Movies Watched For The Enemy Within

SEVEN DAYS IN MAY (1964) is the heavyhanded Rod Serling script in which military officer Kirk Douglas realizes his revered mentor Burt Lancaster is plotting a military coup to prevent the president from signing a disarmament treaty with Russia. Much less effective than the remake, Enemy Within, this reminds me of one of Twilight Zone‘s preachier episodes and it’s also very “stagey” in the way scenes play out.
SHOOTER (2007) starts with a good premise, as federal agent Danny Glover recruits embittered sniper Mark Wahlberg to figure out how an assassin plans to take down the president, only to exploit the plan to frame Wahlberg as the shooter. Unfortunately what follows is pretty standard man-on-the-run-but-fighting-back stuff, with Ned Beatty stealing several scenes as a corrupt senator.Won’t make the book.
WANTED (2009) lives down to the reviews I’d heard (and doesn’t make the book, either)—while I disliked Mark Millar’s comics series, it did, at least have imagination, while this story about a cult of assassins serving fate has little. And why switch Millar’s black female lead for Angelina Jolie? I can’t believe all the good black actresses in Hollywood were that busy.
Watched just enough of CODE NAME DIAMONDHEAD (19 ) to satisfy myself that it didn’t involve anything that would fit in my book, and that this story of a Honolulu based spy was otherwise uninteresting, though with Frances Nguyen as an ally and Ian McShane as an adversary, it’s not lacking in casting.
DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINES (1965) is, of course, Vincent Price’s attempt to create a fembot fifth column to seduce the world’s wealthiest men only to fall afoul of millionaire Dwayne Hickman and SIC agent Frankie Avalon (“I’m agent 00 and a half.”). This will get some sort of mention but being mostly slapstick, probably not much; interesting to see though, given all the AIP in-jokes in it. And it does show how outside of Stepford, female robots are both a Terrible Threat and a Male Fantasy (when they disobey, you can electrocute them and force them to clean the floors!).
CREATION OF THE HUMANOIDS (1962) is a good idea ruined by horrendous execution, as robot-hating militant discovers to his horror that robots are developing droids who can not only pass for human, they take on full human memories-oh, and about that blackout he had a few months ago… Definitely qualifies for an entry in my book, even if the infitration is for noble ends.
BATMAN (1943) is noteworthy for being the Bat’s first turn on the big screen (a 15-chapter serial), and for including a lot of comic-book elements, such as Bats dropping off bound crooks at the front of the police station before speeding away, and his then-girlfriend, Linda Page. However, while Dr. Daka (J. Carroll Naish) is a formidable villain, he comes off more like a general supercriminal than the saboteur villain in G-Men Vs The Black Dragon. The racism and the ringing support for the Japanese internment will, however, earn it some sort of mention.
ECHELON CONSPIRACY (2009) doesn’t qualify for my book either but does make a fairly good entry in the They’re Watching You subgenre of paranoia films as a computer geek acquires a cell-phone that gives infallible advice and discovers a surveillance program is attempting to exploit him for its own ends, which makes him of interest to FBI agent Ving Rames and NSA bigwig Martin Sheen. Nothing special, but decent filler.
VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1995) and its story of aliens impregnating women to breed a fifth column is certainly an entry in the book, but it’s a horrible remake of the 1960 original—every change is for the worse. Watch the first film, or check out John Wyndham’s source novel, The Midwich Cuckoos, instead.
On the other hand, the above looks like an art film in comparison to SEEDPEOPLE (1992) which is as by-the-numbers a BODY SNATCHERS remake as possible, plus ludicrously unconvincing monsters even for a low-budget operation like Full Moon (which I noticed checking online is still going). And the big twist is obvious.
BLACK LEGION (1937) is the based-on-truth drama in which Humphrey Bogart realizes immigrant hordes are taking the jobs of good Americans like his, and so joins a group that’s doing something about it-a disastrous step that leads to drunkenness, separation from his family, unemployment and finally murder and perjury (very noir in a way). I’d thought the Legion had enough political clout to qualify as a home-grown fifth column-while I was wrong, this is still a pleasure to rewatch.
I watched THE OMEN (1976) partway through, enough to decide that it doesn’t have the same conspiratorial elements as Rosemary’s Baby, most of the deviltry being done by the supernatural and only the ominous nursemaid as a human agent.
LEFT BEHIND (2000), on the other hand, may qualify (though with the book due off by the end of the month, I’ll have to decide pronto) as Kirk Cameron realizes that a Sinister Conspiracy of International Bankers is plotting to give the world’s most powerful fertilizer formula to the UN, then bankrupt it and seize control of the world food supply (which doesn’t make much sense) only to be supplanted by sinister Antichrist and new Secretary General Gordon Currie. Better than the book (admittedly a low bar to shoot far) without being either good or bad enough to be psychotronic, but it has more of an infiltration element than Omen did.