Invasion, U.S.A.

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.

I heard about this movie, Invasion USA, many years ago but it wasn't until this week (as a matter of fact today) that I finally got the movie to add to my video collection.

The primary reason that I had wanted to see it was that both Noel Neill and Phyllis Coates had parts in this movie. You ask, who are these actresses. Both of them played Lois Lane in the Adventures of Superman. Noell Neill played the original Lois Lane in the original Superman with Kirk Alyn in 1948.

I had heard that there was some sort of scuffle between them on this set and I wanted to see how professional actresses can overcome personal feelings between each other.

Well, the scenes that they were involved in didn't even have any connection with each other. Noell Neill was a ticket agent and had maybe 2 minutes on screen. Phyliss Coates had approximately the same amount of time but was in Colorado trying to fight the waters of the Colorado river after Boulder Dam was bombed by the "enemy".

If the United States, which is supposed to be a major super power, gets overrun in maybe a month, is really in essence, a paper tiger.

We saw some evidence of a weak and unprepared USA first at Pearl Harbor, the Vietnam war, and then September 11, 2001 in New York City.

I look up to the USA as the world protector and the champion of freedom, and I hope that the film Invasion USA will ALWAYS be classified as fiction.

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.

To begin with, I had expected to be more engaged by this one – which I also was under the wrong impression would be a talk-fest: instead, about sixty per cent of its trim 74-minute duration is compiled of wartime stock footage (representing the potential decimation of the U.S. by invading Communist forces) – scenes of the London blitz from the celebrated Humphrey Jennings documentary FIRES WERE STARTED (1943) are supposed to stand in for the burning of New York! I wonder how Americans look at the film nowadays vis-a'-vis the events of 9/11 – which is perhaps the only reason why it ever saw the light of day on DVD in the first place!

As it stands, INVASION USA is both hysterical and unintentionally hilarious – never more so than when a car is caught in the flooding of Hoover Dam (hit by a nuclear bomb!) and a cowboy hat is seen floating on a branch as the sole remnant of its Texan owner!; Also worth mentioning are the fact that when the U.S. Senate is besieged, it's seen to be peopled merely by doddering statesmen, while the intermittent 'appearances' by the American President addressing the nation are taken from a vague solitary angle! Equally queasy is the fact that handsome leads Gerard Mohr (a cynical TV reporter) and Peggie Castle are drawn together at such a precarious time, while the middle-aged bartender keeps mixing drinks as if his life depended on it – apparently oblivious to the ongoing calamities! Needless to say, the unnamed Soviets are depicted throughout as unemotional slogan-spouting caricatures.

The best thing about the film is the brief but typically riveting performance by Dan O'Herlihy (incidentally, years later he'd appear in a genuine Cold War classic i.e FAIL SAFE [1964]) – not least in view of the twist ending brought about by his particular line of work. In the DVD supplements, much is made of the fact that the film features the two actresses who played "Superman"'s Lois Lane on TV – Noel Neill and Phyllis Coates – but their contribution is, at best, negligible!; also on hand as a newscaster is character actor William Schallert, who's said to have made more Atomic-related titles than anyone else (the top 100 such efforts compiled by "Conelrad" are listed, with a brief synopsis for each one, on the Synapse DVD itself); in an interview included on the disc, Schallert speaks of his brush with Orson Welles' TOUCH OF EVIL (1958) where he was proposed for the role later played by Maltese actor Joseph Calleia – whom Schallert mistakenly thinks was an Italian! Oh, well, it's near enough I suppose…

As can be gathered, therefore, the extras are quite nice, being pretty comprehensive about the whole Cold War aura which pervaded the first two decades or so of the post-war era (though I've only very briefly sampled the two radio programs which play back-to-back as an Audio Commentary to the film). One of the most telling comments in the extras comes from O'Herlihy himself – when he went to Russia in the late 1960s to film WATERLOO (1970), he was met by such an inefficient people that he couldn't fathom how their threat was ever taken seriously!; Noel Neill, then, overhypes the film's impact – I mean saying it blows PEARL HARBOR (2001) out of the water is not much of a feat, is it? In the end, I have to admit that when the Communist ideology (or critique thereof) was presented as a sci-fi allegory, the results were generally that much more fun

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.