Category Archives: Screen Enemies of the American Way

Not a lot, since a lot of my research of late has involved The Invaders.

When I first saw The Brotherhood of the Bell (1970) it was my first encounter with the concept of an all-powerful secret conspiracy, so I was pleasantly surprised that it holds up well on rewatching. Glenn Ford is a member of the eponymous society who rebels when its machinations drive a friend to suicide (the weakest part of the film—I kept expecting to learn the brotherhood had murdered him), only to discover that not only has The Bell shaped his entire life (“You haven’t competed for anything in 22 years.”) but is capable of obtaining secret government documents, impersonating federal agents, and triggering tax audits and job blacklists. While not exactly a Fifth Column, the brotherhood is the kind of secret group (real or imagined) that’s provoked American paranoia for years (in one scene, Ford is accused of being a front man for either the Elders of Zion or the Jesuits), so it’s in the book.

The Thing (1982) is one of the thrillers in which personal paranoia and political paranoia are linked—while the alien shapeshifter’s goal is ultimate planetary takeover, the immediate effect is personal as the occupants of an arctic research station try to figure out Are You One Of Us, Or—. Despite the gratuitous special effects and gore, this John Carpenter film is better than I expected.

Invasion USA (1951) isn’t really a Fifth Column film but it’s certainly paranoid, as Russian forces occupy the West Coast, nuke American cities and capture Washington, all because the lead characters didn’t love America enough to be dedicated to the fight against her enemies! This is one of the most authoritarian films I’ve ever seen, implying the only objections to drafting factory workers or forcing manufacturers to switch to munitions are selfish ones—when a tractor manufacturer points out his dealers will lose money if he switches to tanks, an Army officer tells him that Real Americans would be OK with that.

Big Jim McLain (1952) stars John Wayne and James Arness as investigators for the House Un-American Activites Committee, who in this film are not a bunch of witch-hunters but modern American heroes rooting out murderers and traitors (who then go on to hide their evil by invoking the Bill of Rights). One of the most rabid Red-baiting films I’ve seen, equating American Communists to North Korean soldiers and at one point suggesting Communists are more repulsive than lepers. Memorable.

Along with watching movies for The Enemy Within, I’m also tackling TV shows, so the past week and a half I’ve watched about half the first season of the sixties television series, The Invaders.

This was TV’s first shot at a Bodysnatchers-style alien infiltration series, wherein architect David Vincent (Roy Thinnes) discovers aliens are among us, posing as humans, plotting to take over the world by various means (getting nuclear weapons banned, buying up towns they can populate with their own people, turning insects into killers). Throwing away his job and his old life, he criss-crosses the country, hunting for any evidence he can use to alert the world to the threat.

Which is what now leaps out at me when I watch them: In contrast to most ET invasions, the emphasis isn’t on stopping them, it’s on proving they exist. Nor is there any hint of an X-Files style cover-up—the government here appears to be sincere in wanting the truth, just skeptical (in one episode, military officer William Windom reports events, but tells Vincent they’ll be buried in investigative bureaucracy forever).

Does that reflect that the sixties were a more skeptical time about UFOs? Or that the premise was simply harder for audiences to swallow back then (much less SF on TV) and that was reflected in the story? Or just a decision by the creators to keep David isolated (though he did get some supporters mid-second season)?

The isolation is the other thing I notice: He’s very much in the style of the drifter/loner hero so prevalent in the sixties and seventies, as seen in Then Came Bronson, Route 66, Coronet Blue, The Immortal and of course, The Fugitive (which was the big previous hit for Quinn-Martin, the company that gave us The Invaders).

Another significant difference: In contrast to The War of the Worlds, Threshold and other later series, there’s no actual body-snatching here: The aliens take human form but they don’t replace real people, which makes it a lot less creepy and paranoid. Of course, the stiff direction and plots don’t help: A number of these could have been stock enemy-spy plots on I Spy, say (even though the creators say they didn’t mean this as a Cold War metaphor or anything).

Would I have noticed any of this if I watched it straight, without the critical filter of The Enemy Within? Maybe not.

Does it matter? In the grand scheme of things, no. In the spirit of writing a good book, definitely!

One of the problems for my work on The Enemy Within is that it’s sometimes hard to tell where political paranoia begins.

Obviously the USSR had agents operating in this country, for instance; just as obviously, the entire Communist Party USA was not a trained cadre of Soviet spies. But at what point does a spy film go from “realistic” (well, by the standards of spy thrillers) to paranoid?

Sometimes it’s easy to tell: With I Led Three Lives, as I’ve noted before, there’s a huge difference between Herb Philbrick’s memoir (nine years of listening to Communists talk) and the same-name TV show (where Philbrick spent nine years stopping murders, blackmail, propaganda operations and more). Or take the 1930s Miyazaki case, in which a Japanese spy bribed a US seaman to gather information on ship design, movements, etc.; in the film based on the case, Betrayal From The East, Miyazaki is coordinating all-out attacks along the entire Pacific coast.

The toughest is writing about Islamic-terrorism films, since we’re a long way from knowing the full scope of radical Islam in America (or for that matter the full lack of scope). I find Showtime’s Sleeper Cell on the paranoid side: A terrorist cell with access to weapon-grade anthrax and drugs that can simulate a heart attack. Maybe it’ll turn out I’m wrong. On the other hand, The War Within, with it’s lone, largely solo suicide bomber, seems pretty realistic.

I wish I could lay down a firm line and say Here! This is where political paranoia starts! But I think I’m going to be winging it for a while longer.