Best Cold War Films

Anthony

Anthony

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Anthony
Ron reminded me how much I miss the Cold War. Good guys, bad guys, ex-Nazis, East Germans, Lugers, analog guages and black and white clocks everywhere counting down to Armegedon, the Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, spies, counter-spies. Ahhh, I long for it all to make sense again.

Now that being said, what is your favorite Cold War movie? Mine are:

Dr. Strangelove (of course)
The Bedford Incident (so real the U.S. Navy wouldn't cooperate and they had to make it at Pinewood, Wally Cox AND Donald Sutherland)
The Iprcress File - Harry Palmer/Michael Caine revealed
Funeral in Berlin - More Michael Caine as the poor man's James Bond
The Spy that came in from the Cold - Richard Burton between marriages to that fat broad

OK, now what's yours?
 
Fail Safe with Henry Fonda as the Pres was a pretty good one.
 
If you like cold war comedy, there's a movie called (IIRC), "One, Two, Three," with James Cagney playing a Coca Cola exec in post-war Berlin. The CEO of Coca Cola sends his daughter to Berlin on holiday, charges Cagney with the responsibility of watching out for his daughter's well-being, and she meets and falls in love with a communist revolutionary youth.

It is a hoot, trust me.
 
Anthony said:
Ron reminded me how much I miss the Cold War. Good guys, bad guys, ex-Nazis, East Germans, Lugers, analog guages and black and white clocks everywhere counting down to Armegedon, the Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, spies, counter-spies. Ahhh, I long for it all to make sense again.
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Ah, yes. Checkpoint Charlie. Pictures as it appears today.
 

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SCCutler said:
If you like cold war comedy, there's a movie called (IIRC), "One, Two, Three," with James Cagney playing a Coca Cola exec in post-war Berlin. The CEO of Coca Cola sends his daughter to Berlin on holiday, charges Cagney with the responsibility of watching out for his daughter's well-being, and she meets and falls in love with a communist revolutionary youth.

It is a hoot, trust me.
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One, Two, Three (1961) is one of my all-time favorite films. Directed by Billy Wilder, script by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond and music by Andre Previn, there is not a wasted frame in this film. Cagney is hilarious. It was his last film until 1978 when he came out of retirement to make Ragtime.

Also in the cast are Arlene Francis, Pamela Tiffin, Horst Buchholz, Leon Askin and Red Buttons.

Coincidentally my son and I watched the DVD of this movie just two nights ago. The cold war setting (just before the Berlin Wall went up) is before his time, but he loved the movie all the same.

(Note: Watch for three or four "inside jokes," references to Cagney's lines or mannerisms from his old gangster movies.)

-- Pilawt
 
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Tim said:
Is the cold war really over?:dunno:
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Ha ha ha, up here it's hard to tell, even leaving aside the temperature puns.

I live about 50 miles south of a radar installation designed to detect ballistic missile launches against the US. It is very much still on-line. And guess which direction it is pointed :dunno: (hint: it ain't N. Korea or the Middle East.)
 
Tim said:
Is the cold war really over?:dunno:
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In such iteration as it is generally refered, yes, it's over. The Cold War was actually the conclusion of WWII that was never faught though there were those staff officers who though it should have been faught immediately after the fall of the Japanese. We had all the forces still in place to squeeze from west and east, and the liberated Chinese would have come in from the south, it could have been done in less than a year. Stalins forces were decimated and operating on Lend Lease hardware and ammo. It's incredible to consider how different the world could be had it happenned that way. I could be living in Cuba, the worlds most luxurious resort island. We may or may not have gone to the moon, but the chances are we would still be in space, and probably a bit more efficiently done, but maybe not. I just think that some decissions early on in the program went the quickest, easiest to achieve therefore most likely to succeede path. Jack Thelander, an old instructor of mine, WWII Corsair pilot and engineer at Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach was involved in all of that space race and he used to tell me about projects that were better, but required even more technology developement than the systems chosen. When I asked about Nuclear rockets, he said "Heck, we technically had one ready to go in 1954, it was a political no-go."
 
"Seven Days in May" was quite good, and still stands up well.
 
Thirteen Days with Bruce Greenwood as the president, and Kevin Kostner. It's about the Cuban Missle Crisis.
 
alaskaflyer said:
Ha ha ha, up here it's hard to tell, even leaving aside the temperature puns.

I live about 50 miles south of a radar installation designed to detect ballistic missile launches against the US. It is very much still on-line. And guess which direction it is pointed :dunno: (hint: it ain't N. Korea or the Middle East.)
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Ha! You can probably relate to "Ice Station Zebra" then with
the actor that turned out to be gay, but I forget his name.
 
Anthony said:
Ha! You can probably relate to "Ice Station Zebra" then with
the actor that turned out to be gay, but I forget his name.
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Rock Hudson was in that one?
 
Ghery said:
Rock Hudson was in that one?
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Yes! That's it!

I think the bad guy was...........?
 
Gee the only one I can add to this list is the Day After.

I saw that while on TDY in Omaha at Offut, AFB. in the alert barracks. Talk about kinda freaky. A couple of times we looked outside to see if everything was still alright. I think if the horn would have gone off we would have all been completely freaked out.
 
smigaldi said:
Gee the only one I can add to this list is the Day After.

I saw that while on TDY in Omaha at Offut, AFB. in the alert barracks. Talk about kinda freaky. A couple of times we looked outside to see if everything was still alright. I think if the horn would have gone off we would have all been completely freaked out.
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That was just replayed on one of the classic movie channels the other day. For a made-for-TV movie, it was pretty good. I remember when it first came out too, pretty spooky to a teenager living in the "heartland."
 
Mike Schneider said:
An aviation bulletin board and no one has listed, "Strategic Air Command"! I was in SAC from 1955 to 1959. Mostly at Ramey AFB, Puerto Rico. I can remember while in high school in St. Petersburg, Florida, having the B-36 fly over Al Lang field (baseball) and cast the shadow for the movie. -- Mike
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Oh yeah! It was a fine recruiting film, made me want to join the Air Force, which I eventually did.
 
Always liked "The Bedford Incident".

I remember watching the filming of "The Day After" in Lawrence, KS back when I lived there. The movie didn't have the same impact on us - we were watching it and laughing at all the extras we recognized in the background.
 
I don't know if its anywhere near the best, but another one is "Red Dawn". It featured some really young actors like Patrick Swazey and Charlie Sheen. I think its the only movie made showing Russia/Cuba invading the U.S. Some of it is pretty hokey, but in general its entertaining and could have been a actual scenario.
 
WOLVERINES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Red Dawn was pretty hokey. I still wonder why the Sovs sent Cubans to invade. I wanted to see Swayze and his varsity football squad take on real Commies, not proxy fighters.

The Bedford Incident was great. Still creeps me out, especially that ending.
The Manchurian Candidate - gotta love Frank. Von Ryan's Express was a great WWII flick, not that anyone asked
 
Mike Schneider said:
An aviation bulletin board and no one has listed, "Strategic Air Command"! I was in SAC from 1955 to 1959. Mostly at Ramey AFB, Puerto Rico. I can remember while in high school in St. Petersburg, Florida, having the B-36 fly over Al Lang field (baseball) and cast the shadow for the movie. -- Mike
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Or "Bombers B-52"? There's another recruiting flick for you.
 
Another great comedy, The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, with Alan Arkin, Theo Bikel, Carl Reiner, Jonathan Winters, Brian Keith and Paul Ford. And as Mike pointed out, this is an aviation message board, so I must mention that there is an Ercoupe in the movie.

For serious drama, there's The Hunt for Red October.

-- Pilawt
 
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