Beware the body snatchers, er, communists living next door

Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by a new movie coming out that week. This week: With Steven Spielberg’s Bridge Of Spies coming to theaters soon, we recommend a few more Cold War spy movies.
I Was A Communist For The FBI (1951)
It sounds like a paperback pulp-fiction novel, but I Was A Communist For The FBI (title of both a movie and a radio serial) was based on a true story. Pittsburgh native Matt Cvetic poses as a communist to infiltrate the “reds” that are living in America and actively plotting to take over the country. It’s like Invasion Of The Body Snatchers without the alien element. These obviously heinous nutjobs (called “dirty reds” or “comrades,” depending on whose side you’re on) drop the N-word as they discuss inciting race riots and pinning different American nationalities against each other as a way to tear the newly victorious country apart. The communists enjoy fancy drink and food, rhapsodizing over how much they’ll be living the good life when they rise to glory. (As they enjoy posh meals from luxurious silver serving platters, they resemble nothing so much as the pigs in Animal Farm.) Cvetic, who poses as such a loyal party member that even his comrades tell him to take it down a notch, is ousted from his family, who believe that he’s betraying his country. He can’t even tell his own son, who gets in fights at school defending himself from kids who call his dad a commie.