***SPOILERS*** This neurotic war crazy movie starts peacefully enough with a number of people from all walks of life hanging out at a local watering hole to freshen up with a few drinks and shoot the breeze about local politics in the city. There's news reporter Vince Potter, Gerald Mohr, who drops in doing his latest thing asking those at the bar such meaningless questions about what they think of the draft as well as if the zoot suite or ladies bloomers will ever come back in fashion. There's also this mysterious Mr. Ohman, Dan O'Herlihy, who seems to be fascinated in watching the wine in his glass spinning around as he shakes it. It's then that the preferable you know what hits the fan with a news bulletin that we, the US, are under attack by an unknown enemy that's launching a massive air and sea assault from across the Bering Strait's at the US territory, it wasn't a state yet, of Alaska!
This sneak attack by what is obviously the USSR, that's never once mentioned in the film, quickly turns into a full fledged invasion of the United States with the enemy also using nuclear weapons, or weapons of mass destruction, in the process. As those in the bar watch and listen in horror to the TV news it finally sinks in that because of the cut backs of military spending by the US Congress the US Military is now in deep sh*t in not being able to prevent this invasion and occupation of the US from happening! Among the tactics and tricks that their enemy uses to gain the upper hand is having it's military, by taking night course in collage, speak English and even worse, a clear violation of the 1929 Geneva Accords on the conducting of war-fear, wearing US Army & Marine military uniforms.
We soon see as they, the nameless enemy, advance deep into the US heartland what an uncouth and unfeeling, especially towards the weaker sex, these enemy troops really are. Drunk and disorderly they don't for a moment represent the clean cut milk drinking and boy scout US GI's and Marines that they are impersonating. In what seems like a nut cracking strategy, coming together from west to east, the enemy forces storm the capital, Washington D.C, massacring the entire US Congress, the President and his cabinet escaped by air, and now move on to the "Big Apple" New York City in its final push to make the US a Peoples Republic like nation or dictatorship. It's just then when everything seems lost we the audience and those in the movie get the surprise of theirs and ours lives!
***SPOILERS*** Very probably the best example of Cold War hysterics to come out of Hollywood in the 1950's. With the exception of not identifying, very much due to both diplomatic as well as political pressures, who's doing the invading it tells on film what we back then feared most and on top of all that in a worse case scenario ending that must have caused a number of heart attacks and fainting spells to those watching in the audience. It was the final few minutes that was the right medication that those watching the movie needed to clam them down and bring the back to reality. That's if they lasted long enough by still being conscious and alert to watch it!
This sneak attack by what is obviously the USSR, that's never once mentioned in the film, quickly turns into a full fledged invasion of the United States with the enemy also using nuclear weapons, or weapons of mass destruction, in the process. As those in the bar watch and listen in horror to the TV news it finally sinks in that because of the cut backs of military spending by the US Congress the US Military is now in deep sh*t in not being able to prevent this invasion and occupation of the US from happening! Among the tactics and tricks that their enemy uses to gain the upper hand is having it's military, by taking night course in collage, speak English and even worse, a clear violation of the 1929 Geneva Accords on the conducting of war-fear, wearing US Army & Marine military uniforms.
We soon see as they, the nameless enemy, advance deep into the US heartland what an uncouth and unfeeling, especially towards the weaker sex, these enemy troops really are. Drunk and disorderly they don't for a moment represent the clean cut milk drinking and boy scout US GI's and Marines that they are impersonating. In what seems like a nut cracking strategy, coming together from west to east, the enemy forces storm the capital, Washington D.C, massacring the entire US Congress, the President and his cabinet escaped by air, and now move on to the "Big Apple" New York City in its final push to make the US a Peoples Republic like nation or dictatorship. It's just then when everything seems lost we the audience and those in the movie get the surprise of theirs and ours lives!
***SPOILERS*** Very probably the best example of Cold War hysterics to come out of Hollywood in the 1950's. With the exception of not identifying, very much due to both diplomatic as well as political pressures, who's doing the invading it tells on film what we back then feared most and on top of all that in a worse case scenario ending that must have caused a number of heart attacks and fainting spells to those watching in the audience. It was the final few minutes that was the right medication that those watching the movie needed to clam them down and bring the back to reality. That's if they lasted long enough by still being conscious and alert to watch it!