5 Top Cold War Political-Thriller Films

As the old bumper sticker enlightened us, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean everybody isn't out to get you. And just because Ronald Reagan and his heroic hombres conquered the Evil Empire back in the 1980s doesn't mean that Cold War political thrillers have gone out of style. Here are five mid-'60s movies (with director's credits) about conspiracies and Commies that still feel fresh after 50 years:

Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick)

When an air force base commander goes nuts and sends his bombers off toward the Soviet Union, three men, all played by Peter Sellers -- improvising brilliantly -- are key to stopping the insanity. (This isn't going to turn out well.) Kubrick's legendary satire, originally conceived as a straightforward drama based on a sober novel about a sober subject, was turned upside down when the director realized that the best approach was to push the absurdity of mutual assured destruction to the limit. George C. Scott as the befuddled top general, Sterling Hayden as the crackpot Commie-hater, and Slim Pickens as a big-as-Texas bomber pilot hold their own against Sellers and the crackerjack script. Best line: The president admonishes two quarrelling advisers by saying, "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room."

Fail-Safe (Sidney Lumet)

A technical glitch mistakenly scrambles U.S. bombers loaded with nuclear bombs toward Moscow, and the fail-safe protocol is so finely tuned that the pilots refuse even the president's last-ditch personal order to return. (They've been trained to expect just this sort of Russkie ruse.) Oops. Henry Fonda stars as the president in this dour doppelganger of Dr. Strangelove, Walter Matthau is a hawkish adviser who urges him to take advantage of this heaven-sent opportunity to a kick some Commie butt, and a very young Larry Hagman, who went on to star in the TV series I Dream of Jeannie and Dallas, plays an interpreter who helps the president read between the lines in tense phone talks with the Soviet leader. Best line: A general, arguing against attacking the Soviet Union, says, "What gives us the right to live? What makes us worth surviving? That we are ruthless enough to strike first?"

The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer)

After U.S. Army officer Bennett Marco's unit is captured by the enemy during the Korean War and subsequently freed thanks to heroics by the patrol's sergeant, Marco starts having nightmares upon his return home and begins to suspect that the medal-winning soldier is an unwitting part of a sinister political plot. And, oh, yeah, Sergeant Shaw happens to be the son of a McCarthyesque politician's ambitious wife. Frank Sinatra, an underrated actor who is said to have achieved some renown as a singer, is excellent as the addled officer, Laurence Harvey plays the supposed hero, and Angela Lansbury is the plot's puppetmaster. Skip the nuance-free 2004 remake and enjoy this offbeat original. Best line: A Chinese psychiatrist says to a colleague, "His brain has not only been washed, as they say -- it has been dry cleaned."

Mirage (Edward Dmytryk)

David Stillwell is caught in a double-whammy blackout: A power outage in a high-rise requires him and everyone else in it to evacuate, but that's not the problem -- he suddenly has no idea who he is. But soon after hiring a private detective, he learns he has a connection with a suicide that occurred in the building at the same time, and that -- wait for it -- it wasn't a suicide. The plot revolves around that hoary old standby, amnesia, but Gregory Peck's in it, so you know you're going to be all right, and the decision to avoid signaling flashbacks gives the film a refreshing off-kilter quality. Character actors George Kennedy, Walter Matthau, and Jack Weston are around to complicate things, and Diane Baker is the distaff distraction. This film is the least known of the five but stands up to the best of them. Best line: Stillwell says to the novice private eye, "Wouldn't it be hilarious if it turned out you actually knew what you were doing?"

Seven Days in May (John Frankenheimer)

U.S. Air Force general James Mantoon Scott, the charismatic chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has gotten his knickers in a twist because President Jordan Lyman is pushing a nuclear-disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union, and Scott knows that those dirty Commies are just itching to turn the Red, White, and Blue all red. His more levelheaded aide, Colonel Jiggs Casey, smells a coup attempt in the offing, and thus begins a tense game of strategic subterfuge. Burt Lancaster is as tightly wound as ever as the power-hungry general, usually-hammy Kirk Douglas is effectively restrained as the linchpin of the opposition, and Fredric March heads up a strong supporting cast as the weak but well-meaning president. Best line: A senator tells Casey, "Right now, the government of the United States is sitting on top of the Washington Monument, right on the very point, tilting right and left and ready to fall off and break up on the pavement. There are just a handful of men that can prevent it. And you're one of them."