Strange Holiday

As one of 42 people on the face of the Earth who have seen this "badfilm" all the way through I must say it is more poignant and accurate today than it was in 1945. Difficult not to mention it in the same breath as "Plan 9 From Outer Space". I cannot think anyone put it out on DVD unless it is in one of those $1 movie jubilees you find near the checkout at Wal*Mart, but if it is, remember to watch it with the lights out. Now, how the devil I am supposed to get 10 lines of text out a movie this bad is beyond me. The first time I saw it was at a 1am showing of old Republic Films on ABC late night in the early 1990s, we sought it for years afterward in the TV listings hoping to program the VCR to record it but alas, it never came on again. My...wife...my...children. Joe...Joe was there...

"Strange Holiday" is a surprisingly bad WWII propaganda film...one that should have been a lot better considering it stars Claude Rains. But instead, it's heavy-handed and silly.

The early part of the story consists of flashbacks as John Stevenson (Rains) is incarcerated. First, you see some irrelevant clips of his creepy kids. Then, you see him and his wife. The film then switches to a new locale and apparently Stevenson and a friend are on some extended holiday in the mountains. When they try to get home, they find everything is strange...people are mostly gone and those who they do see are unfriendly.

When Stevenson arrives in his home town, he once again sees that most everyone is gone and no one he sees is willing to tell him what is happening. Soon, the secret police show up and begin torturing him. Eventually (way too long actually) he realizes that the America he knew is no more and fascists have taken over the government.

While the idea of America falling could have been interesting, the film was actually surprisingly dull. Part of it is every time something happens, the camera pans away! Part of it is that the script isn't very good. In particular, it's amazing how long it took Stevenson to realize something is wrong...as well as no one's willingness to talk with him. And, finally, there is no subtlety about it...and it's all very heavy-handed and hard to take seriously. Overall, a bad film...something I didn't think was possible with a Rains movie.

I watched this a few days after Trump's 'patriotic' friends attempted to stop Congress confirming last year's presidential elections. Five people lost their lives. In this film, Claude Rains dreams that fascists have carried out their secret 'Plan' to abolish the Constitution and seize power. At one point, we hear the disgruntled people agreeing with the fascist slogans that 'we can't trust any of our politicians,' that 'this is no democracy any more,' and 'what we need is a strong man and some discipline.' Some of us haven't learned much since 1945.

I just came across this film and watched it yesterday. I had never heard of it before and decided to give it a try. I found it an eerie and haunting little film with a very powerful message. An ordinary American businessman is on a holiday camping, hunting and fishing in the forest. When he goes home afterwards he finds that his city has been taken over and is now run by Nazis. He is arrested and beaten and told by the head Nazi, "this is our America now." Considering what happened last week, when a huge crowd broke into the Capitol in Washington DC in an attempt to prevent Joe Biden from becoming the new President of the USA, this film that is three-quarters of a century old shows that it is still scarily relevant. At the end the prisoner John Stevenson is seen holding the bars of his jail cell and saying, "freedom is not a gift, it is a victory." What a timely reminder that freedom has to be protected, even fought for, or it could be taken away from us. Claude Rains has to carry the film and he does so excellently. Most people probably don't know this film but it deserves to be widely known because its message is urgently in need of being heard. Anyone who values democracy will be haunted by what it shows and what it says. Only 75 minutes long but it packs a punch! I recommend this to anyone and all the more so in our present situation.

A hard-working, happily married man John Stevens (Claude Rains) somewhat abruptly returns home from an agreeably lazy holiday in the mountains in order to celebrate his wedding anniversary, and is then unremittingly Rod Serlinged, with little grace into a dismally unrecognisable, dystopian, iron-fisted, fascist run America! Numbly traversing eerily deserted streets, retailers barred from selling their wares for reason obscure, John's disorientation increasing as he desperately seeks his lost wife and children. Roughly imprisoned for not expressing the newly enforced terror-state, he is then brutally interrogated for crimes he simply cannot comprehend! On one level Arch Oboler's 'Strange Holiday' is shrill, blunt force propaganda, about as subtle as the terrible blood-tide of national Socialism this singular drama is so ardently warning its viewers to fight against; but Claude Rain's raw, uncomfortably pained performance remains both stunningly powerful, and remarkably affecting to this very day.

The oppressive atmosphere generated by this incumbent tyrannical regime is menacingly realised by the capable director, and the truly nightmarish interrogation scene by the maniacal, doggerel-spewing, increasingly sadistic Gestapo Politzist still makes for squirmingly uncomfortable viewing! 'Strange Holiday', while somewhat jarring in its technique, with its portentous usage of pedantic newsreel rhetoric, Ozzie & Harriet homespun smugness, and a terrifyingly stark, Fritz Lang edginess coalesces uneasily into one of the more memorably strange 40s-era agitprop fantasies I have ever seen! Without belabouring the point, I have absolutely no idea why Claude Rain's earnest performance hasn't been given greater kudos by the film loving cognoscenti! Fun B-Movie fact! John Stevens wife is played by the stunning, otherworldly beautiful Gloria Holden ('Dracula's Daughter').