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Our
next short opens on the main street of Anytown, USA. There's
something not quite right with this picture, though. What are
all the armed soldiers, sandbag barricades and concertina wire
for?
The
puzzle deepens as a citizen approaches a soldier guarding the
perimeter in a familiar looking un-American uniform. Our
suspicions are confirmed when the citizen asks, in Russian,
for a cigarette. The soldier scolds him then reminds that
they're supposed to only speak English here. The soldier then
complain that Americans have too many freedoms and it's up to
the citizen to destroy them all.
What
goes on here?
We
get our answer as Jack Webb magically appears and explains
that this, what appears to be an American town, is really a
Soviet spy training ground somewhere behind the Iron Curtain.
Here, espionage is their business, sabotage their art and
treachery and conspiracy their modus operandi.
Webb
serves as our narrator and anti-commie muse and shifts scenes
to a real American town and a genuine American, Jerry Donavan (Jack
Kelly).
Webb warns that Jerry is an okay guy but he takes his freedoms
for granted and, when it comes time to ante up and protect
them,
Jerry has grown complacent to just let somebody else do it.
We
follow Jerry to his home, his domestic engineer wife and three
children who wait for him inside. Before supper Jerry's wife
rides him for skipping his Union and Reservists meetings.
Jerry won't even consent to go to a PTA meeting. All he
wants to do is bowl and watch his favorite TV show.
During
supper, his oldest daughter and her boyfriend announce that
they plan to get married. Jerry has no objection to the
wedding but won't consent unless they wait five years or so because
they're too young. Both leave in a huff. Jerry tries to go
after them but his wife says leave them alone to cool
off.
Outside
the bedroom window Webb (a
moralistic peeping Tom?)
says Jerry's domestic problems will work themselves out and
wishes him pleasant dreams. However, that's not important
right now.
What's important is keeping those-
Webb
changes his mind so, instead of pleasant dreams, he decides to
give Jerry a Red Nightmare. He tinkers with Jerry's dream and
drops him in the middle of the Soviet training camp.
The
action picks up as Jerry, who's a little confused,
hears a summoning alarm and follows the crowd to the square
for the daily lecture. The Commissar praises them and says
they are almost ready to infiltrate into America and help
bring down the Capitalist regime and purge it so they may be
assimilated into the collective Proletariat. (Resistance
is futile!)
Now
even more confused Jerry heads home and finds his family has
changed, too. His eldest daughter is off to join a farm collective
to rid herself of her parent's bourgeoisie
influence. Her boyfriend shows up in a Russian uniform to
escort her away. When Jerry protests that he can't bust in
without a warrant the boyfriend says, as a member of the
Party, he can and will. He also promises to report Jerry's
behavior to the dread Commissar.
After
they leave his wife then accuses him of hiding that he was on
the speech team in high school and didn't tell the dread Commissar.
So she told him and now Jerry has to speak before the PTA on the
glory of Bolshevism. Jerry says he'll do no such thing. The
wife says he has no choice.
The
nightmare continues after Jerry goes to work and he has
trouble producing his impossible quota for the day. A co-worker (Robert
Conrad!)
warns that Jerry better work through his lunch hour to catch
up. The quota must be met because the dread Commissar accepts
no excuses.
The
next morning, Sunday morning, Jerry oversleeps. He asks his
wife if his two youngest kids are off at Sunday School.
They're not. They're packing up to be shipped off to a state
sponsored school due to Jerry's behavior to become good little
Communists.
That's
the last straw for Jerry, he drags his two kids, kicking and
screaming, to the town church but it is no longer a house of
worship but a museum dedicated to Great Russian Inventions.
There are no churches in this town. Jerry goes inside and
finds displays that claim the Rooskies invented everything
from the telephone to the light-bulb.
Jerry
loses it completely and starts tearing the place apart. He's
arrested and soon faces trial. The prosecution presents no
case but asks if Jerry would like to confess his crimes before
sentence is carried out. Jerry protests demanding to know what
he's charged with.
The
prosecutor (Race
Bannon himself, Mike Road)
scoffs saying the accused, in their system, have no rights and
are guilty until
proven innocent. Jerry is accused of "treason and
deviation" for speaking against the party and spreading
capitalist propaganda. The final devious blow comes when his own wife
testifies against him. Jerry is condemned as an enemy of the
state and sentenced to death.
Jerry
has lost everything. His ideals and beliefs have been taken
away. His family has turned against and now his life is
forfeit. He's chained to a chair and waits the executioner's
bullet.
His
executioner asks one last time if he'd like to confess. Jerry
makes one final statement while a gun is aimed at the back of
his head. He warns that someday the Soviet people will get
wise and revolt in the name of freedom because they can't be
fooled forever because we all know communism is just another
word for slavery.
The
gun discharges and with the cheap Russian bullets there's a lot of
smoke. When it clears we find Webb standing back outside
Jerry's house. He assures us that the bullet never reached
Jerry. He warns that the brutality Jerry went through though
is going on in Russia all the time but his rant is put on hold
because Jerry is waking up from his Red Nightmare.
Jerry
rejoices that everything is back to normal and vows to never
take his freedoms and family for granted again. He even
consents to the wedding but the lovebirds are postponing it until
the boyfriend finishes his hitch in the service.
Jerry's
nightmare may be over but the war against communism rages on.
Webb chimes back in and reminds us, with some patriotic music
backing him up, that responsibilities are a privilege and
freedom must be earned. The price is eternal vigilance so we
may continue to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness.
So
who must pay this price?
The
answer, my fellow Americans, is you...and you...and you too!
Me?
Heck, no. It's bowling night.
The
End
Behind
Burt the Turtle's catchy Duck
and Cover
safety procedurals and Lyndon Johnson's political ad against
Barry Goldwater featuring a little girl picking flowers while
the narrator counts down to atomic oblivion,
Red Nightmare
is
probably the best piece of cold war paranoia left over from
the '50s and '60s.
Made
by Warner Brothers for the U.S. Department of Defense it's
working title was Freedom
and You and
also goes by the less then subtle The
Commies are Coming, The Commies are Coming.
Jack Warner himself supervised the production and instructed
writer Vincent Forte to damn the subtlety and hit the public
over the head and pull no punches to show them what Communism
is really about. He did and the results speak for themselves
Warner
Brothers weren't the only ones making these gonzo educational
shorts. Disney made The
Story of Menstruation
and John Wayne helped fund the scare shorts of Sid Davis.
The majority of
shorts that I've seen were produced by those who specialized
in them - the triumvirate of Coronet Instructional Media,
Encyclopedia Britannica Films and Centron.
Anyways,
for awhile after World War II, the Soviets were a threat but
we had the hammer (the Bomb!) that we hoped would keep them at
bay. Unfortunately that didn't last very long and soon they
had the bomb, too.
Fear
of total annihilation and the bomb isn't very productive but
fear of being invaded from the inside out and forcibly
assimilated into a new way of living was and many quickly
moved to cash in on those fears.
Joe
McCarthy and The House Un-American Activities Commission and
others fueled this fire threatening to turn America into a
paranoid mess. A lot of accusers turned a stink-eye towards
Hollywood as a hot bed of subversive Communist actions. The
Studios responded with big films like John Wayne's Big
Jim McLain
and smaller b-pictures like I
Was A Communist for the FBI
and I
Married a Communist.
Ronald
Reagan narrated the short The
Truth About Communism
while What
is Communism?
spelled out how to spot a commie in seven easy steps then
warned that the invasion isn't coming but it's already
here!
As
the cold war dragged on the anti-communist shorts got stranger
and stranger. None stranger, though, then when exploitation
filmmaker Ron Ormond was born again and teamed up with Baptist
minister Estus Perkle for If
Footmen Tire You What Will Horses Do?
Perkle narrates over scenes of murderous Communists raping, pillaging
and poking bamboo shoots through children's skulls after Jesus
refuses to send candy. This
invasion is inevitable and Jesus is the only one who can
prevent it and only then if we maintain a pious way of life.
At
the dawn of the '80s Jayne Loader, Kevin and Pierce Rafferty
cobbled together all of these types of films together for the documentary Atomic
Cafe. In
between laughable spots featuring Burt ducking and covering
are truly depressing scenes of soldiers getting briefed on how
radiation poses absolutely no danger and some congressman
clamoring to use the bomb on China during the Korean War.
Hindsight
is always 20/20. The Soviet Union eventually collapsed but I
don't think these educational shorts had a whole lot to do
with it. Watching them so far removed from when brinkmanship
was the norm - and it was US against THEM - it's easy to laugh at
the films as being dated and
overly paranoid but we should consider ourselves lucky that it
turned out the way it did and not the way they predicted.
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