Our
leftover piece of Cold War paranoia opens
with Albert Glasser doing his bombastic
best to make our ears bleed as the
credits flash across some spiffy Art Deco
inspired buildings. We then enter this
city, New York City to be precise, and
zero in on a cocktail bar, where, while the
rowdy patrons imbibe some spirits, we overhear a
TV news broadcast about the
Cubs winning a baseball game -- so we
already know
this tale is most definitely in the realm
of science fiction. After the
sports wrap-up, as the news anchor takes
over and announces that the
government is still denying all those reports
of several unknown planes being sighted over
Alaska, we get the overall impression
that tensions between the world's Super
Powers are
at the breaking point, and the ever
simmering Cold War is about to become red
hot -- stress on the Red.
![](i-images/Invasion%20USA/Invasion_USA_7.jpg)
As
the gloomy anchor continues on and on about a
Communist uprising in Italy, when a
customer in a cowboy hat tells Tim (Tom
Kennedy) to shut him up, the
bartender happily mutes the TV. But it
turns out
there's a reporter from that very same TV station
at the bar,
interviewing people on what they think
about all these rumors of war and a possible
new draft. Vince
Potter (Gerald
Mohr), our man on the scene, starts with the cowboy, Ed
Mulfroy (Erik Blythe), a
cattle rancher from Arizona, who complains
about too much government interference
already, with price controls and taxes on
top of taxes. When another couple walks
in, 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
them about whether
the draft should be universal -- both
military service and civilian workers for
the war plants -- this raises
Sylvester's ire even more as he relates how he runs
a plant that manufactures tractors near
San Francisco.
Seems the military recently
asked him to convert over and make tank
parts, but he refused because tractors
make more money. (More
money than inflated government contracts?
Man this IS science fiction.)
Warned that the day may come when he has
no choice but to make tank parts,
Sylvester says it'll be over his dead
body, and then rants that this isn't
Russia, free enterprise, blah-blah-blah
... Moving on, when Potter asks about a woman's
roll in the war effort, Carla says she tried
working in a plant during the last war but
it ruined her hands, so she quit. Then
another patron, who was listening in, speaks up. Meet
the Honorable Senator Harroway (Wade
Crosby), from Illinois, who'll
gladly tell you his opinion, even though
nobody asked for it. As the Senator complains that
his constituents want to be safe from
Communism but want no war and no new
taxes, at
the other end of the bar, a solitary
figure
sits with a snifter of brandy, quietly
trying to read a book, who can't help
but overhear all the derogatory things
these people are saying about their
country. When Potter finally asks him
some questions, we gets his name, Ohman (Dan
O'Herlihy), and his occupation,
forecaster -- and we can't help but notice that Ohman is
slightly offended when Potter assumes he's
just a weather forecaster. [SOUND
THE KLAXON! PLOT
POINT! PLOT POINT!] As
Ohman chastises the others for their
complacency, he then goes into a scathing
indictment 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. Of course,
the others
scoff at his barstool sermonizing, but as the
lesson continues on how a nation must
concentrate and be prepared, we also can't help but notice that while he slowly
speaks, all the other patrons we've met are
intently staring at his glass as he gently
sifts the liquid within. Almost as if
he was putting them
in a...
Suddenly,
Ohman's spell is broken by a frantic
news bulletin on the TV. Turns out those
rumors were true: there were planes over
Alaska, and enemy paratroopers wearing
American uniforms are landing all over the
Land of the Midnight Sun! We then cut to
the first of many shots of stock military
footage and watch as these rogue planes and
paratroopers go to and fro; then a quick cut
to a boat in a harbor, that is filled with
more Communist infiltrators and saboteurs,
who
help exploit the breach. That's right,
folks. The shit has hit the fan, and for the first time in almost two
hundred years, American blood has been
spilled on its own soil by an invading
foreign power! And the last
transmission from Peace Harbor, before the
woman making the frantic call is gunned down, shot
in the back, reads "The enemy is
here!"
![](i-images/Invasion%20USA/Invasion_USA_13.jpg)
...I
remember as if it were yesterday ... Back
when I was in grade school, I remember a
time when my teacher -- a relic from the
1950's, herself -- was talking about
Castro and the Communists in Cuba. Pulling
down a map of North America, she pointed
out how close Cuba was and, with a sweep
of her hand, showed her captive audience
how easy it would be if they had missiles
to bomb us into oblivion. For as we all
watched, her hand moved up on the map,
simulating a missile’s trajectory, until
it smashed down on Holstein, Nebraska and rubbed us
out as if she were squashing a bug, and
relished smearing it's guts all over the
vinyl! ... Well. If the fear of the bomb
wasn’t in me before, it most certainly
was now! And this was 1977!
Mutual
self-destruction: it’s not all that hard
of a concept to comprehend. 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
USA,
from nuking us off the map like good old
Mrs. Meyer.
Now,
when most people think of Invasion
USA,
they're probably thinking of the ultimate
Chuck Norris vehicle of the same name,
where the Chuckster gets to play the
ultimate bad-ass in a career full of bad-assery
by personally taking out another army of
terrorists who also had the temerity to
attack America -- during Christmas no
less! And when I tuned into Mystery
Science Theater 3000 one fateful week,
expecting Chuck's version, I was
personally introduced to the 1952 version
of Invasion USA,
which, frankly, I didn't know existed
until then. Undaunted, I watched anyway and wasn't
disappointed -- and it's a classic
episode. And though the movie never explicitly
calls the invaders Communists, nor does it
specify their exact country of origin, we
can discern from the thick, Slavic accents
of the Generals who plot in front of a
large map of the United States where they
really came from, Comrade. Эврика!
![](i-images/Invasion%20USA/Invasion_USA_8.jpg)
Well, whoever they are, the enemy's
blitzkrieg plan has worked to perfection
thus far. With
the element of surprise, they've seized
all the civilian airports in Alaska as a
staging area to invade further south. In
Washington DC, as our own military leaders
plan a defense and counterattack, they
deduce the enemy is wearing American
uniforms because a Communist is a sneaky
and decevious bastard, who has no qualms
about stooping that low. (Or
it's just a lame plot device to match the
stock footage better.)
Obviously, the biggest concern is whether
the invaders will use their atomic bombs,
and 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! And
the Pentagon's worst fears are confirmed by some
stock footage of a mushroom cloud: all
part of the enemy's insidious plan to atom
bomb the major military bases, and then
seize the civilian airports to leapfrog
across the continent.
Back
in New York, at the same bar, our group of
malcontents watches as the President
breaks the news that America has suffered
another Day of Infamy. Telling the people
to stand fast and to have faith, for even
as we speak, he assures that our own
military is meeting the invaders head on
-- and is also carrying the fight to the
enemy's homeland; and 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 follows as American bombers
retaliate with extreme prejudice. When
Potter shows up, the reporter glumly sets
the record straight by telling the others over his
beer that the state of Washington is
already lost, and now they're pounding the crap
out of Oregon, where 20,000 people were
killed in a surprise A-bomb attack. Asked if San
Francisco is still okay by a suddenly concerned Sylvester,
the reporter shrugs,
saying the enemy hasn't attacked California
yet --
but it's only a matter of time. On
the TV, live pictures of the Battle of
Puget Sound are broadcast. As enemy
paratroopers fill the sky, the defenders
fight valiantly but are hopelessly
outnumbered and out-gunned. When the
live-signal is lost, before they get any
more bad news, Mulfroy begs the bartender
to just shut the TV off again. With that,
and before it's too late, Sylvester decides to try and get a
flight home. Mulfroy asks to go with him
to the airport,
hoping to get back to Arizona, and before
they leave, 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.
Anyways,
as the authorities beg everyone to head to
the nearest hospital 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." Incredulously, Carla 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?) Elsewhere,
Sylvester and Mulfroy
make it to the airport but find most of the
flights out west have either been cancelled or are booked solid. We also
find out that Montana has fallen, too,
when someone tries to get a flight to
Billings. And though Arizona also proves impossible,
when 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
keep tagging along ... Meanwhile,
as the bad guys go over their big invasion
map,
things are going well but not well enough
for the Comradeski-n-Chief. To appease
him, his underlings unveil their next
step: the siege of San Francisco, that
commences 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 to Sylvester's offices
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 right now,
Mulfroy easily convinces the Cabbie to
evacuate and drive him all the way to Arizona.
![](i-images/Invasion%20USA/Invasion_USA_15.jpg)
Back
in New York, Potter stops by Carla's
apartment for a visit, and 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 now know where Lucas gets the
inspiration for most of his romantic
dialogue.) Back
in San Francisco, trying
to rapidly convert their assemble lines to
get the army the tank parts they need to
hold the city, Sylvester has gathered all
of his supervisors in his office. The situation is desperate,
he says, but three or four tanks could
make the difference. Interrupting
him, Sylvester's
janitor asks the others why should
they go on making money for this
Capitalist pig, earning him a slug him in the mouth
just as the
doors are kicked open and enemy troops
pour in. Then, as the
pudgy janitor, obviously a Communist
infiltrator, claims he's in charge now, and
that they'll be making tank parts for the
enemy, the Americans try to resist but are
all quickly shot dead -- except for
Sylvester, who bemoans if he only had a
second chance, he would have helped
sooner. Told he was left alive because he's needed to
run the plant at peak efficiency, the
quarter drops and Sylvester commits
suicide, shot while
trying to escape.
As
Potter broadcasts the bad news that San
Francisco has fallen (--
If we only had those three tanks! --)
it gets even worse when he reports the
army has withdrawn all the way back to the
Rocky Mountains to regroup. When the
President comes on again (--
who must be shy because we never see his
face),
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. Potter stops
by and offers up a pint, 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, out west, as the cab winds
its way down a lonely
Arizona road, when Mulfroy tells the
driver they're almost home, the Cabbie
says to speak for himself -- seems there's a new
flag flying over his home. Spotting some
bombers flying overhead, the travelers
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 still
manages to gets
through and drops it's atomic payload on
Boulder Dam. When Mulfroy
hears over the radio that the dam has been
destroyed and the Civil Defense alert to
evacuate all the low lying areas, between
his blubbering to turn the radio off, he
begs the Cabbie to step on it. Water is
already trickling over the road when they
reach his ranch and pick up his family (--
a wife and two young kids).
And as they race away, when Mulfroy's wife
(Phyllis
Coates) asks what's the matter, her
husband yells at the driver to go faster
because a massive wall of radioactive water
is surging
toward them from behind! Alas, 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?)
![](i-images/Invasion%20USA/Invasion_USA_9.jpg)
In
New York, at the bar, Potter and Carla
watch as William Schallert gives 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 all go up in flames. 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, they conclude, 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,
mixing martinis. As they all laugh, Carla
gives these yahoos and their glib attitude a look of
disdain that could vaporize glacial ice. Potter thinks they should
just get
out of there, but before they can leave,
an emergency announcement is made: enemy
planes have been spotted heading toward
New York! And soon enough, the streets are
rocked with explosions as more postcards
and several nifty models are sacrificed to
some Jack Rabin-fueled pyrotechnics. When the bar
takes a direct hit, our couple is buried
in the rubble. They're bruised and
battered but okay, and after moving a few
more rocks, they find Tim, dead, still
clutching his martini mixer.
At
the Pentagon, fearing the enemies next
move, the Powers the Be feel the attack on
New York was just a probe. Turns out
they're right, as their opposite numbers
gloat over their big maps and unveil the
next step of their invasion: 10,000 more
paratroopers dressed in American
uniforms, who speak English, will assault
Washington DC. Their orders: To kill and
destroy the heads of the government,
sending a teetering America into chaos.
Spotters pick up the enemy 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 the
Capitol. Most of the fake soldiers are
tripped up with trivial questions, but
there's so many of them that the defenders
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 along when word comes that
the Capitol building is surrounded and the
enemy is about to seize the seat of
government. When they try to evacuate, the
Senators run right into the enemy troops
who've overrun the building. And as the
legislators try to run/waddle away,
most are mowed down with machine gun fire,
including Harroway.
![](i-images/Invasion%20USA/Invasion_USA_14.jpg)
Now,
you'd think seeing moronic and
narrow-minded politicians getting
perforated by machine-gun fire would
make you laugh -- but honestly, I found
this to be alarmingly disturbing.
Despite
the setback at the Capitol building, the American
army regroups, counter-attacks, and cleans
out the city. Democracy is safe ... for
now. As the Chiefs of Staff consult with
the President, they receive word from the
Governor of Illinois, who asks for
protection, saying the enemy demands his
surrender or they'll A-bomb his state's
largest cities.
When the President asks if they can help,
a General solemnly shakes his head no ... Back
in the besieged New York City, Hopper is still
broadcasting, watching and reporting
on civilians turned guerilla fighters
taking it to the invaders. Saying he's
never been more proud to be an American,
even as one of his engineers warns the
invaders have found their signal and have
broken into the building, 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 before two enemy soldiers bust
in, dragging what's left of Potter behind them. (I
assume the studio is across the hall?!)
![](i-images/Invasion%20USA/Invasion_USA_12.jpg)
She can't believe he's still alive, but
Potter warns it's only because they want
him to broadcast their propaganda. Seems
he bluffed his way to seeing Carla first
before agreeing to cooperate. Now,
when Potter
tells the slovenly soldiers where the
liquor cabinet is to buy them some time,
the more sweaty one tells him
no tricks or he'll kill them both before chugging some of that gud
viskey! And
so, taking
the girl in his arms, when 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 with his unspoken sentiment. (So they're both
goners, I guess.) Alas, the sweaty
soldier interrupts them, wanting to share
the joy of Vat 69 and to take a shot at
Carla for some *ahem* fraternizing.
As
he tries to stop this, Potter is gunned
down, and 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 giving 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 ... her body
eventually dissolving into a pool of
brandy.
The
hell? Ah, man. Don't tell me this was
all a dream?!? Boo! Hiss! Bad Movie!!
Bad! Bad! Bad!
When
the camera zooms out, we see everyone is
still silently staring at Ohman's snifter.
Watching this dumbfounded display, Tim
snaps the side of a glass; it's chime
snapping everyone out of their funk.
Confused, everybody looks at everybody
else, trying to regain their bearings. We
also realize Ohman is no longer in the
bar, and 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 all these
susceptible cretins!)
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, denying those allegations
(--
I'm thinking he was in the john. Now make
them cluck like a bunch of chickens!),
and warns that these visions of the future
could really happen -- unless we all do
something about it. And to do this will
require some changes and sacrifices, but
together, we can make a difference and
keep those damnable Commies where they
belong. With that, one by one, each
member of our morality
play peels 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, as George Washington once said: "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
think somebody summed it up best when they
said Invasion
USA
is about 50% stock military footage, 20%
fake newscasts to explain that nonsensical
stock footage, 15% rabidly anti-Commie
propaganda, 10% not so special-effects, 4%
forced and inappropriate romantic subplot,
and 1% Lois Lane, as
the two actresses who portrayed the
character on the old Superman TV
show are both present and accounted for.
Director Alfred Green and editor Don Hayes
actually do a pretty good job of meshing all
of that 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? And all of them spoken with such a ham-fisted
delivery that they 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,
and would go on to terrorize his soon to
be wife in My World Dies Screaming.
Castle, meanwhile, was last seen fighting
off a bunch of 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.
E'yup, the same man who gave us Touch
of Evil
and Written on the Wind also gave
us this, the rocket-bra inspired bad girl
adventures of Sex Kittens Go to College
and Girl's Town, and the oddities
of all oddities, Confessions
of an Opium Eater, where
action-hero Vincent Price fights and puffs
his way through Chinatown to prevent a
forced bridal auction.
Released
for it's 50th Anniversary on DVD,
Synapses'
Invasion
USA
disc
has a couple of great audio bonus features
that are a real treat for your ears.
Produced by a company who manufactured
pre-fabricated bomb shelters, "If
the Bomb Falls"
is high on the scare tactics while showing
us how to survive an atomic attack, but the narrator is so blasé about the end of
the world 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. Sure, the narrator is a little
over-melodramatic, but the sound-effects
of people screaming as their skin burns
and sizzles actually gave me goose-bumps.
But the extra feature
highlight has got to be the inclusion of
Jack L. Warner’s infamous short, Red
Nightmare,
where Jack Webb narrates the story of Jack
Kelly (Bart
Maverick!), who goes to bed in the
suburbs but wakes up to a nightmare of
Communist oppression. This little piece of
paranoia is worth the price of the DVD
alone, and I'd go into more detail but I'm
gonna 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, where the world could have ended
at any moment. Meaning 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 Armageddon never came
to pass. 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, results are
tweaked, and situations are exaggerated to
justify a budget, sell you a gas mask,
boost ratings, or sell you tickets to a
movie.
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