Big Jim McLain

Plot synopsis:
House Un-American Activities Committee investigators Jim McLain (John Wayne) and Mal Baxter (James Arness) come to Hawaii to track American Communist Party activities. They are interested in everything from insurance fraud to the sabotage of a U.S. naval vessel.
After receiving useful information from reporter Phil Briggs (Vernon "Red" McQueen), the agents begin searching for Willie Nomaka, a former party treasurer, who has allegedly experienced a nervous breakdown and attends the clinic of psychiatrist Dr. Gelster (Gayne Whitman). The doctor's secretary, Nancy Vallon (Nancy Olson), is helpful as well. McLain asks her on a date and a romance develops.
Nomaka's landlady, Madge (Veda Ann Borg), assists in the investigation, flirting with McLain. Nomaka's ex-wife (Madame Soo Yong) also helps McLain. Nomaka is eventually found to be staying in a sanitorium, heavily drugged and unable to speak. Party leader Sturak (Alan Napier) gives orders to Dr. Gelster to get rid of him. Gelster also kills McLain's partner Baxter, by mistake, when he succumbs to an injection of truth serum.
As the investigators close in, Sturak attempts to make Gelster confess to his Party membership so the case can be closed and so others can continue their nefarious work. Their meeting is interrupted by McLain, who instigates a brawl. Police arrive to place Party leaders under arrest, but ultimately he and Nancy Vallon see them plead the Fifth Amendment and go free.

Tags: cult, suspenseful, murder, violence

Review:
For a movie so obviously filled to the brim with machismo, the results surprise us with just a scene or two of fisticuffs and much more romance between Wayne and Nancy Olson (who moves quickly, and can you blame her?).
"Big Jim McLain" features one of John Wayne's best walk-throughs; he looks a little sheepish, but he's so amiable you forget he's really not in character.
It's not that I disliked the plot of having John Wayne playing an FBI man bent on smashing communism--it certainly is unique and very much like the real life Wayne.
The answer to this threat seemed to be the House Un-American Activities Committee that used intimidation to do what it thought was necessary to secure American safety (Perhaps there's a lesson for in it us today as our people give away freedoms for safety) This film therefore should be viewed in the context of the times when it was made and not with 50 year hindsight, as doubtless 50 years from now our children will view at least some of the steps taken in the heightening of security today.
Unfortunately this is a hypocritical viewpoint as the anti-Japanese films produced certainly helped produce the fear and paranoia that led to the abuse of Japanese-Americans' civil rights and their internment by their own government.
In the film the villains are not the idealists who go to American Communist Party meetings call everyone comrade debate Marx and Engel's viewpoints and who should run for election next fall and then go home to their spouses, but agents acting against the United States, and yes this did exist at the time.
(People that had been believed innocent victims of communist 'witch hunts' were indeed shown later to have actually been foreign agents when the Soviet archives were opened after the collapse of communism in the USSR)While facing the same problems as many other patriotic wartime films it does deliver enjoyable scenes and it is certainly mostly superior to many similar films made during World War II.
Wayne's acting is good as is that of most other cast members except for James Arness whose emotional outbursts don't come off as very believable when he gets infuriated about the traitorous party members and possibly Soo Fong also when recounting her personal ordeal about her 'recovery' from communism.
In some ways this part of the movie reminds more of anti-drug or anti-sex exploitation films that have become cult classics such as Reefer Madness) While not the best, once the plot develops it is entertaining.
While Big Jim McLain will hardly rank with the greatest of John Wayne's films, it expresses the conflict between loyal American citizens and law enforcement officials and the threat posed by Soviet agents.
Big Jim McLain needs to be viewed in the context of its times just as other US wartime action films reflect the tenor of our role in World War II and how people saw the enemy of that day..
Big Jim McLain is a hilariously bad propaganda film.
If it was made by the Nazis, the cast and crew would had got medals from Goebbels.John Wayne surely was doing his best to avoid being labelled as a commie (it was made in conjunction with his own production company.)Big Jim McLain (John Wayne) and his partner even bigger Mal Baxter (James Arness) are investigators for the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Although raucous party girl Veda Ann Borg is also interested to know how big John McLain really is.Napier is suave and despicable going around in expensive cars treating the lower ranked members of the party with disdain.
Many people will disagree, but this is one of my favorite John Wayne films of all time, and for all the wrong reasons:  This film is a cold-war camp classic that has to be seen to be believed.
James Arness is such great at John Wayne's side kick who hates commies because they shot at him during the war.
While the brainwashed elite criticize this story of how Communism threatened the security of America in the 1950s, any unbiased viewer will understand a piece of history that has since been revised.This movie was made while the liberal elite defended their liberalism by making a straw man of Senator McCarthy.
Making this movie was unpopular then, nevertheless now; Wayne was a brave patriot who should be commended for doing the principled thing, however unpopular.The liberal politicians and the media has waged war on the fight against communism for 40 years.
This movie is valuable for the independent minded; it shows a history and culture that Hollywood wants to deny and ignore in the same way the Klan wants to deny and ignore the Holocaust.It is not Wayne's best film.
One of John Wayne's least known and at the same time most underrated film.
(Some Spoilers) John Wayne as James "Big Jim" McLain in a very restrained role for him, in the action department,as an investigator for the House on UnAmerican Activities Committee.
Big Jim is sent to the island of Oahu Hawaii who along with his friend and fellow investigator Mike Baxter, James Arness, is out to expose and arrest a Communit group operating there.
Big Jim and Mike get a very important lead that may well break the entire Communist operation wide open when they find out from a former commie member that was the treasury secretary of the communist party Willie Namaka is cracking up under the strain of being a Red in Paradise.
Totally unconscious from drugs injected into his system by a local commie Doctor Willie is now useless to the US and local official's in getting any information out of him about what his "friends" in the movement are planing for the good and honest people of Hawaii.
There were some things in the movie "Big Jim McLain" that was obviously over-the-top but at the same time the film was very honest about the threat of Communisum that the USA and the Free World faced at that time.
In general "Big Jim McLain" was very honest about how the USA was in it's fear of the Communist Menece and how the American people felt about it.
In the movie, like in real life, I could never understand why people would join the Communist Movement.
It treated the working men and women with utter contempt like in one scene in the film where Big Jim let one the commies have it, right in the mouth, when he called those who worked for a living "White Trash and Cotton Choppers".You can overlook the excesses of "Big Jim McLain" and see a clear picture of how really vicious and deranged the hard corps Communist not the vast majority of Communist members in the movement, or "Useful Idiots" as their leader called them, really were and why that created the excesses that the US government went to in combating them..
This is an awful movie.No matter what your politics, this is one of those jaw dropping bad movies that is so bad it's mesmerizing.Duke and Marshall Dillion scurry around Hawaii chasing an inept bunch of "commie" conspirators, though Big Jim somehow manages to spend the majority of his time wooing Nancy Olson.
What previous reviewers have not mentioned is that John Wayne was a friendly witness at the House Un-American Activities Committee and he and his best friend Ward Bond were founders of a pro-blacklist group in Hollywood, the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.
One previous reviewer said that their probably could be a good movie written about the Communist Party efforts to take over labor unions.
But this ain't that movie.What saves the film from being a total waste of time is the presence of Veda Ann Borg.
And Wayne who if he really did get involved romantically with the secretary of a Commie would be completely compromised as an investigator.One little known fact about this film is that Wayne gave a last pay day to character actor Paul Hurst.
Hurst, who was terminally ill with cancer at the time that this film was made, played the father of a rising labor leader in Hawaii that HUAC was looking into.
Whatever you think of John Wayne's politics, the Duke was a man capable of a lot of personal kindness.
This was not the first or the last time he helped out colleagues down on their luck.Big Jim McLain is one of the lamest movies John Wayne ever did.
1: John Wayne never testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and 2: Senator Joseph McCarthy had nothing whatsoever to do with the House investigation of Communism in Hollywood (he was a Senator, and not a member of the House; McCarthy's Senate investigation was into Communism in the Army and the State Department).
I would like to think that Hollywood was capable, even in the midst of the paranoia of the early 1950s, to create an anti-communist film that truly explored the issues and compared and contrasted the viewpoints at play in the country at that time.
I suspect that even intellectual anti-communists hated this film and must have thought something along the lines of "Get off our side!" As much as I love Wayne and his films, I find it necessary to pretend Big Jim McLain is investigating pedophiles or some such, if I want to get through this movie.
The absurd stupidity of the movie would be funny if not for the chilling realization that some folks actually believed this nonsense.I found the scene with the "reformed" communist nurse who now worked in a leper colony (nice symbolism there -- that working with lepers, the lowest of the low, is still a step up from Commies) to be a good microcosm of the entire film.
Particularly stomach churning is to see such pap come from Hollywood in 1952, right in the middle of Senator McCarthy's brutal reign of terror -- many of whose victims were actors and directors.This film does do a good job of exposing traitors -- I'd say that those involved in creating it would certainly fit the bill.
Forgetting the fact that its script is laughable, plot thin, acting wooden and appreciation of communism astoundingly pathetic, this film is a historical gem which allows one an insight into the right wing U.S paranoia prevalent in the 1950's cold war era.In 50 years time from now I expect the future generation will find some of our contemporary Hollywood films just as risible.
Seeing as this film is about John Wayne saving the world from commie scum I burst out laughing at the credits which listed one of the actors as Red McQueen !
, an actor called Red in a film starring John Wayne saving humanity from the horrors of communism !
" I`d better shut up before I start talking politics " Duke you do nothing else but talk politics so please shut up I know I`m probably being churlish in pointing this out ( This film is propaganda of the worst sort remember ) but the un-American activities commitee didn`t really concentrate on hard detective as shown here , they pressured people into becoming informants and anyone refusing to grass up anyone with vaguely liberal views soon found themselves becoming a suspected communist themselves .
John Wayne and James Arness are HUAC investigators out to break up a communist cell in Hawaii.
This film is just (just?) Big John doing what he does best .........
Sit there watch it and go back to a time which was black and white and not just the photography.Big John ........
The film glorifies the work of the Un-American Activities agents who went around looking for communists behind every tree and under every rock.
I seriously doubt that the story line has any real validity, but instead was an excuse for making a film in Hawaii that was in keeping with the paranoia of the times.
While Big Jim McLaine was made during the early Red Scare years of the Fifties, it still would have been a good action movie without the topical headlines that helped promote it.
Granted, John Wayne may have been outspoken in his politics, but his movies were popular because of the image he projected.
Aside from its topical subject matter, Big Jim McClain still would have drawn a crowd because John Wayne was in it.
Working for the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), tall wizened John Wayne (as Jim McLain) is disgusted as guilty citizens take the Fifth Amendment when asked, "Are you now or have you even been a member of the Communist Party?" With tall young James Arness (as Mal Baxter) as his partner, Mr. Wayne is sent to root out Commies in Hawaii.
"Big Jim McLain" is Wayne with the warts showing, and they're not all political.** Big Jim McLain (8/30/52) Edward Ludwig ~ John Wayne, Nancy Olson, James Arness, Alan Napier.
The Red Menace was real and apologists for Communists can't make it unreal, no matter how many George Clooney movies get made.With that said, what was John Wayne thinking when he made this idiotic, cartoonish garbage?
All the people who are still alive and were involved in the production of the ludicrous anti-Commie Pinko, anti-intellect (not anti-intellectual), Reefer Madness-level trash should have to write an explanation for why they didn't read the script and just say no!Regardless of your politics, you've got to get a copy of Big Jim McLain and watch for its comedy value.
The sad thing is that I think that a good movie could be made about attempts by communists to take over labor unions (I can't imagine that it didn't happen).
John Wayne and James Arness play a couple of HUAC agents who are out to find Communists in Hawaii.
Unfortunately this did more harm than good; many of their associates (great performers like Howard Da Silva, John Garfield and Betty Garrett) were banned for years if not for life.This movie was a product of those who wanted to convince the modern day inquisition called the House on Unamerican Activities that they were genuine flag waving, apple pie eating homies.
Thirdly, both "law and order" agencies are based in Hawaii (why?) and finally, the guys who work with John Wayne in the film are actual Hawaiians whose acting is as stilted and crummy as the Hawaiians who try to act in the TV show!!!Finally, I ask "why"???
The film quality (I know – it was black and white) – sucked, and other than Wayne and Arness, I didn't notice any memorable talent.
If it wasn't for John Wayne and James Arness, this movie would probably end up starless – but those two are in it – so I will have to hand out five stars..
Most cineastes are more or less left-wing; a film such as 'Big Jim McLain' will be bashed regardless of its intrinsic merits, and whether time has vindicated its picture of widespread communist labour-movement penetration or not.
There is an incongruous episode of a lunatic (Hans Conried, the future Dr Terwilliker) who offers to inform on the party cell, boasts of his secret inventions and contacts with Stalin, and then tells Wayne he has a plan to end all wars by making every man and woman in the world look the same.
Again, if taken seriously this strand of the plot makes the investigation look like a clumsy wild goose chase.Moreover, Wayne is not the fascistic bully critics purported to see but is poised between the gallant, diffident cowboy of his pre-war movies and the crusty blowhard of the Sixties.
John Wayne (six-feet, four inches), James Arness (six-feet, six inches), and Allan Napier (seven-hundred-and-twenty-two feet).
Second, this, along with "The Green Berets", is the most political movie that John Wayne has ever made.
They're pure e-vil.Wayne and Arness are members of the House Un-American Activities Committee, sent to Honolulu to uncover these Red moles who have infiltrated the unions.
Arness is accidentally killed by the commies, but Wayne and the Hawaiian police capture the evildoers.It's a terrible movie but fascinating too.
Thus, this is another Wayne film you must look at in the context of the times in which it was made.
John Wayne plays the title role of Jim McLain, a federal agent working for the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee in search of a pesky ring of Communists believed to be operating in Hawaii.
That's what a Japanese nurse tells House on Un-American Activities Investigator John Wayne (as the title character) about her feelings towards Communism when he questions her about her Communist ex-husband.
I do not profess to be an expert on communism, but I do understand that the Red Scare of the late 1940's and 1950's was an era in Hollywood that destroyed many innocent people, and films like this, "The Red Menace" and "I Was a Communist For the FBI" are just as manipulative as the dangers they are preaching against.
When Communists are seen, they are as obvious as the stereotypical Nazi's of those propaganda filled World War II movies.
James Arness is perfectly cast as Wayne's co-hort (they seem like brothers), while Veda Ann Borg and Hans Conreid offer amusing supporting roles.
This black and white drama/thriller sees John Wayne and James Arness, both taller than tall actors, travelling to Honolulu on the trail of some Communist bad guys in order to bring them to book.The film benefits from a decent and unusual setting with a great number of local character actors playing in support.
What would you expect in a John Wayne flick - he "shot at the other guy because he was an enemy".Infiltrating labor unions and intending to plague the islands of Hawaii with disease infested rats made the Commies a bad bunch in this story.
The Duke must have had that affect on her, especially after he told her that "what I think about you has to be said in the dark".Politics aside, the movie is an average effort and certainly a product of it's times.