Invasion, U.S.A. (1952)

Wow! Such a good movie.

A Masterpiece!

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

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.

It's a darn shame that INVASION USA was such a poorly made film, as the film did have a couple things in its favor. First, the idea for the film of a Soviet invasion of America, while rather ridiculous, was also pretty interesting. It's an interesting "what if" sort of concept. Second, while many of the "actors" were amazingly lame, there were a couple quality actors in the cast as well. While not household names, Gerald Mohr and Dan O'Herlihy could definitely actor and both had wonderful voices. Despite a script written by marsupials, they tried their best and gave the film a tiny bit of respectability. Unfortunately, everything else in the film was such a mess that these factors manage to keep the overall score to a 2! Yes, folks, it's THAT bad! The film begins with an incredibly obvious scene in a bar where the people all seem more like caricatures than real people. Each person there has a variety of excuses not to do their best to protect America from foreign devils. However, to teach them all a lesson, a mystic (O'Herlihy) uses mass hypnosis to show they what it would be like if their beloved nation were destroyed due to their indifference.The biggest problem with the film is the budget. It's obvious they had very little money, so at least half to two-thirds of the film consisted of stock footage of an "invasion". Many times, photographs of US cities were shown and then explosions were cheaply superimposed over top of it--and looked nothing like an exploding city. As for the action footage, the trouble was that much of the stock film was hopelessly out of date by 1952, as much of it was from WWII. In fact, the naval footage is almost all from the War in the Pacific--and featured Japanese planes that were now obsolete making kamikaze attacks on ships. Apart from this, with only a few grainy clips of MIG-15 fighter planes, the rest of the clips all showed American airplanes supposedly attacking America! So, the "enemy" consisted mostly of B-29/B-50 bombers (the B-50 is an updated version of the 29) as well as Saber and Starfighter jets. This was never explained and telling who was who was practically impossible. However, with the footage of "enemy" soldiers, the film explained that the reason they looked EXACTLY like American soldiers was because they were deliberately doing that to confuse us!! Oh, and by the way, the reason I say "enemy" is that although the film obviously is about a Soviet attack on America, not once were these enemy nations named--a very strange omission to say the least.Based on what I've said so far, you'd probably assume the film isn't worth watching. Well, that might be true for the average viewer, but there is a certain silly appeal in watching it. In other words, the film is so bad that it's entertaining because you might just find yourself laughing at either the film's incompetence or how over the top it becomes near the end. In particular, you just have to see the scene where the pretty lady is attacked by slobbering perverted soldiers--I know I found myself laughing out loud!! By the way, the DVD for this film is excellent. I like the way it was packaged as well as the extras. While the interviews with some of the actors were done in a rather cheesy manner, some of their insights are interesting and it's very surreal to see that Noell Neal actually seemed to like the film and think it was well made!! Also, a short film from 1962, RED NIGHTMARE, is actually better made and a much better example of the so-called "Red Scare" era than the featured film.FYI--For trivia nuts out there, this film has small parts for BOTH Lois Lanes from the 1950s TV show--Noel Neill and Phyllis Coates, though they do not act together in the movie. Look closely, though, as each part is rather small. Neill is the lady at the airline desk and Coates is the wife of the rancher who almost immediately snuffs it when she enters the screen.

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