Red Nightmare

This educational short – intended as a propaganda piece, solemnly narrated by Jack Webb (a familiar face of the era) and personally overseen by movie mogul Jack L. Warner – feels very much like an episode of "The Twilight Zone". As in INVASION USA (1952), on whose DVD it's included, the politics are hard to take nowadays – though the fantasy, albeit moralistic, framework of the narrative (wherein a passive working-class American wakes up one morning to find his hometown overrun by the Communists) makes it at least palatable in an IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946) sort of way. On the other hand, being compact and on a much smaller scale than the earlier feature-film, it's easier to suspend belief in its case. By the way, George Waggner (billed "waGGner", for whatever reason) is best-known for his stint directing such classic Universal chillers as THE WOLF MAN (1941).