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Don't Believe the Hype

Absolutely the worst movie.

Absolutely Fantastic

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

I'm quite partial to a bad movie and pride myself in being able to enjoy a movie for when it was made but this was just dreadful. A ton of stock WWII footage pasted into a cheap bar room scene for some narrative ..... "they're wearing US uniforms" .... no sh!t Sherlock that's cos its footage of US troops in action or training!Was that John Agar as a trooper on the Telephone?I only ticked the spoiler alert box in case you wanted to be surprised at how bad this movie is .... makes Plan 9 from outer space look like an Oscar winner.

This is a hyper-low budget stock footage film festival which profits heavily from the battle for Okinawa in World War II, among others things. Add to that one yellow cab and several local-TV-station-studio-quality soundstage sets and you are there. Surely it is proof that it is possible to make a feature film for less than about $50 (albeit in 1952 dollars). The screenplay isn't much past the 4th-grade level and it is hard to imagine how it could be taken seriously as a movie by any adult outside of the sub-zero IQ set that now dominate a certain American political party today. It's so bad it's not even funny. Best seen only to see what kind of crap Hollywood was capable of selling in 1952. The sole highlight is getting to see the venerable William Schallert in one of his earliest film appearances.

***SPOILERS*** This neurotic war crazy movie starts peacefully enough with a number of people from all walks of life hanging out at a local watering hole to freshen up with a few drinks and shoot the breeze about local politics in the city. There's news reporter Vince Potter, Gerald Mohr, who drops in doing his latest thing asking those at the bar such meaningless questions about what they think of the draft as well as if the zoot suite or ladies bloomers will ever come back in fashion. There's also this mysterious Mr. Ohman, Dan O'Herlihy, who seems to be fascinated in watching the wine in his glass spinning around as he shakes it. It's then that the preferable you know what hits the fan with a news bulletin that we, the US, are under attack by an unknown enemy that's launching a massive air and sea assault from across the Bering Strait's at the US territory, it wasn't a state yet, of Alaska!This sneak attack by what is obviously the USSR, that's never once mentioned in the film, quickly turns into a full fledged invasion of the United States with the enemy also using nuclear weapons, or weapons of mass destruction, in the process. As those in the bar watch and listen in horror to the TV news it finally sinks in that because of the cut backs of military spending by the US Congress the US Military is now in deep sh*t in not being able to prevent this invasion and occupation of the US from happening! Among the tactics and tricks that their enemy uses to gain the upper hand is having it's military, by taking night course in collage, speak English and even worse, a clear violation of the 1929 Geneva Accords on the conducting of war-fear, wearing US Army & Marine military uniforms.We soon see as they, the nameless enemy, advance deep into the US heartland what an uncouth and unfeeling, especially towards the weaker sex, these enemy troops really are. Drunk and disorderly they don't for a moment represent the clean cut milk drinking and boy scout US GI's and Marines that they are impersonating. In what seems like a nut cracking strategy, coming together from west to east, the enemy forces storm the capital, Washington D.C, massacring the entire US Congress, the President and his cabinet escaped by air, and now move on to the "Big Apple" New York City in its final push to make the US a Peoples Republic like nation or dictatorship. It's just then when everything seems lost we the audience and those in the movie get the surprise of theirs and ours lives!***SPOILERS*** Very probably the best example of Cold War hysterics to come out of Hollywood in the 1950's. With the exception of not identifying, very much due to both diplomatic as well as political pressures, who's doing the invading it tells on film what we back then feared most and on top of all that in a worse case scenario ending that must have caused a number of heart attacks and fainting spells to those watching in the audience. It was the final few minutes that was the right medication that those watching the movie needed to clam them down and bring the back to reality. That's if they lasted long enough by still being conscious and alert to watch it!

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