In 1947 and again in 1951, when the queasy wartime alliance of the United States and the Soviet Union was long dissolved into mutual suspicion, the House Un-American Activities Committee launched aggressive investigations of Communist activity in the Hollywood film industry. If millions of worried Americans became preoccupied with subversion directed by the many-tentacled Red Menace, Hollywood studio chiefs were absolutely petrified. Fearful of profit-killing scandal that might be uncovered by Washington's heavy hand, Hollywood scrambled to display its patriotism by producing anti-Communist movies. The films came by the score, some sober and thoughtful, others wildly hysterical. Cold War audiences were fed anti-Red dramas, melodramas, science-fiction thrillers-even comedies, westerns, and animated cartoons.

In twenty-one lively essays, sixteen widely published film historians scrutinize more than forty films from the anti-Red cycle of the 1950s and '60s, including many provocative examples that have fallen into undeserved obscurity. Concerned equally with the pictures' aesthetic, political, and social ramifications, the essays capture the essence not only of some remarkable movies, but the frightened, agitated historical period that spawned them.