Invasion USA: Essays on Anti-Communist Movies of the 1950s and 1960s

With the queasy U.S.-Soviet wartime alliance long dissolved into mutual suspicion, the House Un-American Activities Committee launched aggressive investigations of alleged communist activity in the Hollywood film industry in 1947—and again in 1951. Studio chiefs, terrified of scandal, scrambled to display their patriotism by producing anti-communist films, from melodramas to thrillers to animated cartoons.

Twenty-one lively new essays by film historians examine the aesthetics and politics o...