I saw INVASION USA first in theatre in, I think, 1958, a Saturday [Afternoon] Special, and slightly later on television. Boy! Did it blow a thirteen year-old's hair back! America unprepared. Atomic bombers coming over the Pole. The R.C.A. Building sliding into ruin. Street fighting. "Enemy soldiers in American uniforms." A screaming woman with most of one mammary showing leaping to her death to escape . . . you know what. And that ENDING -- blow the [boy] down! The whole week-end I was in a daze.
It is a pity that one compares the enormity of two years ago to a cautionary "message" in this propaganda film. Perhaps if the United States were not spilling so much unnecessary blood in Korea, as she would in the next decade in Indo-China, the unnamed Enemy would not have gotten a leg up so easily. Please do not compare INVASION USA to 11 September, an insult to the latter, the least of which is that this S.F. story tells a frontal assault, while the Tragedy was pure and simple subversion.
This film is a pathetic attempt by "Hollywood" to show how much of a Team Player the industry was -- after coming apart like wet cardboard for the previous five years under Government scrutiny. I understand there was a 1980s movie of the same name which I will not see, a celebration of the Cold War revival of that heady decade. America under the heal. See the N.R.A. paranoia in RED DAWN. Check into Grenada, or Panama, anyone?
Final non-cinema note: Want an excellent 1950s anti-commie thriller? WHEN THE KISSING HAD TO STOP by Constantine FitzGibbon. It was all set up for a film in the early '60s, but the project fell through to the disgust of the talented British novelist.
It is a pity that one compares the enormity of two years ago to a cautionary "message" in this propaganda film. Perhaps if the United States were not spilling so much unnecessary blood in Korea, as she would in the next decade in Indo-China, the unnamed Enemy would not have gotten a leg up so easily. Please do not compare INVASION USA to 11 September, an insult to the latter, the least of which is that this S.F. story tells a frontal assault, while the Tragedy was pure and simple subversion.
This film is a pathetic attempt by "Hollywood" to show how much of a Team Player the industry was -- after coming apart like wet cardboard for the previous five years under Government scrutiny. I understand there was a 1980s movie of the same name which I will not see, a celebration of the Cold War revival of that heady decade. America under the heal. See the N.R.A. paranoia in RED DAWN. Check into Grenada, or Panama, anyone?
Final non-cinema note: Want an excellent 1950s anti-commie thriller? WHEN THE KISSING HAD TO STOP by Constantine FitzGibbon. It was all set up for a film in the early '60s, but the project fell through to the disgust of the talented British novelist.