Invasion USA

In 1951 Harry Truman fired Douglas MacArthur over what Hollywood would call ‘creative differences’ — the word went out that the General wanted to use nuclear weapons in Korea. Even though neither side had a stockpile of atom bombs sufficent to mount a full-on nuclear war, the fear of attack increased the moment the Soviets started testing their weapons. And what was to prevent unscrupulous Hollywood producers from exploiting those fears?

While mainstream Hollywood supported the idea of an  aggressive nuclear deterrent, independent producers moved to fill the gap. Holding a special place in commercially notable Sci-fi money makers is Albert Zugsmith’s Invasion USA, an artless but extremely effective atom war scare picture that reached audiences early in 1953. It followed the first independent atom war thriller by a full 20 months, Arch Oboloer’s more poetic art film  Five. Both were released by Columbia Pictures.

Invasion. U.S.A. used to run constantly on television before disappearing in the early 1970s. The show is a bizarre call to arms against the communist threat: not some insidious subversion from within, but an all-out military onslaught. An orgy of military stock footage that depicts the Soviet juggernaut is ridiculous but effective, thanks to excellent editing and graphic, if crude, special effects. The strange framing story involves a Criswell-like mystery man who influences a group of bar patrons. The narrative conceit is very good, even if some of the characterizations and dialogue reach heights of camp hilarity. Like John Sayles said in Joe Dante’s  Matinee, this is a steaming pile of jaw-dropping sociology, right on our doorstep. It’s also great group viewing fun.

A cross-section of Americans comes together in a Manhattan bar: newscaster Vince Potter (Gerald Mohr), beautiful Carla Sanford (Peggie Castle), tractor factory industrialist George Sylvester (Robert Bice), Arizona rancher Ed Mulfory (Erik Blythe), and blustering congressman Arthur Harroway (Wade Crosby). They’re all entranced by the confident, mysterious Mr. Ohman (Dan O’Herlihy), a patron who identifies himself as a ‘forecaster.’   Ohman asks the patrons to think about their country. While they’re drinking, war breaks out in the form of a full-scale Soviet military invasion, using atomic bombs to knock out airstrips in the Northwest. The Navy resists well in the Pacific, but Alaska and Washington State are overrun. Sylvester and Mulfory catch one of the last flights to San Francisco but meet horrible fates at the hands of ruthless invaders who take out Boulder dam in a nuclear strike. New York City is nuked as well, with skyscrapers collapsing as enemy troops blast their way in. The newscaster tries to shield his new girlfriend Carla, but to no avail. All wish they had been a trifle more committed to their country’s defense …

Cheap, clever, outrageous, but attention-grabbing in the extreme, Invasion U.S.A. is a key cold war scare picture. Forget Sci-fi with pacifist sentiments: this show’s Soviet Union is so aggressive, Senator Joe McCarthy wouldn’t recognize it. Always keen to spot a good audience magnet, Daily Variety’s review of December 4, 1952 deemed Invasion U.S.A. to be ideally conducive to boffo box office. The question of good taste is not raised. Old Variety reviews can be depended on to rigorously divorce a movie’s content from its commercial appeal.

The neatly structured plot centers on a half-dozen stereotypes, broadly impersonated by capable actors. The rugged, dashing leading man is Gerald Mohr, who began by playing slick sharpies, like his quick bit as a ladies’ man in  Gilda. Mohr specialized in smooth-talking roles all the way to his starring role in the Sci-fi  The Angry Red Planet.

Did Mohr motivate Dan Rather to become a news anchor?  Cool TV news personality Vince Potter interrupts his TV duties only long enough to trawl the bars for dishes. In her low-cut evening gown, Peggie Castle is a welcome potential conquest. But a &$%#@*! nuclear war gets in the way, dammit.

“Last time I met a girl I liked, they bombed Pearl Harbor!” 

Referred to as a ‘debutante’ for who knows what reason, Castle’s Carla is the consort of the tractor manufacturer, but falls for Mohr in what must be the most ridiculous courtship in a science fiction film. Mohr moves in like a Tex Avery wolf, practically diving down Carla’s dress at first sight. Castle has the bod but plenty of talent as well. She’s a lot of fun; the disc extras convince us that she deserved a better career than she got.

The other patrons are serviceable types that react stoically to the strident screenplay that deals them horrible fates. The congressman is cornered by commie troops right in the halls of congress. The fate of the rancher Mulfory is even stickier. When he pulls up to rescue his wife and kids in front of his painted-backdrop ranch, I always want to see the family from the television show Lassie leap into the car to race to safety. Mulfory’s son is none other than  future genie Richard Eyer, in his first movie appearance at age 7.

The film’s touch of casting genius is Dan O’Herlihy. The underused actor was an IRA killer in Carol Reed’s  Odd Man Out, Luis Buñuel’s celebrated  Robinson Crusoe and, much later, ‘The Old Man’ in the first two  RoboCop movies. O’Herlihy’s slightly eerie performance sets us on edge. His Mr. Ohman wears a woolen belt — is it an Irish ‘Crios’ belt?  He convinces as a prophet who claims to know the future, who could hypnotize a group of strangers just by jiggling a brandy snifter. His ‘forecast’ is a George Bailey- like glimpse at Things to Come, should loyal Americans not attend to the business of girding the loins of the United States defense machine.

The reality, of course, is that by 1952 American defense spending was not hog-tied as implied here, but growing by leaps and bounds. The exaggeration of enemy capability, and the claim that a weak America is risking a Pearl Harbor-style sneak attack, rates as irresponsible propaganda. In 1952 we had more military might than any nation in history. Commentator Jason A. Ney says that Invasion USA had government approval, but he might have just been referring to its access to prime-quality signal corps and Navy combat footage. The show calls for civilian production to be converted to military use. We have to think that the Pentagon would approve, even if they didn’t want their name mentioned on the final product.

“It’s the final game of the World Series – and we’re the Home Team!” 

In Invasion U.S.A., war breaks out without the slightest hint or provocation. Then the show shifts into high gear, with outrageously re-purposed battle combat footage.

The invasion is represented almost 100% by stock film footage, from every can in the vault: WW2 and the Korean War, augmented by a few grainy shots of Soviet MIGS. After a while we don’t know what we’re looking at. The enemy bombers are all our own B29s and B36s. Judging by the evidence here, our war surplus must have gotten wa-ay out of hand.

‘Soviet’ planes are often standard American jets with USAF markings. Many shots are flopped, with writing on airplanes written backwards. Did viewers really think they were seeing Cyrillic writing?

Invasion U.S.A.‘s battle scenes play like an extended version of the war montage that opens The Road Warrior. Nervous news bulletins plant exposition like, “The enemy is wearing our uniforms to create confusion,” thus allowing stock footage of our troops to represent the Soviets. When broadcasting mass attacks ‘live from the scene,’ the newscasters talk about ‘remote control camera units’ and telephoto lenses. Their equipment is amazing: the live television feed is somehow beautifully edited, as well.

Augmented by Albert Glasser’s relentless score, the cumulative effect of the non-stop combat is a mounting feeling of hysteria. We do get a panicky idea of what it would be like to be invaded. News anchors invent fictitious air bases but report the conquest of actual cities, with deaths reaching into the thousands, a la Howard Koch’s famous radio broadcast of War of the Worlds.  The crude imagery works no matter how foolish individual cuts may be. Every so often the gag goes too far. Some wartime shots are too familiar. We see the carrier Yorktown being hit by kamikaze planes, only 9 or so years after the real event. Many American sailors are dying in those images … was nobody offended by this opportunistic repurposing?

The enemy is identified as Soviet in every way except verbally. The movie presents no recognizable Soviets at all, and the script takes great pains to avoid naming them. Other details appear to be skewed for budget reasons. A roomful of Russki generals all wear quasi-Nazi uniforms and speak with accents that sound Soviet, German, and Spanish, sometimes in the same sentence. The top general is addressed as, ‘Excellency.’ The most repeated enemy line is a spirited, “Bombs Ay-Vey!”

The invasion logistics are absurd. The Soviets can somehow airlift millions of men around the globe to pull off a massed sneak attack in the Pacific Northwest. Ignored is the elaborate U.S. warning system that would detect just such an ambush. The nervous newscaster William Schallert instead chronicles a clean Red sweep of the West Coast, knocking out airfields along the way with atomic weapons.

Much later, the invasion fantasy Red Dawn doubled down on comic book hysteria: the U.S.A. is overrun by Cuban Reds, backed by the Soviet Union. Around the same time, Cannon Films’ Chuck Norris actioner Invasion U.S.A. combined anti-commie sentiment with racist paranoia. Latin American Reds try to overthrow the U.S. as an army of drug-running criminals. It’s leftist radicals that bomb churches and kill schoolchildren, haven’t you heard?

But being sillier than this film isn’t easy. Every plausible situation is matched by two howlers. Just as the Soviet troops are bashing down an industrialist’s door, a meek window washer (Aram Katcher) reveals himself to be a deep-cover commie agent, who can’t wait to gloat over his new conquest.  ↗  Goddamn labor committees — all of these ‘organizers’ are pinko subversives.

The best thing about Nuclear War is that drinks will still be served. 

The brief, under-produced scenes of civilian panic raise the concept of hokum to a wonderful new level. There’s a fine confusion among the barflies getting soused at Tim’s bar, cracking wise at the tube’s reports of doom. Our beloved Noel Neill, TV’s  Lois Lane, has a choice bit as a lowly airline counterperson.  ←  She must have a direct conduit to the latest war info, because at one point she has to tell a frightened woman that there aren’t any tickets available to Montana … because it’s been nuked. The people in line behind the lady stare as she staggers away. We really expect to hear Noel Neill chirp, “Next!”

The East coast invasion is wonderfully silly. An enemy soldier fighting undercover in GI garb is outed when he doesn’t know that the Chicago Cubs are not “Leetle Bears.”  But his comrades blast their way into rear-projected Senate building interiors to machine-gun the congressmen … action identical to scenes in  Mars Attacks!, and our own January 6 debacle.

Vince bravely continues his broadcast under direct attack, just as did Joel McCrea in the Hitchcock classic  Foreign Correspondent.  But he can’t shield Carla from the fat Soviet slob who crashes into her apartment, eager for whiskey and some blonde companionship: “You MY woman now!”  The goon rips her dress neatly across the shoulder, in the censor-approved manner afforded all dream girls in science fiction movies. We’re surprised that this ‘ravaged look’ — carefully ripped blouses and neat dirt smudges on the cheek — didn’t at some point turn into a fashion statement. Poor Carla’s’ fate mirrors that of the ‘Broadway Baby’ of  Gold Diggers of 1935.  This time, no kitty cat is left behind to mourn over an empty saucer of milk.  ^*

The effects in Invasion U.S.A. are impoverished, but so outrageously ambitious that they work. Optical specialist Jack Rabin depicts the nuclear strikes by superimposing a nighttime bomb blast over various targets, in quick cuts that would be ridiculous were it not for the iconic power of the mushroom cloud.  ↓  In the hyped-up context, firecrackers and cigarette smoke superimposed over cityscapes are more effective than they have any right to be. The sight of a taxi fleeing a massive flash flood is a fall-down hoot. Boulder Dam has been nuked. With a mountain of gurgly, grossly out-of-scale water visible through the rear window, the rancher pleads with the taxi driver to go faster!

When NYC is nuked, our lovers are buried alive under a cascade of bricks and masonry, but of course escape unharmed. One solitary break-apart model skyscraper is shown to collapse in flames. The fact that it’s a solitary tower makes it a disturbing sight, no matter how crudely visualized. It’s one of only a couple of models constructed for the film. In the disc extras we see Misses Castle and Neill in bathing suits, posing next to it for cheesecake publicity stills.

Recommended alternate takes on Invasion, USA: Movies ala Mark, Scifist.