During the Cold War, the United States indulged in a national delusion — that this country was somehow divinely anointed to combat Communist expansion. The complexities (not to mention realities) of this titanic geopolitical struggle were simply not to be contemplated by John Q. Citizen. Why bother? Us versus Them. How wonderfully simplistic! Synapse Films has assembled a terrific package of Cold War pop culture relics on its latest DVD, pairing the early '50s fantasy-drama Invasion U.S.A. with the infamous "Red Scare" short from 1962, Red Nightmare. Looking back from today's perspective (having been born a month before the Cuban Missile Crisis), it seems astonishing that the average American of the day probably believed this crap. Didn't someone once say that, if the Lie is big enough, the people will swallow it? At least now we can enjoy these films for what they truly are: comedies.
    Invasion U.S.A. concerns the blasé patrons of a New York City bar — a TV anchorman, a blonde ingénue, a glad-handing congressman, a factory owner, a cattleman — who are shown the folly of their indifference by the mysterious "Mr. Ohman" (Dan O'Herlihy), a fortune teller who hypnotizes them with the swirling liquid in his brandy snifter. When they (supposedly) snap out of their collective trance they learn from a TV newscast that an enemy nation has launched a war against the United States with a surprise invasion of Alaska. Periodically the characters meet at the bar to get further news updates; it's through these bulletins that most of the plot is advanced. The dastardly enemy — never identified in the script, though clearly the Russkis — next drops A-bombs on military airfields in Washington, Oregon, and California in advance of mass paratroop landings. The Commie paras are sneakily dressed in American uniforms. (All the easier, you see, to use stock footage of U.S. soldiers. And for some inexplicable reason not a single American radar station seems capable of picking up the invader's aircraft until they're right over their targets, despite the fact that the U.S.A. then led the world — still does — in radar technology.) With the crisis worsening, the characters go their various ways to meet their fates. The anchorman and the blonde (Angry Red Planet's Gerald Mohr, Beginning of the End's Peggie Castle) hit it off, their romance blossoming even as the nation falls apart under the hammer (and sickle) blows of the enemy. The congressman returns to D.C., where an enemy paratrooper guns him down as the capital itself is overrun. Factory Owner makes it back home to a San Francisco already under attack; his attempt to retool his tractor plant to make tanks is thwarted when an "ethnic-type" window washer reveals himself to be a Communist spy. In the flick's most memorable scene the cattleman reunites with his family in Arizona only minutes before they're all killed by a raging flood, unleashed when an enemy jet nukes Boulder Dam. Meanwhile, back in New York, the lovebirds manage to survive an A-bomb attack (so does most of the city, apparently; the blast doesn't even interrupt the power supply) only to suffer the depredations of occupation. Rather than defilement at the hands of a fat, brutish Bolshevik ("Now you MY woman!"), this All-American gal commits suicide by jumping from a skyscraper window.
    A supposedly grim 'message' film (with a completely unsurprising surprise ending), Invasion U.S.A. is simply so ridiculous it beggars the imagination to think anyone in the '50s, much less nowadays, could take a micron of it seriously. Atomic weapons are used like the blockbuster bombs of World War II; the words "radiation" and "fallout" are never spoken. Perhaps the kindergarten-level military strategies of the film were dictated by the stock footage the filmmakers had to hand — which is a lot. At least half the movie is WWII/Korean War stock footage you've already seen a zillion times on The History Channel, and in a lot of other movies as well. (Not only do the Commies dress in Yankee uniforms, they fly B-17s, B-24s and B-29s — as well as Luftwaffe and Imperial Japanese aircraft — occasionally dropping bombs on London when they're actually aiming for New York.) Only two or three model shots are used, and when you see little explosions going off on postcards of San Francisco you might think you're watching a Bert I. Gordon flick. Fortunately, every five minutes or so there's a break in the stock footage allowing the actors to spout the occasional kneeslapper. (When an American soldier questions a disguised invader about seeing the Cubs play in Chicago, the "Russki" stutters: "Cubs? A cub is a small animal... A bear!") So if you think authentic combat footage is cool to watch — regardless of what it's spliced into — and dig incredibly cheesy dialog, you'll have fun with this Eisenhower apocalypse. (A slightly truncated version of the film was savagely mocked on a very funny episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.)