By the time this was released, World War 2 had finished a couple of months before. Thus, instead of being a "We're fighting for freedom with God on our side!" flagwaver, it is a "Don't let ANYONE take our freedom away" movie.
Basically the plot involves everyman John Stevenson (Claude Rains) returning from a fishing holiday to find that Nazis have taken over America.
Badly acted and directed with all the grace of Bambi wearing hob-nailed boots, this is a boring and tedious picture to watch. To be fair Claude Rains does his best with the dismal script. But, even for him, there is a limit to the number of ways he can utter the repeated line "There's been a terrible mistake.". While the rest of the now oppressed Americans simply wander around like extras in a zombie movie, responding to his questions with "What's happened? You don't know?" Or, "We can't answer your questions." It all started to look and sound like a pale imitation of one of Kafka's stories. In fact, bearing in mind that the film is only an hour long, it is at around 40 minutes when Stevenson actually finds out what has gone on during his absence. And this is only after he has been picked up by the gestapo and brutally interrogated. One of the most ironic, and hypocritical, scenes is when Stevenson is banged up in a cell with an ageing African-American who laments that "they" have rescinded the Bill of Rights. Yeah, as if that made any difference to HIS reality! The sledgehammer montage with strident voiceover explaining why flabby, ineffectual democracy had failed due to lack of "discipline" is completely over the top. Apart from which the film doesn't seem to go anywhere. After further beating , Stevenson is thrown into a cell with the expectation that he will die. However, he drags himself to his feet and croaks out a warning to the audience about how precious freedom is and never taking it for granted. It's all rather embarassing really.
Review of Strange Holiday
