# Cold War Movies **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 26, 2008, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678 "2008-05-26T20:03:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2008, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678/41 "2008-05-26T23:27:19Z")
More than fair. Thanks for letting me offer an explanation. ---
**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2008, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678/42 "2008-05-26T23:44:12Z")
Certainly somebody has mentioned **Red Dawn** , but I didn’t see it. ---
**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2008, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678/43 "2008-05-26T23:46:04Z")
Oh yeah, and **The Day After**. Once again I didn’t see it mentioned, but I may have missed. ---
**Author:** ![Slithy\_Tove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slithy_tove/32/18248_2.png) [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2008, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678/44 "2008-05-26T23:46:46Z")
You could go all the way back to the beginning, but unfortunatly there’s no movie I’m aware of about the North Russain Campaign against the Bolsheviks at the end of WWI. Fight my ignorance, please: I can’t believe not a single producer green-lighted as kick-ass a story as the [Czech Legion’s](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Legion) “Siberian Anabais” (band name!) The closest I can recall is _The Sand Pebbles_ where the Chinese who blow Steve McQueen away at the end are in the Communist faction of the Nationalists. Nuclear Holocaust movies aside, for me and millions of guys who were in uniform at the time but avoided the proxy wars like Vietnam, it was what used to be known in military terms as garrison duty, and aside from Molly Blooms “and yes I said yes I will Yes.” soliliquy from _Ulysses,_ and the racier parts of _From Here to Eternity_ garrison duty isn’t as interesting as a good shoot-em-up. Some examples, though, are [Buffalo Soldiers,](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0252299/) about Army larceny in Germany, [Soldier in the Rain](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057517/) a gentler look and Army operators, and [Town Without Pity,](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055539/) about four GI’s who rape a German girl. Then there’s Jack Webb’s _The DI,_ but it’s not about the Cold War, just a rite-of-passage boot camp movie, like the better part of _Full Metal Jacket_ ---
**Author:** ![TWDuke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e495f1/32.png) [@TWDuke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TWDuke)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678/45 "2008-05-27T00:04:00Z")
While trying to come up with Cold War titles I thought surely there must have been one called I Married a Communist. Turns out I was [almost](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041495/releaseinfo#akas) right. How about **Animal Farm** (1954), a fable of the rise of a Stalinist-style totalitarian regime? **The Manchurian Candidate** (original, of course) **The Front** , a 1976 movie about 1950s McCarthyism with several formerly blacklisted people in the cast and crew. **The Mouse That Roared** , tries to lose a war against the United States in hopes of receiving financial aid and ends up in possession of a doomsday bomb. ---
**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678/46 "2008-05-27T00:07:47Z")
[QUOTE=Slithy Tove] You could go all the way back to the beginning, but unfortunatly there’s no movie I’m aware of about the North Russain Campaign against the Bolsheviks at the end of WWI. Fight my ignorance, please: I can’t believe not a single producer green-lighted as kick-ass a story as the Czech Legion’s “Siberian Anabais” (band name!) [/QUOTE] Alas, it seems when a producer gets a script about interesting wars such as WWI, they can only think “It’s a nice idea, but wouldn’t it be better if it were set during WWII?” ---
**Author:** ![mack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mack)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678/47 "2008-05-27T00:40:16Z")
[The Bedford Incident](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058962/). Nice little destroyer vs sub movie with a psychological angle as the Captain of the destroyer tightens his crew to the breaking point. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678/48 "2008-05-27T00:45:38Z")
_Miracle Mile_ (1988) is a great Nuclear war movie, especially if you don’t know anything about the plot. ---
**Author:** ![mack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mack)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678/49 "2008-05-27T01:12:34Z")
[Mulholland Falls](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117107/) , sort of. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Them](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/898d66/32.png) [@The\_Them](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Them)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678/50 "2008-05-27T01:24:35Z")
**WarmNPrickly** beat me to _The Day After,_ \>:( , so I’ll have to throw in _Red Heat,_ (1989), with Jim Belushi and The Governator; Hollywood trying to make nice with the Commies, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678/51 "2008-05-27T01:51:01Z")
[QUOTE=TWDuke] **The Mouse That Roared** , tries to lose a war against the United States in hopes of receiving financial aid and ends up in possession of a doomsday bomb. [/QUOTE] Oooh! Good one! ---
**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678/52 "2008-05-27T01:59:08Z")
Re. \*_The Birds \*\* – sorry, but I’m just not seeing it. I don’t think it’s any Cold War allegory or even primarily about repressed sexual impulses_; I think it’s actually focused on Man vs. Nature, with Nature possibly paying back Man for messing with the earth too much (or, perhaps for no coherent reason at all). Anyway, here’s a few more titles, all played for laffs: **Hopscotch** – Soon-to-be-ex-CIA agent Walter Matthau dodges both the CIA and the Russkies as he writes his universally unflattering memoir and tries to avoid being forcibly ex-pired. The film’s plusses include its wonderfully astringent tone and mature love story (with Glenda Jackson); unfortunately, it’s also riven with some second-rate hamming around. \*\*The President’s Analyst \*\* – Like Matthau’s burnout spy, the analyst in question (James Coburn) is sought by one and all, including “the phone company,” in this delirious cult satire. \*\*The Tailor of Panama \*\* – Pierce Brosnan’s taking the piss out of the Cold War’s spy game, in this gleefully nihilistic adaptation of a Graham Greene classic. And speaking of silly spies, here’s the explicitly Soviet-referencing (as opposed to hiding behind SPECTRE and Blofeld… er, specters) Cold War Bonds: **The Spy Who Loved Me** : against a backdrop of detente, a megalomaniacal Swedish shipping magnate targets the USA’s and the USSR’s nuclear submarines – and Bond gets to team up with “Agent XXX”. **You Only Live Twice** : the Cold War heats up in the Greek Mediterranean, as both the UK and the USSR intensify their involvement in the region (initially through their respective proxies Havelock and Kristatos and the hitman pilot Gonzales, but later with Bond and that scary East German guy) to recover a missing British ATAC decoder. **Octopussy** : a rogue Russian general and his partner, an exiled Afghan prince, plot to nuke a NATO base in West Germany, thereby discrediting (to put it mildly) the US’s military presence in Western Europe. The scarily realistic kernel at the heart of this plot is all but lost in all the secondary Russian-antiquities-smuggling hokum (and harem). Faberge eggs served up with Steven Berkoff’s hammy acting, anyone? **A View To a Kill** : rogue KGB agent (and product of Nazi medical experimentation) Max Zorin (Christopher Walken, doing his weird shtik) brushes off his former handlers and independently plots to make Silicon Valley go ka-boom, bye-bye, and blub-blub as all of western California sinks into the Pacific (didn’t Donner’s **Superman** ’s Lex Luthor plot basically the same thing?). Kicks off with a teaser sequence in which Bond infiltrates Siberia to recover microfilm from the body of Agent 003. **The Living Daylights** : intrigue surrounds a rogue Russian general who disingenously defects to the West, but what’s his angle, and what exactly is his relationship with the pretty cello player? Follow the money, the diamonds, the Afghan opium and the Soviet black-market armaments… * * * - Yeah, yeah, I know about Hitch and his icy blondes, yada yada yada, but most of the victims in this flick were extras, including several middle-aged or older men and children. If there was one form of horror Hitchcock didn’t dare broach, it was the sexualization of kids… ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678/53 "2008-05-27T03:26:52Z")
No collection of cold war movies could be complete without the original [Invasion U.S.A.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_U.S.A._(1952_film)) > [@](#): > > The Enemy is staging air attacks over Seal Point, Alaska and then Nome. Paratroops have landed on Alaskan airfields and an American female communications operator is gunned down in mid-sentence. Soon The Enemy’s plan of attack becomes clear: civilian airfields are captured as staging areas while military airfields are A-bombed. > … > The industrialist and the rancher both return home to find themselves on the front lines; the industrialist finding himself caught in the battle for San Francisco, and the rancher in the destruction of Boulder Dam by a nuclear missile. The President makes ineffectual broadcasts with inflated claims of counter-attacks to rally the morale of the people. But things are only going to get worse, much worse. And each American talks about how if they could only do everything over again… -Classic stuff from 1952! ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678/54 "2008-05-27T16:25:08Z")
_The Day the Earth Stood Still_ and the lesser-known _The Day the Earth Caught Fire_ ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678/55 "2008-05-27T16:57:19Z")
As far as the Cold War at home, how about “Advise and Consent” and “I Was a Communist for the FBI”, as well as John Wayne’s “Big Jim McLain”. ---
**Author:** ![Interrobang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/interrobang/32/17463_2.png) [@Interrobang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Interrobang)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678/56 "2008-05-27T18:21:39Z")
Schwarzenegger does detente: **Red Heat**. Le Carre has come up, but I’d specifically call out **Smiley’s People** if you have that series on disc, and **The Russia House** , from the Cold War’s waning days. There’s always **No Way Out**. And I second the recommendation of **Matinee**. ---
**Author:** ![Interrobang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/interrobang/32/17463_2.png) [@Interrobang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Interrobang)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2008, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678/57 "2008-05-27T18:23:45Z")
Oh, and what about **Kiss Me Deadly**? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678/58 "2008-05-28T17:21:55Z")
**Charlie Wilson’s War** (about the CIA’s covert war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980’s, and Rep. Wilson’s role in arranging the covert funding). I can’t believe I forgot that one; I just rented it last week and loved it! (It was really very funny, despite the often serious and sobering subject matter.) :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678/59 "2008-05-28T17:35:54Z")
[The Falcon and the Snowman](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087231/) [The Lives of Others](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/) [Breach](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401997/) ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2008, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678/60 "2008-05-28T18:13:11Z")
[2010](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086837/) [Predator](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093773/plotsummary) [Beneath the Planet of the Apes](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065462/) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cold-war-movies/450678.md?page=4)