What is the best Cold War influenced TV show, movie, book, song, or album? Why?

Question

Blatantly influenced, that is. Preferably from the '50s to early '70s...

So, what do you think is the best?

Examples - "The Hunt for Red October", "99 Luftballons", "Mission: Impossible", James Bond books/movies...

Answer 1

I'm not sure which is the best, but here are some examples (among many) to choose from:

Movies: The Manchurian Candidate, Ninotchka, Red Dawn, Dr. Strangelove, Wargames, First Blood (Rambo), Fail Safe (Note: Some of these movies were books first).

TV Shows: The Day After, Amerika, Get Smart, Mission Impossible (Note that the first two were TV miniseries).

Songs: 99 Red Balloons, Land of Confusion, Russians (by Sting), Eve of Destruction, A Hard Rains Gonna Fall (Dylan).  Also check out the NO NUKES concert in or around 1980.

Books:  There are so many.  I would look at the Tom Clancy and WIlliam F. Buckley, Jr. novels.  

Admittedly, I don't think there were many cold-war influenced songs, tv shows and movies that were released during the cold war period prior to the 1970's.  However, more cold-war inspired entertainment vehicles were released during the 1980's when the Cold War started to heat-up.  

I hope this helps.

Answer 2

Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the obvious choice.

"Indeed [the film] can be read both as right-wing McCarthyite scaremongering—Communists from an Alien place are infiltrating our American towns and wiping out their American values, and the worst of it is they look exactly like Americans—and as left-wing liberal satire on the ideological climate of conformism that McCarthyism produced, where the lack of emotion of the podpeople corresponds to the ethical blind eyes turned by Americans to the persecutions of their fellows by over-zealous McCarthyites." -Adam Roberts

Answer 3

I particularly like James Cagney's last movie (before coming out of retirement for Ragtime, of course) which was called "One Two Three!"

He plays the head of Coca Cola in West Berlin, and he has to take care of the spoiled daughter of the President of Coca Cola and she secretly marries an East German communist agitator. Cagney has to make a respectable son in law out of him, because the girl is of course pregnant.

Cagney: "Just what this world needs, another bouncing baby Bolshevik!"

"I'd like to give him a haircut, with a hammer and sickle!"

daughter: " Don't worry, I'll put in a good word for y'all. It's my parents I'm worried about. Otto says they'll all have to be liquidated!"

Most of the jokes are VERY subtle, but they cover almost every aspect of the Cold War.

Answer 4

My vote would be for "The Manchurian Candidate;" book by Richard Condon, 1962 film by director John Frankenheimer.  The story revolves around the brainwashing of an American former Korean War POW by Chinese communists in order to create a political assassin.  Very scary idea--that patriotic Americans could unknowingly be assassins "planted" by communists--and definitely inspired by cold war paranoia.  The film was shelved after the assassination of JFK and not shown for over 20 years.