Category Archives: Screen Enemies of the American Way

Invaders From Mars is a 1986 remake of the creepy 1953 film in which a small boy discovers that Martians have taken control of his parents, his friends, the police … While there’s some good acting—Timothy Bottoms and Laraine Newman are quite creepy as the possessed parents—the high-powered special effects and spectacular Things Blow Up Real Good climax are a poor substitute for the eerie look William Cameron Menzies gave the original.
Strange Invaders (1983) is supposed to be a tribute to the fifties alien-invasion/body-snatcher films, as Paul LeMat discovers the town where his ex-wife mysteriously disappeared seems to be a hotbed of activity by disguised extraterrestrials. Unfortunately, while it has all the elements, it can’t seem to decide what to do with them: It’s not clever enough for a tribute and not effective enough to be taken straight. Plus, Nancy Allen’s performance as the female lead is awful.
Nowhere Man is an interesting TV series in which Bruce Greenwood steps out of a restaurant for a few seconds, then walks back in to discover nobody knows him, including his wife, his identification is gone and there’s no proof he ever existed. Cut off from everyone he knows, he sets out to learn the secrets of the organization behind it, and why they’re so interested in securing the negative of one of his photos. While a lot of the episodes were pretty dull, enough works that this was worth rewatching (and the sinister conspiracy definitely qualifies for my book).
Threshold is a terrific SF series that died much too soon: Aliens have sent a radio signal that genetically transforms humans into something more than human, with an obsessive desire to spread the infection to others; to stop the “bioforming” of Earth, a crack team headed by Carla Guggino is organized to fight back and control the infection. One I greatly enjoyed rewatching.

First, the ones that didn’t make the cut:
MIMIC 2 (2001) is a sequel in which the protagonist of the original is now working as a science teacher, only to discover the super-insects of the first film have now mutated to the point of taking human shape. That angle doesn’t play in enough to qualify for my book, since it’s mostly about just running from the scary insect people rather than wondering Are You One Of Us Or …?
BLOWUP (1966) is the Antonioni film in which Anthony Hemmings’ discovery he’s photographed a murder almost jars him out of his aimless lifestyle. Works slightly better on rewatching than it did the first time, but it’s still more about style than substance.
ADVENTURES OF THE FLYING CADETS (1943) is a Boys Own-style serial in which four plucky pilot trainees are framed for murder by the Nazi assassin the Black Hangman (regrettably much more mundane than the name sounds) and forced to go on the lam to stop him. The descriptions I had of this made it sound like it was just possibly grist for my mill, but no, there is little of paranoia and not much of a Fifth Column, so I gave up about a third of the way through.
THE GROUNDSTAR CONSPIRACY (1972) is a good thriller in which George Peppard refuses to let double-agent Michael Sarrazin’s amnesia stop him from learning who Sarrazin worked for when he blew up a top-secret lab. Not paranoid enough for the book (the focus is on Sarrazin putting himself back together with help from Christine Belford) but good fun with Peppard as the man who suspects everyone as naturally as he breathes.
MURDER AT 1600 (1997) is a so-so thriller wherein homicide detective Wesley Snipes is assigned to investigate a White House staffer’s murder only to discover that it points right at First Son-or does it? Like SHADOW CONSPIRACY and THE SENTINEL this focuses more on replacing the president with an ambitious rival than a full Fifth Column scheme, so it doesn’t make the cut; with Diane Lane and Dennis Miller as Snipes’ sidekicks, and Daniel Benzali and Alan Alda as White House power players.
S*P*Y*S (1974) stars Donald Sutherland and Elliot Gould as respectively realist and idealist spies forced to team up when the KGB claims their heads in return for two of its own agents (“It’s the bilateral accord of 1972.”). Despite the obvious effort to cash-in on M*A*S*H, this is just recycled Bond-parody material that could have been made 10 years earlier.
Now the one that did:
CIVIC DUTY (2006) stars Peter Krause as an unemployed accountant who becomes increasingly obsessed with the Arab Terrorist Menace but can’t convince anyone that the Middle-Eastern grad student next door is obviously plotting something horrible. This works well, though the ending leaves me wondering if they’re trying to have it both ways or should be a sign as to how far Krause has gone off into delusion-land.

First, I’m pleased to report that I’ve updated and polished up the introduction and the first four chapters (German, Japanese and Cold War Fifth Columnists—the Commies required two chapters). It’ll need more going over, particularly as I add movies to those chapters and as the book gets longer (I may wind up having to go back and trim), but it’s looking quite decent.
Now, the movies:
THE SENTINEL (2006) has Michael Douglas as a veteran Secret Service agent suspected of being the double-agent plotting to assassinate the president, but his real secret is a love affair with First Lady Kim Basinger. Perfectly adequate, but as it turns out, not one for the book.
GUILTY BY SUSPICION (1991) is one of those films that mistakes a premise for a plot, a by-the-numbers drama of screenwriter Robert deNiro discovering his brief association with the American Communist Party has HUAC wanting him to name names, then blacklisting him when he refuses. Definitely one for my book, but the kind of film where I react to every development with “Well, of course!”
Charlize Theron is THE ASTRONAUT’S WIFE (1999) who gets the oddest feeling spouse Johnny Depp hasn’t been the same since he lost contact with Earth for a couple of minutes in space. Ploddingly slow and dull, but merits at least a mention in my book.
INVASION OF THE POD PEOPLE (2007) is a direct-to-DVD piece (from the same people who brought us TRANSMORPHERS) in which the replacement of staff and models at an LA modeling agency leads to R-rated lesbian orgies (nothing over an R, though) and violence between the usual Are You One of Us, Or— paranoid fears. Feeble.
ACROSS THE PACIFIC (1942) is best known for reuniting John Huston, Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor and Sidney Greenstreet after The Maltese Falcon but should be at least as well known as the first Pearl Harbor film, only to switch gears when Dec. 7, 1941 took place mid-filming, forcing them to shift their Japanese sabotage plot to the Panama Canal (and some rather awkward explanations why a Central American plantation is staffed entirely by Asians). A perfect fit for my book, for example by showing a completely Americanized Japanese college student as being really a die-hard loyalist to the Emperor.
THE PARALLAX VIEW (1972) is Alan J. Pakula’s exercise in political paranoia, as Warren Beatty discovers everyone who saw a second gunman at a political assassination has died mysteriously as the result of a sinister conspiracy we never do get to make sense of. Very much a product of its time in its vague but ominous suspicions and having the Parallax Corp. win out in the end; very good, in any case.
THE ENEMY WITHIN (1994) is a reworking of Seven Days in May with Jason Robards as a would-be military dictator and Forest Whitaker as the man working to prevent it with help from George Dzunda as a Russian spymaster (“We do not want to see a militarized United States.”), President Sam Wanamaker and Chief of Staff Dana Delaney. The scope of the scheme puts this in my book where straight assassination stories such as The Sentinel lose out.
THE HOLCROFT COVENANT (1985) doesn’t qualify as well as I’d thought—while Michael Caine’s Holcroft certainly has trouble figuring out which side his various associates are on, and a great many conflicting agendas are in play, there isn’t much in the way of infiltration and political paranoia. In its own right, competent, but not outstanding , though I do like Caine playing such an inept man of action.
MINISTRY OF FEAR (1945) has Ray Milland discover that merely by buying a cake, he’s plunged himself into a world where everyone from psychics to relief agencies is up to their knees in espionage; a solid thriller from Fritz Lang based on a Graham Greene book (I really must read some Greene one day).
INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS (1973) remains one of my favorite bad films as a sexy mad scientist attempts to create a Fifth Column race of insectoid superwoman only to breed sterile sexpots whose insatiable lust causes men to drop dead of exhaustion during sex (triggering a lot of sexual paranoia). A decade later, this might have been an AIDS metaphor; as is, inept but entertaining.