SUPERMAN II: the current lunar mission has an American astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut working side-by-side, collecting geological (selenological?) samples and sparking the occasional joke about détente; when all of a sudden the Kryptonian criminals, just now freed from the Phantom Zone, show up and soon realize that humanity consists of conquerable people who can be torn apart like tissue paper.
After some death and destruction, the villains leave the moon for the Earth: briefly carrying both the American and Russian flags as they fly off, but only long enough to dismissively dump the trash of two nations — this one star-spangled, and that one showing the hammer and sickle — on the lunar-lander wreckage.
Speaking as someone who was a little kid at the time: :eek:
A Deputy Dawg cartoon has a Russian mouse named Mischa pop out of a satellite in the Lou’siana swamp. A submarine later surfaces, and the sub commander (big guy with furry hat and an undershot jaw) chases Mischa and eventually convinces him to return home - the commander ends up being friendly and tells Dawg and his southern-fried cohorts “You are someday coming to veesit my country, you-all!”
This would’ve been around 1962.
In the mini-series World War III multiple Soviets are shown in a positive light including the Soviet Premier played by Brian Keith. The bad guys are a hardline faction in the KGB and military. The Premier and the commander on the ground do what they can to avoid war but in the end they are unsuccessful. Boom.
The Chairman is a 1969 cold war thriller. But in this movie, the real threat is China and the Soviets are depicted as having a common interest with America in keeping China in check.
One of my favorite episodes of ***Gilligan’s Island ***is “Nyet, Nyet, Not Yet,” where two Russian cosmonauts land on the island. They’re just as suspicious of the castaways as the castaways are of them. Hilarity ensues.
Similarly in ‘By Dawn’s Early Light’ the Soviets aren’t shown as the bad guys, rather being caught up in a war that neither side really wants. If I recall correctly the only actual individual Soviet shown is the General Secretary, and only over a phone line, but he is depicted as a sympathetic figure.
The movie was released in 1990 so it wasn’t really of the deep Cold War era.
