The Red Nightmare
In the opening scene, two communists discuss how the Americans have too many freedoms and that they will one day crush all the “bourgeois capitalist freedoms,” just so the viewer knows right away that this is going to be heavy, anti-communist propaganda. The narrator then warns Americans that too often Americans love their country but are complacent when it comes to protecting the country’s freedoms. The American family has there minor issues, such as teenagers that want to marry when they are too young, but these problems, the narrator says, always work out in America.
Then the story progresses to a “nightmare” the father of the family Jerry has, where his town is full of communists. He cannot use a payphone without a permit, a town meeting is called calling citizens to take control of capitalist citizens, and his family does not want to talk during dinner. His wife speaks with dead seriousness and commands advises him to follow communist doctrine. Officers invade his house and take his daughter for “voluntary” farm work. The whole family is brainwashed into thinking that family life is bad for the collective society. Jerry is eventually reported for acting against communism, and is given a “trial” where he is simply ordered to confess.
The obvious goal of the film is to convince Americans to never take their freedoms for granted, and to warn them of how communists want to take them all away.