PETER BROWN in RED NIGHTMARE
THE COMMIES ARE COMING! THE COMMIES ARE COMING!

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. 

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.