Movies watched for The Enemy Within

FIVE STEPS TO DANGER (1957) has Sterling Hayden and Ruth Roman on a cross country run from spies that isn’t very interesting … and doesn’t qualify for the book.
THE HOUSE ON CARROLL STREET (1988) stars Kelly McGillis as a blacklisted 1950s activist who discovers corrupt politico Mandy Patinkin (playing a Roy Cohn knock-ff) is in charge of smuggling Nazis into the country (“With the names of dead Jews—who else would have that sense of humor?”), and slowly convinces FBI man Jeff Daniels that they can’t let him get away with it. Not exactly an infiltration thriller, but worth seeing for Patinkin’s scene-stealing schemer.
NO WAY OUT (1987) is the remake of THE BIG CLOCK in which Secretary of Defense Gene Hackman murders his mistress Sean Young, then decides to cover up the crime by blaming it on a possibly mythical superspy, “Yuri” and assigns intelligence officer Kevin Costner to the job—unaware that Costner, as Young’s secret lover, is the prime suspect. A good thriller, though I’ve never liked Young.
I vaguely remembered HALF-MOON STREET (1986) as having much more of a conspiracy angle—as it is, it’s just a straight romance between British politician Michael Caine and professor/escort Sigourney Weaver, with a terrorist angle thrown rather awkwardly in. Good performances, mediocre movie.
IN LIKE FLINT (1967) likewise had less of a paranoia/infiltration element than I’d remembered so watching this mostly served to confirm that I find James Coburn’s smug super-agent really, really annoying.

G-MEN VS. THE BLACK DRAGON is a 1940s movie serial in which the Black Dragon Society (a militant Japanese NGO that was seen at the time as the prime mover behind Japanese espionage) begins operating in Los Angeles, blowing up ships, stealing secret weapons and destroying power lines, with the help of its network of covert ops. Can a trio of agents (one Brit, one Yank, one Chinese) stop them?
BLACK DRAGONS (1942) was the Society’s other shot at movie immortality, as a string of sabotage attacks cripples American business, Bela Lugosi lurks ominously and dead businessmen keep winding up on the steps of the Japanese embassy. Given this is from the Poverty Row filmmaker Monogram, it’s surprisingly entertaining.

And in print:

ONSCREEN AND UNDERCOVER :The Ultimate Book of Movie Espionage by Wesley Britton, is a competent but dry history of screen espionage recounting silent battles against Germans, anarchists and occasionally Mexicans through WW II, the Cold War and the somewhat bemused post-Cold War phase (though Britton underestimates how many Arab terrorists showed up as villains in the pre-9/11 days). A useful reference source for my book, even given that most of the possibles turned out to be false leads.
I interlibrary-loaned HEARST OVER HOLLYWOOD: Passion, Power and Propaganda in the Movies by Louis Pizzitola for information about PATRIA (a silent serial warning about the unholy Japanese/Mexican alliance) and discovered several other interesting entries (two WWI films portraying a Hearst-like character as a German agent and Fighting Youth, in wich Commies try to corrupt college football!). The book itself is very good, showing Hearst’s involvement with the movies for much of his life, whether pushing for censorship (starting early on, probably as a way to clean up his playboy image), romancing Marion Davies and financing her films and getting involved in multiple other productions, not to mention his contributions to celebrity journalism and movie promotion.
Rereading THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND showed I was right about the later movie reworking the story (though I underestimated how much): This makes for a very good paranoid thriller as a successful reporter has to spot which of his close friends is an agent for a conspiracy plotting to destabilize the US economy (using blackmail on powerful players, which made me think of TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE) only to find himself wondering if the CIA is entirely on the level. The fact that it is marks the big difference from the eighties film, in which the CIA turns out to be the real baddie.