
things people are saying about the
government. When Potter finally asks him
some questions, he gets his name, Ohman,
and occupation, forecaster -- and we
notice that Ohman is slightly offended
when Potter assumes he's just a weather
forecaster. (PLOT POINT! PLOT
POINT!) Ohman
chastises the others for their complacency
and goes into a scathing rant about how
America has grown soft, sacrificing
security from the Commies for personal
liberties -- like big cars and
dishwashers. No cares, no worries. Someone
else will take care of it. As the others
scoff at him, he starts
to shake and swirl his snifter of brandy
and preaches that wars are not won by
making jokes, and a nation must
concentrate and be prepared. While he
speaks, all the patrons we've met stare at
his glass while he slowly speaks, almost
as if he's putting them in a trance. (SOUND
THE KLAXON! PLOT POINT! PLOT POINT!)
Then
suddenly, his spell is broken by a frantic
news bulletin on the TV. Turns out the
rumors were true -- there are planes over
Alaska, and enemy paratroops, wearing
American uniforms, are landing all over
the the largest State. That's right:
America is being invaded! We then cut to
the first of many shots of stock military
footage, watching planes and paratroops
going to and fro, then a quick cut to a
boat in a harbor, that is filled with
communist infiltrators and saboteurs who
help quicken the invasion. And the last
transmission from Peace Harbor is "The
enemy is here!" before the woman
making the call is gunned down, shot in
the back. (Those
dirty commie skunks!)
Okay,
I'm calling them Communists, but the
movie never actually calls them
Russians. But we can discern from the
next scene by the thick Slavic accents
of several generals, plotting in front
of a large map of the United States, as
to where they really came from, comrade.
(Damn Bolsheviks!)
The
enemy's plan so far has worked to
perfection: They've seized all the
civilian airports in Alaska as a staging
area to invade further south. In
Washington, our own generals plan a
defense and counterattack. They figure
they're wearing American uniforms because
a Communist is a sneaky and decevious
no-good-nik bastard who has no qualms
about stooping that low. (Or
it's just a lame plot device to match the
stock footage better.)
The generals' biggest worry is if the
invaders will use their atomic bombs. To
answer that question, we cut to more stock
footage of an aerial dogfight over
Washington state where several enemy
bombers reach a military base and drop
their single payload. Kablooey! --
confirmed by some stock footage of a
mushroom cloud. All part of the enemy's
insidious plan: atom bomb the military
bases, and then seize the civilian
airports to leapfrog across the continent.
Back
in New York, our group watches as the
President comes on the air and breaks the
news that America has suffered another Day
of Infamy. He tells the people to stand
fast and to have faith for, even as we
speak, our own military is meeting the
invaders head on -- and is also carrying
the fight to the enemy's homeland. He
promises for every one A-bomb dropped
here, three will be dropped there. (Take
that! Ya commie be-yitches! Don't start
none won't get none!) More
stock footage, then, as American bombers
retaliate with extreme prejudice. When
Potter returns from the TV station,
Sylvester asks him for the straight dope.
Potter glumly tells them over this beer
that the state of Washington is lost and
they're pounding the crap out of Oregon
where 20,000 people were killed in a surprise
A-bomb attack. When Sylvester asks if San
Francisco is okay, the reporter says they
haven't attacked California -- yet.
On
the TV, live pictures of the Battle of
Puget Sound are shown. Enemy paratroopers
fill the sky as the defenders fight
valiantly, but they are hopelessly
outnumbered and out-gunned. The battle
rages on until the signal is lost. Before
they get any more bad news, Mulfroy begs
Tim to just shut the TV off. Wanting to
get back home, Sylvester decides to try
and get a flight out west. Mulfroy asks to
go with him, hoping to get back to
Arizona. Before he leaves, Sylvester asks
Potter to make sure his "cousin"
(yeah,
right!)
Carla gets home safely. Potter happily
agrees -- hell, she basically jumped in
his pants the minute they met anyway,
and poor, dopey Sylvester never
really had a chance after that.
As
the TV begs everyone to head to the
hospitals to give blood, Potter and Carla
take that opportunity to get the
obligatorily, insane, and totally
inappropriate romantic subplot going. She
can't believe what's happening, hoping
it's just a nightmare, to which Mr.
Smoothie replies with this howler,
"It was bound to happen. That last
time I met a girl I liked they bombed
Pearl Harbor." She continues this
stilted foreplay by asking what happened
to that girl. Simple. "The war
ended." (And
I wonder why I can never get a date?)
Sylvester
and Mulfroy make it to the airport, but most
of the flights out west have been
cancelled or booked solid. We also find
out that Montana has fallen, too, when
someone tries to get a flight to Billings.
Arizona is impossible but the ticket agent
(Noel Neil) says there are
still a few openings for San Francisco if
the men can get priority approval. Mulfroy
decides to chance it and plans to get to
Arizona from there.
Meanwhile,
the bad guys go over their big map. Things
are going well but not well enough for the
Comradeski-n-Chief. They also unveil that
their next step is the assault on San
Francisco just as Sylvester and Mulfroy's
plane lands. Taking a cab to the tractor
factory, when the radio blares that
enemy planes have been spotted over
California, Mulfroy asks the driver to
turn it off. (And
have you noticed that Mulfroy's always
asking somebody to turn the bad news off.
Does he think that will make it go away?)
Barely making it inside Sylvester's office
before the bombs start falling -- well,
actually, some scenic postcards of San
Francisco are assaulted with firecrackers
-- since San Francisco isn't the safest
place in the world to be, Mulfroy asks the
Cabbie to to drive him to Arizona. To get
away from the bombs, the driver happily
agrees.
Back
in New York, in Carla's apartment, Hopper
stops by for a visit. As they listen to
news reports that San Francisco is barely
holding out, the dread romantic interlude
continues with this; "Even with the
world coming to an end, people want to
eat, drink (dramatic
pause)
and make love." Potter then grabs her
and they swap some spit. (Well,
at least we know where Lucas gets the
inspiration for most of his romantic
dialogue.)
In
San Francisco, Sylvester has all of his
supervisors in his office, trying to
rapidly convert their assemble lines to
get the army the tank parts they need to
hold the city. The situation is desperate,
but three or four tanks could make the
difference. Then Sylvester's janitor
interrupts them, asking why should they go
on making money for this capitalist pig.
One of the workers slugs him in the mouth
-- just before the doors are kicked open
and enemy troops pour in. When the
pudgy janitor, obviously a communist
infiltrator, says he's in charge now and
that they'll be making tank parts for the
enemy, the Americans try to resist but
they're all shot dead except for
Sylvester. Sylvester bemoans if he only
had a second chance, he would have helped
sooner. The infiltrator says he'd gladly
kill Sylvester himself, but he's needed to
run the plant at peak efficiency. But
again, Sylvester says over his dead body
while trying to escape, so the enemy
happily obliges and shoot him dead.
Potter
broadcasts the bad news that San Francisco
has fallen. (If
we only had those three tanks!)
Worse yet, the army has withdrawn all the
way back to the Rocky Mountains to
regroup. Then the President comes on (who
must be shy because we never see his face)
and he encourages everyone to have hope:
NATO has declared war on our enemies, as
well, and we cut to more stock footage of
planes, explosions, and some selected
scenes from Victory
at Sea.
Next,
we find Carla working in the hospital,
helping with the blood drive. When Potter
stops by and offers up a pint, he's
feeling dejected because he's been turned
down by every branch of the military. No,
he's not too old or 4-F, that's not the
problem. There are plenty of volunteers to
fight now but they have no time to train
them, and worse yet, nothing to arm them
with. (If
we only had three more tanks!)
Meanwhile,
a cab winds it's way down a lonely Arizona
road. Inside, when Mulfroy tells the
driver they're almost home, the cabbie
says to speak for himself -- there's a new
flag flying over his home. Spotting some
bombers flying overhead, they hope they're
American. But they're not. Several
spotters raise the alarm, and some stock
footage fighters are scrambled to
intercept them, but one bomber gets
through and drops it's atomic payload on
Boulder Dam. Mulfroy
hears on the radio that the dam has been
broken, and the alert is out to evacuate
the low lying areas. Between his
blubbering to turn the radio off, he begs
the cabbie to step on it. Water is already
seeping over the roads when they reach his
ranch and pick up his family (a
wife and two young kids).
When Mulfroy's wife (Phyllis
Coates) asks what's the matter, her
husband yells at the driver to go faster
as a wall of radioactive water surges
toward them from behind. They never stood
a chance. And as the cab is swept away, we
see Mulfroy's hat and his daughter's doll
floating away. (Maybe
Mulfroy should have asked somebody to shut
the water off?)
In
New York, at the bar, Potter and Carla
watch as William Schalert give a rousing
report on the latest war developments. It
seems the Rooskies have unveiled a new
Atomic torpedo that's wreaking havoc on
the Pacific fleet. Meanwhile, California
burns as the people invoke a scorched
Earth policy, putting the torch to
anything that would aid the enemy: food
warehouses, railways, steel plants, and
oil refineries. Other
drinkers laugh and still revel, thinking
the attack out west is just a ruse to keep
our army occupied so the enemy can take
over Europe. No sir, the war won't reach
them here. When they ask Tim the Bartender
what he did in the last war, he replies
the same thing he's doing during this one,
mix martinis. They all laugh. Carla gives
their glib attitude a look of disdain and
Potter thinks they should get out of here.
But before they can leave,
an emergency announcement is made: Planes
have been spotted heading towards New
York. Soon enough, the planes are overhead
and the streets are rocked with explosions
as more postcards and several nifty models
are sacrificed to some pyrotechnics. When
the bar takes a direct hit, our couple is
buried in the rubble. Some civil defense
workers unearth them. They're bruised and
battered but okay. After moving a few more
rocks they find Tim, dead, still clutching
his martini mixer.
At
the Pentagon, our generals fear the
enemies next move. They feel the attack on
New York was just a probe. They're right,
as their opposite number gloat over their
big maps and unveil the next step of the
invasion: 10,000 paratroopers, dressed in
American uniforms, all who speak English,
will assault Washington. Their orders: To
kill and destroy the heads of the
government, sending a teetering America
into chaos.
American
spotters picks up the planes and more
stock footage is scrambled to stop them.
The attackers are repelled from the north,
south, and east but there is no report
from the western outposts. When a call is
made to them, we pan over a ringing phone
and down to two dead bodies on the floor.
Man those infiltrators are everywhere! So
be wary of pudgy janitors with funny
accents, I guess. Outflanked again, it's
soon raining enemy paratroopers all over
Washington D.C. The order is given to
double the guard on all government
buildings, to challenge everybody, and to
trust no one. Most of the fake soldiers
are tripped up with trivial questions, but
there's so many of them that the guards
can't hold. On
the Senate floor, Harroway is addressing Congress,
saying they must pledge all money and
support to the military during this time
of crisis. He's still blustering and
blundering when word comes that the
Capitol is surrounded and the enemy is
about to seize the seat of government. They
try to evacuate but run right into enemy
troops who've stormed into the building.
The Representatives try to run/waddle away
but are mowed down with machine gun fire,
including Harroway.
Now,
when seeing moronic and narrow-minded
politicians getting perforated by
machine-gun fire, you'd think that would
make you laugh, but honestly, I found it
to be surprisingly disturbing.
Despite
the setback at the Capitol, the American
army regroups, counter-attacks, and cleans
out the city. The government is safe, for
now. As the Chiefs of Staff consult with
the President, they receive word from the
Governor of Illinois, asking for
protection, saying the enemy demands his
surrender or they'll A-bomb his state.
When the President asks if they can help,
a General solemnly shakes his head no.
Back
in the besieged New York City, Hopper
still broadcasts, watching and reporting
on civilians turned guerilla fighters
taking it to the invaders. Saying he's
never been more proud to be an American, one
of his engineers warns the invaders have
found their signal and have broken into
the building, but Potter keeps on
broadcasting. In
her apartment, Carla listens, horrified,
as Potter's broadcast is interrupted by
gunfire. After a few tense moments of
silence, a new voice comes on, spewing the
new American manifesto of living life as a
happy little Bolshevik. When she
shuts the radio off, there's a knock at
the door. Then two
enemy soldiers bust in, dragging Potter
behind them. (I
assume the studio is across the hall?!)
She can't believe he's still alive, but he
warns it's only because they want him to
broadcast their propaganda. Bluffing his
way to see Carla first before cooperating,
Potter
tells the slovenly soldiers where the
liquor cabinet is to buy them some time.
The more sweaty, slovenly one tells him no
tricks or he'll kill them both, and then the
two start chugging some Vat 69 and claim
"Da! Gud viskey!"
Taking
Carla in his arms, Potter pines if he
could only live his life over again. (A
phrase I point out everyone has been
saying right before they got plugged.)
Carla agrees. (So they're both
goners, I guess.) A month ago, all
she wanted was a mink stole. She thought
that stuff was so important. When the
sweaty soldier interrupts them, wanting to
share the joy of booze, he also wants
Carla to join him for some *ahem*
fraternizing. Potter
tries to stop him but is gunned down, then
the sweaty guy claims "you my voman
now!" Fighting off his lecherous
advances, Carla manages to slip away from
his sticky grasp and rather than give
herself over to the enemy, she throws
herself out the window. And as she
plummets several stories to her death, her
body starts spinning -- and then the whole
world starts spinning with her...disolving
into a brandy snifter until Carla's body
disappears.
The
hell? Don't tell me this all a dream?!?
Boo! Hiss! Bad Movie!! Boo! Hiss!!
When
the camera pans back, we see everyone is
still silently staring at Ohman's glass.
Tim watches them dumbfounded, and then
snaps the side of the glass; it's chime
snapping everyone out of their funk.
Confused, everybody looks at everybody
else, trying to get their bearings. As several
"aren't we supposed to be dead"
looks are exchanged, we realize Ohman is
no longer in the bar. When Potter asks Tim
who that guy really was, the bartender
reveals he's a famed hypnotist and
prognosticator.
(In
other words, a crummy Criswell wannabe
just put the hypno-whammy on these
nay-bobs!)
While Potter and the others are mystified,
Tim grumps that Ohman left without paying
his tab and calls him a phony. But then
Ohman reappears and denies those
allegations. (I'm
thinking he was in the john. Now make them
cluck like a bunch of chickens!)
He warns that those visions of the future
could really happen -- unless we all do
something about it. And it will require
some changes and sacrifices, but together,
we can make a difference and keep those
damnable commies where they belong.
One
by one, each member of our morality play
peel out of the bar: Harroway heads back
to Congress to raise our taxes; Sylvester
heads back to San Francisco to get to work
on those three tanks; and the film ends as
Potter promises to show Carla the way to
the nearest blood bank because those that
bleed together, stay together.
And
remember, George Washington says, "To
be prepared for war is one of the most
effectual ways to maintain the
peace."
Amen,
brother. Praise the Lord and pass an
A-Bomb!
The
End
I
remember as if it were yesterday...
...I
was back in grade school and my teacher
was talking about Castro and the
communists in Cuba. Pulling down a map of
the U.S., she pointed out how close Cuba
was. And with a sweep of her hand, showed
how easy it would be if they had missiles
to bomb us. As her hand moved up on the
map, simulating a missile’s trajectory,
it then smashed down on Nebraska and
rubbed us out -- as if she were squashing
a bug, and relished smearing it's guts all
over the vinyl. If the fear of the bomb
wasn’t in me before, it most certainly
was now! And this was 1978!
Mutual
self-destruction: it’s not all that hard
of a concept to understand. This was the
argument that a nuclear war would never
happen because if both super-powers ever
committed their arsenals, the world would
be nothing but a radioactive cinder. No
winners, and everybody loses. It made
sense, in a warped and anti-nihilistic
sort of way, but that didn’t stop the
creators of the 1952 Red Scare classic Invasion
U.S.A.
from nuking us into oblivion.
Every
time an A-bomb was dropped, I wrote
"kablooey" in my notes -- and
I count at least eight of them scribbled
in the margins.
When
most people think of Invasion
U.S.A.,
they're probably thinking of the ultimate
Chuck Norris vehicle of the same name,
where the Chuckster gets to play the
ultimate bad-ass, personally taking out an
army of terrorists who attack America. And
I was personally introduced to the '52
version when I tuned in when Mystery
Science Theater 3000
featured it. Expecting Chuck's version, undaunted,
I watched anyway and wasn't disappointed
-- and it's a classic episode.
I
think somebody summed it up best when they
said Invasion
U.S.A.
is about 50% stock military footage, 10%
fake newscasts to explain the nonsensical
stock footage, 25% rabid anti-commie
propaganda, 10% not so special-effects, 4%
forced and inappropriate romantic subplot,
and 1% Lois Lane. (The
two actresses, Neil and Coates, who
portrayed the character on the old Superman
TV show are both present here.) They
actually do a pretty good job meshing it
all together, but it really falls apart
during the romantic interludes between
Mohr and Castle. Where else could a guy
get away with pick-up lines like that? All
of them spoken with a ham-fisted delivery
that will have you on the floor gasping
for air.
Still,
Mohr and Castle are genre veterans and
total gamers. Mohr is a likeable hero who
barely survived his trip to The
Angry Red Planet.
Castle, meanwhile, was last seen fighting
off giant grasshoppers with Peter Graves
preventing The
Beginning of the End. O'Herlihy is
awful young here, but it's still the same
guy who eventually told Robocop "nice
shooting, son" after he blew Ronnie
Cox away. And producer Albert Zugsmith was
all over the cinematic map. The same man
who gave us Touch
of Evil
also gave us this, and the rocket-bra
inspired bad girl adventures like Girlstown
and Beauty
and the Robot,
and the oddities of all oddities Confessions
of an Opium Eater.
Just
been released for it's 50th Anniversary on
DVD (only, sorry), Invasion
U.S.A. has
a couple of great audio bonus features,
including a couple of atomic war paranoia
leftovers. "If
the Bomb Falls"
is high on the scare tactics while showing
us how to survive an atomic attack. Produced
by a company who manufactured
pre-fabricated bomb shelters, the narrator
is so blasé about the end of the world
subject matter that you'll listen with
mouth agape. The
second audio feature is a gruesome little
number called "The
Complacent American"
where a ghost recounts how his city went
up in flames when the H-bomb dropped,
giving us a first person point of view of
the sirens sounding, not knowing what to
do, the actual bomb falling, and the
blinding flash and blast wave impact that
killed him. The narrator is a little
over-melodramatic, but the sound effects
of people screaming and skin-burning and
sizzling gave me goose-bumps.
The
extra feature highlight, though, is Jack
L. Warner’s infamous short, Red
Nightmare.
Jack Webb narrates as Jack Kelly (Bart
Maverick! -- That’s a lot of Jacks,
jack.) goes to bed in the suburbs
and wakes up to a nightmare of communist
oppression; where you can’t make a call
without a permit, and Sunday School is
strictly forbidden. This little piece of
paranoia is worth the price of the DVD
alone and I'd go into more detail but I'm
going to save it for a
review all by itself.
Getting
back to the Red-Scare nonsense, I think we
can learn a lot from our parents and
grandparents who lived (and ducked
and covered) through the height of
cold-war paranoia, where the world could
have ended at any moment. They can teach
us how to deal with our current situation
where the danger of a terrorist attack
looms around every breaking news update.
Or whenever some moronic lab-tech
misplaces a beaker full of the bubonic
plague. For you see, there
never were any “Reds under the beds.”
And sometimes a seed pod is just a seed
pod. Luckily, the Atomic War never came.
Yes, some of these new threats that we
face are real and we should be wary. We
should also be wary that sometimes figures
are fudged, and results are tweaked, and
situations are exaggerated to justify a
budget, sell you a gas mask, or boost
ratings, or sell you tickets to a movie.
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