I'm quite partial to a bad movie and pride myself in being able to enjoy a movie for when it was made but this was just dreadful. A ton of stock WWII footage pasted into a cheap bar room scene for some narrative ..... "they're wearing US uniforms" .... no sh!t Sherlock that's cos its footage of US troops in action or training!Was that John Agar as a trooper on the Telephone?I only ticked the spoiler alert box in case you wanted to be surprised at how bad this movie is .... makes Plan 9 from outer space look like an Oscar winner.

A lame plot with bad actors linking together a bunch of WWII stock footage to depict the soviets invading the US, only they're all dressed in American uniforms and can speak English. Right... I'd be fooled.It's so carelessly made that they have footage of jets fighting and when one gets shot down the plane obviously has a propeller, or another example is running the same stock footage of guns mirrored to make it seem like they had more guns or just draw out the runtime.I watched this as a MST episode thinking that I would be seeing the Chuck Norris movie of the same name, only instead I got subjected to this waste of time. I couldn't even finish watching it with Mike and the bots, and when I found out what the ending was I couldn't have cared less. This plot was redone in 83 as The Day After and that was actually good, do yourself a great favor and watch that instead

To begin with, I had expected to be more engaged by this one – which I also was under the wrong impression would be a talk-fest: instead, about sixty per cent of its trim 74-minute duration is compiled of wartime stock footage (representing the potential decimation of the U.S. by invading Communist forces) – scenes of the London blitz from the celebrated Humphrey Jennings documentary FIRES WERE STARTED (1943) are supposed to stand in for the burning of New York! I wonder how Americans look at the film nowadays vis-a'-vis the events of 9/11 – which is perhaps the only reason why it ever saw the light of day on DVD in the first place!As it stands, INVASION USA is both hysterical and unintentionally hilarious – never more so than when a car is caught in the flooding of Hoover Dam (hit by a nuclear bomb!) and a cowboy hat is seen floating on a branch as the sole remnant of its Texan owner!; Also worth mentioning are the fact that when the U.S. Senate is besieged, it's seen to be peopled merely by doddering statesmen, while the intermittent 'appearances' by the American President addressing the nation are taken from a vague solitary angle! Equally queasy is the fact that handsome leads Gerard Mohr (a cynical TV reporter) and Peggie Castle are drawn together at such a precarious time, while the middle-aged bartender keeps mixing drinks as if his life depended on it – apparently oblivious to the ongoing calamities! Needless to say, the unnamed Soviets are depicted throughout as unemotional slogan-spouting caricatures.The best thing about the film is the brief but typically riveting performance by Dan O'Herlihy (incidentally, years later he'd appear in a genuine Cold War classic i.e FAIL SAFE [1964]) – not least in view of the twist ending brought about by his particular line of work. In the DVD supplements, much is made of the fact that the film features the two actresses who played "Superman"'s Lois Lane on TV – Noel Neill and Phyllis Coates – but their contribution is, at best, negligible!; also on hand as a newscaster is character actor William Schallert, who's said to have made more Atomic-related titles than anyone else (the top 100 such efforts compiled by "Conelrad" are listed, with a brief synopsis for each one, on the Synapse DVD itself); in an interview included on the disc, Schallert speaks of his brush with Orson Welles' TOUCH OF EVIL (1958) where he was proposed for the role later played by Maltese actor Joseph Calleia – whom Schallert mistakenly thinks was an Italian! Oh, well, it's near enough I suppose…As can be gathered, therefore, the extras are quite nice, being pretty comprehensive about the whole Cold War aura which pervaded the first two decades or so of the post-war era (though I've only very briefly sampled the two radio programs which play back-to-back as an Audio Commentary to the film). One of the most telling comments in the extras comes from O'Herlihy himself – when he went to Russia in the late 1960s to film WATERLOO (1970), he was met by such an inefficient people that he couldn't fathom how their threat was ever taken seriously!; Noel Neill, then, overhypes the film's impact – I mean saying it blows PEARL HARBOR (2001) out of the water is not much of a feat, is it? In the end, I have to admit that when the Communist ideology (or critique thereof) was presented as a sci-fi allegory, the results were generally that much more fun

I saw this movie twice on late night TV between 1965 and 1980. As a jingoistic "message" film, its anachronistic views are almost solely of an 'historic' interest. But they are quite accurate. As a grade-school student in the 1950's, I can attest to the very real concerns of the time : air raid drills, military brinkmanship, and uncertainty about the very future of civilization. This movie was the "Dr. Strangelove" of it's time and shows what 'might' have happened if Russians heated up the Cold War! Of course, the 'invaders' are never actually called Russkies - that's just obvious. And their overwhelming superiority lets them succeed, hence the message of the movie. We all know the Reds never got that kind of edge.The story and characters are often compelling even if not brilliantly acted. The romantic interlude, however, is too 'Hollywood' -- it was years until war movies treated the subject with more realism. Likewise the special effects and military footage are mostly the standard stock of the era. The movie does have one casting coup : both Lois Lanes from TV's Superman! I enjoy the movie as a whole, probably because it shows what we avoided in the Fifties. It's a relief that this particular fear is no longer a threat. But perhaps we need a better update than the Chuck Norris film : a film that shows us how we can act as citizens TODAY to ward off the very real current threats to our country's future. If Gerald Mohr did it, so can we!Addendum : I made sure that the version I bought had some bonus short features from the Red Scare era, one by Jack Webb. They are funny in a way...*now*...