Definitely some so bad its good things to it. The director was a notorious Hollywood reactionary who was competent at making films at least. It’s not a great film, it’s clearly a propaganda screed and kind of laughable these days.
If you’re looking for other bad reactionary anti-communist films I’d suggest “If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?” if you can find a copy which was a kind of church/preacher-made fearmongering film about the threat of communism and a hypothetical scenario of what if they won in the US. It has this delightful scene where a communist commissar supposedly trying to indoctrinate a bunch of children prays to Fidel and “glorious Fidel” brings the children “all the candy they can eat” which consists of a guy walking in through a door and bringing a sack of candy the guy proceeds to throw at the children, telling them it is a miracle, not of “your Jesus Christ” but of Fidel Castro. This is a truly bad film unlike Red Dawn, Red Dawn tries and has correct communist iconography whereas the hammer and sickles in Footmen are badly done and everything is cheap.
Have you watched Red Dawn (2012)? Same plot, except the invaders are East Asian communists with Russian help. The producers wanted to show the movie in China, so they changed the communist villains from Chinese to North Koreans. Of course, all the actors still look Chinese, though.
The sheer audacity to think that Chinese people wouldn’t know. Of course, the movie performed extremely poorly in China.
There is some good-bad to it but there’s some real bad-bad as well. Overall I do think it is a movie people should watch but not for fun entertainment as much as for historical/cultural information.
Technically it doesn’t do anything amazing. As a story it is simplistic and rough. But the some of the acting and character work is good and it does a good job pushing its jingoistic message.
I watched it, it’s alright, and I think it’s actually a pretty okay period/propaganda piece. I mean that if you watch it through the lens of its historical context, it’s alright. Look, it’s not going to completely reshape your ideology or anything, and it doesn’t deserve any institutional awards, but it was iconic for a reason. In its own right, it’s fairly typical 80’s faire: all soviets are Russians, and all Russians are brainless, heartless mooks that are just there to oppress good, god-fearing, suburban white Americans. There’s no surprises, you know who the good guys and bad guys of the film are already. America is weak and vulnerable but also strong and unbreakable, etc.
Fun in a cheesy way.
I think even back then the idea of Cuba and Soviet Union suddenly deciding to paradrop over the country as one of it’s many attack maneuvers to be out-right silly. I believe Red Dawn also had influence from CIA in hollywood if I remember correctly.
