Other than the enjoyment of watching Dana Andrews, the Fearmakers is a shallow, trite, and sloppily written film that spends more time lecturing than entertaining. A relic of the Cold War, the characters drone on about how wrong it is for agencies to manipulate public opinion, while manipulating public opinion is the whole purpose of the film. The movie does well enough on some basics. Led by Dick Foran, the villains are sly and ruthless. Good-girl Marilee Earle is naïve and pretty. Dana Andrews is Dana Andrews, not particularly acting but keeping the story moving. For the rest, the sets look cheap, and costumes are off the rack, and the plot becomes entirely predictable as the hero "exposes" the evil communists in our midst. Little effort is made to create clever dialog or even build-up suspense, as it's obvious from the early scenes what has already happened and where the story is going. If someone is looking for the kind of political moralizing that would have made Joe McCarthy happy, this film has it. Otherwise it's just a lot of speeches.
Review of The Fearmakers
