Category Archives: Screen Enemies of the American Way

My final post on this subject (by the way, the manuscript and photos arrived in fine shape. The Post Office deserves more credit for good work than it gets).
•Left Behind (2000) and Left Behind: Tribulation Force (2002) are two extremely forgettable films based on the best-selling End Times Christian fiction series, which is based on author/preacher Tim LaHaye’s interpretation of Revelation (it is not, contrary to many statements in the media, a literal retelling). In the opening film, heroic reporter Kirk Cameron discovers a conspiracy by sinister businessmen to take over the UN and thereby gain control of the world food supply (don’t ask me how this makes sense—I’m pretty sure it doesn’t). Cameron discovers too late that in busting this conspiracy, he’s been used by the Antichrist as a tool for cementing his power as leader of the world.
In Tribulation Force, Cameron and his friends try to alert the world to the true nature of that noble leader, only to find out that nobody believes he could be a bad guy; they then begin work spiking the Antichrist’s guns despite his growing control of the economy and the media.
Neither movie is art; both qualify for my book since the Antichrist strikes me very much as a Satanic fifth columnist.
•Coronet Blue.
This late-sixties series involves an amnesiac whose only clue to his identity—and why someone wants to murder him—is the code phrase “coronet blue.” Having read the producer’s explanation for this—the guy was a Soviet agent trained to pass perfectly as American, only to turn rogue and be shot by his own spy network, Coronet Blue—I thought it might earn a place in my book, but the fifth column aspects aren’t pronounced enough. However it’s an entertaining show with some familiar faces turning up (Juliet Mills, Candace Bergen, Jon Voight, David Carradine) and the wild credit sequence is worth watching for alone. Catchy theme songs are fun!
•X-Files.
Needless to say this does qualify for my book. As Peter Knight puts it in Conspiracy Culture, X-Files was the perfect show for fin-de-siecle skepticism and cynicism, a series where there’s always some sort of conspiracy going on, and even if you’re wrong that a particular event is a conspiracy, some other event is. It fits perfectly with a time where people who believe Oswald killed Kennedy and 9/11 really was a terrorist attack (rather than a government conspiracy) get sneered at as sheeple accepting whatever they’re spoon-fed by the government.
As far as the show itself, I’ve never been a fan and still am not (if not for my friend Ross Bagby guiding me, I don’t know how I’d have found the key episodes to watch for the grand Conspiracy arc), but it wasn’t as unwatchable as I thought and sometimes really was entertaining.

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.

I went to GHOST WRITER (2010) primarily for TYG’s birthday, but I did wonder if the conspiracy angles would justify its inclusion. No, although the story of Ewan McGregor learning what happened to ex-Prime Minister Pierce Brosnan’s previous biographer does fit into a British form of political paranoia that cropped up a lot in the Thatcher years, that the country had been turned into a puppet for the USA. The film itself is good, but not great: The revelations were obvious early on and McGregor’s ending action seems suicidally stupid.
HIRED GUN (2009) doesn’t fit the book either, though it does amuse me how it was able to fuse multiple Bogeymen into a single threat by having the Russian Mafia supply a neo-Nazi/Arab terrorist alliance with a nuke. That aside, unimpressive.
RED DAWN (1984) fits better than I expected since American pilot Powers Boothe emphasizes at one point that it was Cubans infiltrating SAC bases that somehow managed to keep us from detecting a Soviet/Cuban/Nicaraguan invasion until Too Late. Very much a product of its times with the use of Nicaraguans as attackers, and of course, the teen protagonists—Action Speaks Louder has a point that it’s The Breakfast Club Fight WW III—but surprisingly free of any political message beyond Gun Control Is Bad (in contrast to Invasion USA in 1951, with its heavyhanded directives on how to avoid being conquered). I can’t help wondering if the emphasis on male bonding is part of the appeal (the kind of film where hugging your friends and weeping when they die is proof of manliness), and what conservative fans make of commander Ron O’Neal equating the Wolverines with the Vietcong.
Patty Duke and Ted Bessel are TWO ON A BENCH (1971) which makes them suspects when the FBI spots a KGB courier on the same bench, resulting in their being confined together long enough to fall in love. This TV movie doesn’t qualify for the book, but works better than I expected thanks to Duke’s high-energy performance as the free spirit; Bessel is much less impressive as the uptight square.
FRANKENSTEIN (2004) has homicide detective Parker Posey discovers the serial-killer “the Surgeon” is one of the Homo superiors created by legendary surgeon Dr. Helios in order to supplant the human race, and agrees to work with prototype Vincent Perez (the original Frankenstein monster) to stop him. With Helios’ creations already infiltrating society, this clearly qualifies for my book, but I don’t feel bad that this pilot didn’t make it to series.
CRY PANIC (1974) is a TV movie in which John Forsythe tries to convince small-town sheriff Earl Holliman that he did so run down a man with his car, even if there’s no body, and Pretty Girl Anne Francis he was talking to never existed. A stock Lady Vanishes variant.
SHADOW ON THE LAND (1968) is the TV pilot set in a totalitarian future America where the protagonist works in the Internal Security Force while secretly helping the revolutionary Society of Man undermine the Leader; the plot concerns his efforts to thwart a terrorist attack that will justify a new crackdown, while keeping security chief John Forsythe from spotting his deceit. Interestingly, the opening lecture on how America grew complacent about its freedom is interchangeable with the message of Strange Holiday or Red Nightmare.
SEVEN DAYS IN MAY (1964) has military officer Kirk Douglas come to realize that his revered superior Burt Lancaster has gone from opposing a nuclear-disarmament treaty to actively plotting to overthrow the government to keep us strong. Too stiff and heavy-handed for my taste (though it does fit the book)—the nineties remake, Enemy Within, works much better.

Enemy Within is due at the end of the month. It will be a busy April, but I don’t think it will be an impossible April (though this week was a lot less productive than I’d hoped).

THE QUILLER MEMORADUM (1966) has spymaster Alec Guinness send agent George Segal to root out a Berlin neo-Nazi network “that looks just like everybody else—no brownshirts.” This is a curate’s egg: Harold Pinter’s screenplay has some great scenes, but also a lot of plodding stretches (the effect of his style on an espionage story, I think). With Max von Sydow as the neo-Nazi leader and Senta Berger as a teacher devoted to the “new Germany.”
THIS GUN FOR HIRE (1942) is a bordeline case (but probably the wrong side of the border) wherein vengeful hit man Alan Ladd and stage magician Veronica Lake wind up on the wrong side of Laird Cregar, the front man for a conspiracy of industrialists sabotaging the defense industry for profit. A great one to rewatch—Ladd’s stony-faced killer was what made him a star and it’s easy to see why.
BAD COMPANY (1995) didn’t make the cut at all, since the conspiracies going on concern corporate corruption and a struggle between Frank Langella and Ellen Barkin for control of their industrial espionage firm, with Laurence Fishbourne caught in the middle. Slick, but predictable.
THE FRONT (1975), like GUILTY BY SUSPICION, is a film too heavy on the message and too light on the entertainment. The story of Woody Allen becoming the front man for several blacklisted writers is earnest and well-intentioned, but not terribly interesting; as an account of the real-life political paranoia of the fifties, it goes in the book nonetheless.
MISSING (1982) is Costa-Gavras’ gripping drama in which hardnosed conservative Jack Lemmon comes to realize daughter-in-law Sissie Spacek is right that her husband was executed by the Chilean government after a US-backed coup. I watched this as a possible entry—a film in which American interests are the fifth column infiltrating someone else—and haven’t quite decided, but Lemmon’s performance and his character arc make it a much better message film than The Front.
LET’S GET TOUGH (1942) is one I dismissed the first time I saw it, but in rewatching this tale portraying the East Side of New York as a hotbed of fifth columnists that only the Bowery Boys can stop, I’ve decided to reconsider.
In some ways, JFK (1991) reminds me of Red-baiting 1950s films like Big Jim McLain in arguing that criticism of Jim Garrison’s (Kevin Costner) crackpot quest to prove Oswald didn’t act alone is proof how close he came to exposing the conspiracy. No substance, but lots of style: My favorite moment is when one of Garrison’s aides tells him a Mafia/CIA/FBI/Corporate conspiracy is insane to even contemplate and Garrison replies matter-of-factly that “The Mafia were only involved at a very low level.”
TRUE LIES (1994) doesn’t hold up as well as I would have expected—what was spectacular action at the time doesn’t look quite so impressive 15 years later, and the annoying parts of the story (heavy sexism, and Arnold Schwarzennegger using federal resources to spy on wife Jamie Lee Curtis) annoy me on rewatching more than the humor appealed to me. And there’s not enough of a fifth column for my purposes.
ENDGAME (2005) is a dull assassination thriller in which Cuba Gooding is the angst-ridden Secret Service agent who let the president get shot and tries to figure out why. Burt Reynolds, James Woods and Anne Archer are also wasted here—and no, it doesn’t qualify for the book either.
AMAZONS (1986) definitely fits as a secret Amazon cult plots to put one of their own in the vice president’s office (presumably the president would have died as dead as he did in Hitler’s Daughter) only to run afoul of surgeon Madeline Stowe and cop Jack Scalia. Not great art, but fun, with several DC Comics references (the history of the Amazons and the use of the element promethium).
THEY GOT ME COVERED (1943) stars Bob Hope as the world’s worst foreign correspondent (“It’s definite-Hitler will not attack Russia.”) whose hunt for a scoop embroils him with an Axis terrorist conspiracy operating out of a DC beauty shop. Marginally enough for my book by virtue of the scope of the operation (an all-out terrorist attack on multiple cities); with Dorothy Lamour as Hope’s long-suffering girlfriend
CONSPIRATOR (1950) is a dreary domestic melodrama in which Elizabeth Taylor falls for dashing Yank Robert Taylor only to being to suspect there’s something he’s not telling her … the discovery he’s a Red doesn’t make for enough of a fifth-column element.

THE ODESSA FILE (1974) stars John Voight as a German reporter hunting down Nazi war criminal Maximilian Schell, which leads Voight to learn of Odessa, a post-war Fifth Column that’s placed SS officers into every aspect of German life. Unusually, the goal isn’t to start a Fourth Reich but simply to get rich and escape war-crimes trials; competently cast with Derek Jacobi, Mary Tamm and Maria Schell among the supporting players. “What you have done sickened all mankind—but I am here for my father.”

THE SILENCER (1999) has a federal agent go undercover as a hitman to infiltrate the terrorist uber-conspiracy The Group, only to discover this is just a ploy by his FBI bosses to frame him for murdering a senator asking too many question. This might slide in as a candidate for my book since it reveals the existence of the homegrown conspiracy D5, an FBI black ops cell that purged enemies J. Edgar couldn’t blackmail, including JFK and Martin Luther King (“Hoover didn’t pull the trigger, but he orchestrated the cover-up.”). In its own right, unimpressive. “You’re just like your father-a perfect patsy.”

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962) is, of course, the classic Fifth Column film in which a Red-baiting candidate and his scheming wife turn out to be Commie plants, a Chinese brainwashing expert goes shopping at Macey’s (“My wife gave me a list.”) and Frank Sinatra assures his superiors that Laurence Harvey is the kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human being he’s ever known. A landmark in so deftly skewering both Bogeyman and Bogeyman-Hunters, though it’s not one I really have any fresh insight into. “What was Raymond doing with his hands?”

BLIND HORIZON (2003) is one that doesn’t qualify, a dull thriller in which Val Kilmer wakes up amnesiac but convinced he knows something about an upcoming presidential assassination … Neve Campbell and Lauren Hutton are among the supporting cast trapped in this.

DIARY OF A MADMAN (1963) is one that skirts the edges of my book in implying the sinister Horla are preying on human beings by turning us against each other; however, as the only one we see is the one which drives magistrate Vincent Price to madness and murder, it doesn’t quite cut it. Good, though “Surely you realize that when a man cannot see his reflection, there must be someone between him and the mirror!”

RENDITION (2007) is an earnest but uninteresting drama in which Reese Witherspoon tries working through the system to get her Arab husband out of enemy combatant status despite the opposition of authoritarian security official Meryl Street. Dramatically mediocre. “Give me a pie chart—I love pie charts.”

EXECUTIVE ACTION (1973) is more interesting, even though it’s a muddled mess chronicling how businessmen Will Geer and Burt Lancaster are among the schemers plotting to assassinate JFK to stop him pulling out of ‘nam (“With Vietnam as a base, we can keep the population in the East down to five and a half billion-and use the same techniques on blacks and Mexicans here.”). Pulls out all the usual arguments (Oswald imposters, deaths of witnesses) without convincing “In Europe, heads of state are killed by conspirators-our presidents are killed by madmen.”

LOOSE CHANGE 9/11: AN AMERICAN COUP (2009) is the latest revision of the original Loose Change documentary that asserts the 9/11 attacks were a power play in the tradition of the Reichstag fire or the Gulf of Tonkin resolution by “a group of tyrants ready and willing to do anything to maintain their stranglehold on America.” Not as nutty as the original version (dropping the claim that the planes that hit the Pentagon and the Twin Towers had actually been replaced with robot drones) but still enough political paranoia for my book. “The slaughter of civilians in broad daylight as the means of promoting an agenda is not unprecedented.”

THE MILLION EYES OF SUMURU (1967) marginally qualifies thanks to sinister Shirley Eaton’s scheme to marry female agents to the world’s wealthiest men, though it’s a marginal element of this plot which mostly concerns Frankie Avalon and George Nader slugging, kissing and wise-cracking their way through a bad Bond knockoff. Only marginally similar to Sax Rohmer’s original “How come everyone hates you and tries to kill me?”

TRIBULATION 99: ALIEN ANOMALIES UNDER AMERICA (1992) is a mockumentary using recycled film and news clips to show how America’s interference in South America (El Salvador, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala) was a sustained effort to thwart the mind-control schemes of evil aliens living inside the hollow earth. Entertaining

MY SON JOHN (1952) lives down to all the reviews I’ve heard in showing how intellectual Robert Walker was corrupted by Communism into actually questioning what his parents and the Catholic Church told him!!! Unlike most of its Red-baiting brethren, this devotes little time to what the Party does (apparently just getting Walker to disagree with his parents was perfidy enough); what really makes it a headscratcher is that while we’re apparently supposed to side with Helen Hayes and Dean Jagger as the parents, they come across as really unpleasant people rather than salt-of-the-earth types. Memorably awful “Everybody has a purpose in life-even Judas.”

HITLER’S DAUGHTER (1990) is a TV Fifth Column film in which Patrick Cassidy discovers that Hitler’s bastard daughter is the head of a conspiracy to raise the Fourth Reich in America, and that she’s on the brink of getting into the White House as either the vice-president, the Secretary of State or the president’s mistress (but … which?). Very Idiot Plot (if Phoenix had burned the secret file instead of letting Cassidy hang onto it, there’d have been no movie) and very blandly acted; Kay Lenz plays one of the suspects. “The new generation of Nazis in America is greater than existed in Germany in 1931!”