Invasion, U.S.A.

This incredibly cheap film is not without its entertaining moments. While America is being invaded by The Enemy, the President appears on television to assure the nation that the US military is exacting vengeance on Russia - for every atom bomb dropped on the US, three are being dropped on Russia! While this sounds comforting, it merely proves the key to Russia's success, since the Russians have already transported everything they'll need to win the war. By devoting so much energy to attacking the Russians on their own soil, the US fails to defend itself against the invading Russian army. Apparently national "defense" is an alien concept, for a nation accustomed to fighting its wars overseas.

This film is no masterpiece. But it is nowhere near as bad as often made out, perhaps by those who have never seen it.

The use of stock footage, and some cheap special effects, is not unusual for films of this vintage. For a low budget film, it actually made good use of the available resources.

I suspect most of the criticism is not based on the film itself, but its supposed political failings. However the politics of a film are not a reason to pan it. We recognise the Battleship Potemkin as a great film, despite it being communist propaganda. The same applies to Triumph of the Will as Nazi propaganda. Less successful but no less political films, such as Schindler's List, are rated on their merits, irrespective of their message.

Invasion U.S.A. adopts a narrative that is close to documentary. It does not include irrelevant romantic distractions, or complex sub-plots. It is rather more of a war film than an anti-communist work.

The enemy is not clearly identified. They look and sound rather more like Nazis than Reds. The identity of the enemy is not as important as the message that America needs to be ready to defend itself. I would have thought that the message that a country needs to be vigilant is as correct now as in 1952.

The course of the invasion, and its successful outcome, were refreshing after watching too many gung ho American films where the US heroes always prevail. This film shows the reality that the USA could have been invaded by the Soviet Union in 1952 - if they had been, the Soviets would almost certainly have won the war. Russia had a narrow window of opportunity, before the USA developed too many thermonuclear weapons, and invasion would be too costly. There were Soviet invasion plans prepared.

I wonder when we will see an American film about a successful Taliban or ISIS attack on the USA, with the message that the USA needs to be prepared.

It's worth noting that this ultra-low-budget splicing-together of unmatched stock footage was mocked and panned even in its own day, so it should not be viewed seriously as an accurate document of Cold War paranoia. Even in the depths of the Red Scare, most Americans weren't stupid enough to be scared by crap like this. It was more like a super-cheapie public service announcement for the military-industrial complex. If you fast forward through most of the stock WW2 battle scenes, which are endless, and slow down for the "story" scenes, it's a mildly amusing exercise in what-if? science fiction -- doofy and utterly implausible, but good for some wry smiles. I mean, you gotta love that the hypnotist fortune teller is named Ohman. It's also kind of interesting that many, many more "serious," bigger-budget invasion and terrorist- plot films since this one have followed a pretty similar storyline, if more competently. Add the general atmosphere of paranoia post-9/11, and this thing is worth a look, with the FF button to the metal.

It was the early 1950s. J. Parnell Thomas of The House Unamerican Activities Committee was accusing everyone in sight who had any measure of public visibility with Communist allegiance. He went after Hollywood in a series of highly publicized hearings, resulting in the arrests and convictions of the Hollywood Ten for invoking their Fifth Amendment rights against self incrimination... just before Thomas himself was hauled before a Grand Jury to answer fraud charges. In a moment of high irony Thomas himself invoked the Fifth Amendment before he was convicted and imprisoned.

It was the time of "Tail Gunner Joe" McCarthy, who charged that Communist influence in the State Department and Army had caused us to "give away" China. He recklessly charged that Communists had infiltrated nearly every aspect of American life... strictly in the name of enhancing his own political power base. In the Army hearings McCarthy was finally unmasked as an unprincipled charlatan by Army counsel Joseph Welch, and he was subsequently censured by the Senate for unethical conduct. Joe McCarthy subsequently died of alcoholism.

Besides these men... Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover, Roy Cohn, and many others in positions of power shrieked the gospel of anticommunism, demanding that Americans surrender Constitutional rights in the name of defeating this new enemy.

It was a time of fear where American opinion could be easily manipulated. Partly for financial gain, and partly to spare itself from further attacks by the Thomases and McCarthys, Hollywood became a willing tool for the use of politicians, a propaganda machine that produced a number of sensational films that capitalized on the anti Red hysteria.

Some of the more notable Hollywood efforts were the major studio film BIG JIM MACLAIN, starring John Wayne and James Arness, and a B-movie effort, THE RED MENACE, whose opening credits graphic showed an octopus wearing a hammer and sickle logo using it's tentacles to embrace the entire world.

Pretty heavy handed stuff, but it was effective for the political manipulation of a frightened American populace. It kept McCarthy off of the studio's backs... as well as made a few B-movie bucks.

Along with these heavy, ideological films came INVASION USA, a mythical war and adventure movie. Of the whole lot, THIS is the most interesting of the Red Scare films, and it's the ONLY one that's ANY fun at all! Ed Wood must have LOVED this film; it clearly taught him the cinematic techniques he was to later make famous. As a cost cutting measure the film makes GENEROUS use of stock footage, mostly Public Domain stuff from military sources.

To make American planes into enemy ones, they just printed the stock footage BACKWARDS, so that UNITED STATES AIR FORCE on the planes came out REVERSED, and it looked sort of like Russian Cyrillic lettering.

In newly shot scenes where stock footage couldn't be used, set decoration relied heavily on the local Army-Navy store! There are literally TONS of military surplus equipment on the sets.

The fact that enemy troops were dressed in American military surplus uniforms was explained neatly by saying that they were infiltrating in disguise! As another cost cutting measure, the cast is ENTIRELY made up of B list "talent" who would work for Actor's Equity scale. The amount of over the top, hammy acting has to be seen to be believed! To throw in a touch of sex, a drunken enemy soldier tries to ravage a blonde American beauty, who chooses instead to kill herself by diving out of a window!

The script is absurd, but for frightened audiences of the time it was plausible... it bore out all of the dire threats that politicians had been making. Hedda Hopper's review of the film said "It will scare the pants off you!", and so it did. Bombing raids on San Francisco, the Hoover Dam destroyed by a missile attack, and New York City hit with an atomic bomb were enough to scare the pants off of ANYBODY.

For sheer kitsch value I give it a ten.

As a warning of what propaganda feeding the political hysteria stirred up by unethical politicians can accomplish, it ALSO gets a ten.

As movie-making, it gets a four.

Invasion U.S.A. (1952)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

If you listen to most reviewers they'll have you believing that this propaganda film is among the worst movies ever made. The story is pretty simple as a group of strangers are sitting in a bar when the news breaks that the Soviet Union have invaded America. Before long most of America has been hit with an Atomic Bomb.

INVASION U.S.A. is considered by many to be one of the worst movies ever made but I think that's rather extremely. There's no question that there are some very bad things in the picture but at the same time it manages to hold you attention no matter how bad things get. I think the biggest problem with the film is the fact that its budget was so low that they really weren't able to do anything good with the picture.

I say that because even though the film is only 72-minutes long, I'd say a third of that is made up of stock footage, which obviously makes the picture look cheap. There are so many scenes where it's either stock footage or projection stuff that you can't help but not be frightened by anything you're looking at. The entire point of this picture was to frighten you into thinking that the Soviet Union could strike at any moment but without the drama there's just not much here. To make matters worse, there are some unintentional funny moments including a scene where the Hoover Dam is bombed and a family gets taken out by the water.

There are some decent performances here including Gerald Mohr and Dan O'Herlihy. Character actor Tom Kennedy is also on hand playing the bartender. Another problem I had with the story is the fact that America pretty much falls without any issue. I mean, as easy as it was for us to be taken over it would be impossible for America to beat anyone. Still, INVASION U.S.A. isn't nearly the bomb some make it out to be.