"Invasion, U. S. A.," the Columbia release, is an atomic-war picture showing the invasion and subjugation of the United States by an unnamed, but obviously Soviet, army. It is almost wholly composed of stock combat newsreel footage taken during World War II. But its clever editing makes it a war of the future, complete with atom-seared American cities, drowned American children (when Boulder Dam is atomized), and gut-shot Senators on Capitol Hill. And, as a pièece de rèsistance, a stately and desirable Amerian girl commits suicide to avoid being revoltingly pawed by a fat, brutish, whisky-swilling soldier whose accent places his origin as just north of Minsk.
It is a "message" picture. All the actors in it, especially the leads, Gerald Mohr, Peggie Castle, Dan O'Hierlihy and Robert Bice, are dismal in their roles. They build their edifice of horror on the foundation that the United States must be strong and prepared and if we're not an utter ravaging is our fate. Complacency must be abolished and a warrior's posture assumed. With this premise established, the picture blithely ignores the possibility that peace might be obtained by free strength backing up reason and negotiation, and embarks on a pictorial essay in carnage, devastation, death and spiritual crucifixion.
The whole bloody stew of cold brutality is resolved when the protagonists wake up to find they have been hypnotized in a bar by a TV magician. They leave the saloon en masse to donate blood and turn tractor factories into tank plants.
This frank espousal of raw strength without thought sets it apart from the American heritage of quick thinking and dry powder, in that order.
It is a "message" picture. All the actors in it, especially the leads, Gerald Mohr, Peggie Castle, Dan O'Hierlihy and Robert Bice, are dismal in their roles. They build their edifice of horror on the foundation that the United States must be strong and prepared and if we're not an utter ravaging is our fate. Complacency must be abolished and a warrior's posture assumed. With this premise established, the picture blithely ignores the possibility that peace might be obtained by free strength backing up reason and negotiation, and embarks on a pictorial essay in carnage, devastation, death and spiritual crucifixion.
The whole bloody stew of cold brutality is resolved when the protagonists wake up to find they have been hypnotized in a bar by a TV magician. They leave the saloon en masse to donate blood and turn tractor factories into tank plants.
This frank espousal of raw strength without thought sets it apart from the American heritage of quick thinking and dry powder, in that order.