Cast Jack Kelly as Jerry Donovan Jeanne Cooper as Helen Donovan Peter Brown as Bill Martin Patricia Woodell as Linda Donovan with Andrew Duggan     Peter Breck Robert Conrad     Mike Road

Narrated by Jack Webb

Presented by: The Department of Defense Directorate for Armed Forces Information and Education

Two of Hollywood's most conservative forces, Jack Webb and Jack  Warner, joined to make this anti-Communist propaganda film for the Department of Defense.  Many of our NiteOwl baby boomers remember seeing this film in school as part of the standard curriculum in civics, history, etc.  It's now sometimes shown as "The Commies are Coming! . . ." in classes about the anti-Communist excesses of the 1950's.  It's also become something of a cult comedy classic.  When Peter Brown was asked if the actors were aware of just how over-the-top this film was while they were shooting it, he remembered only how happy he was that this film got him his SAG card.  Ah, Youth.

Red Nightmare opens on a seemingly all-American town complete with American cars, soda fountains and freedoms but surrounded by barbed wire barricades and Russian soldiers.  Jack Webb tells us "it may be assumed that such a town does exist, shrouded in secrecy and protected by utmost security, deep behind the Iron Curtain."  According to Webb, it is used to train Russian students in "espionage as a science" and "propaganda as an art" in order to destroy American freedoms.

Webb then launches into our main story, that of a typical complacent American, Jerry Donovan.   We see him blowing off a meeting of his Civil Defense committee because his favorite TV show is on and declining to attend a PTA meeting because it's his bowling night.  He gets irritated when his wife reminds him he missed his last Reserve meeting.  Peter Brown enters our story as Bill Martin, the boyfriend of Jerry's daughter Linda.  Jerry is happy to see Bill as long as they talk football, which is hampered by Bill's cow-eyed attention to Linda.  He's less thrilled when they announce their engagement.  He thinks they're too young.  But all in all, we're left with the picture of a typical American family complete with younger kids who tease their sister about her boyfriend.

However, the next day Jerry awakes in a Red Nightmare.  He can't make a phone call without a permit, his wife & children are automatons, Bill is a Communist soldier who transports Linda to a farm collective in order to free her "from the lingering bourgeois influence of family life."

Peter Breck (& 2 uncredited soldiers)

Robert Conrad fellow collective worker

Jerry is ultimately tried and convicted of crimes against the state for complaining of lack of warrants, churches being replaced with displays of Communist inventions [like the telephone], work quotas set by a commissar, his children being sent to a state school to make up for his failure to indoctrinate them, etc..

Mike Roads as state prosecutor

Peter Brown as a state witness

Andrew Duggan  flanked by 2 uncredited judges

Jerry awakens from his Red Nightmare with new dedication to the defense of liberty.  And as an added bonus, Bill and Linda have decided to wait to get married until after Bill completes his hitch in the service.

NiteOwl note:   This was a surprisingly successful group of actors for a training film.  Every credited male actor in this film eventually starred in two or more series.  And as Westerns fans, we have to note each had at least one Western:  Jack Kelly in Maverick, Peter Brown in Lawman & Laredo, Peter Breck in Black Saddle & Big Valley, Andrew Duggan in Lancer, Robert Conrad in Wild, Wild, West and Mike Road in Buckskin.  Patricia  Woodell was the first  Bobbie Jo on Petticoat Junction.  Although she was never in a western series, she married Gary Clarke, the costar of The Virginian and Hondo.  Jeanne Cooper (Corbin Bernsen's mother) was in only one prime time series, the short-lived Bracken's World, but she was a highly successful character actor whose roles included appearances on Lawman, Laredo, Maverick, Big Valley and Lancer.  She also had a long-running part on the daytime drama The Young & the Restless (where Peter Brown spent some time).

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