The movie depicts a crisis-wracked America that has succumbed to a fascist dictatorship. The unseen strongman who now rules the country, known only as "The Leader", deploys his own personal Gestapo, the ISF (Internal Security Force) to wipe out dissenters and control the populace. The ISF flies its own spiffy flag very similar to the symbology of World War II's You-Know-Who from You-Know-Where....just look up the German word for 'the leader' in case you don't catch the subtlety. But wait! All is not lost......armed resistance fighters, dubbing themselves The Society Of Men, have risen up to do furious battle with The Leader and his ISF minions.
From that premise, we're off and running, with the movie bookended by two spectacularly violent firefights between The Society of Men and the ISF.......keep in mind by 1968, American feature films had begun to fully embrace gory nihilistic violence, so "Shadow On The Land" eagerly became one of the first TV films to jump on the Blood Wagon,
Sadly, "The Leader" himself remains off screen during all this hysterical hoo-hah. The principal villain, an oily ISF business suit who walks like a man (John Forsythe) barks orders to his chief enforcer (Marc Strange) while consumed with standard fascist paranoia about enemies lurking within the very bowels of the ISF. Forsythe has no idea how right he is.....Strange is in fact a double agent mole for the resistance and periodically gets to spew out freedom-loving patriotic homilies. Strange has to grimace and bear it when his closest pal, an Army Lt.Colonel (Jackie Cooper) is beaten and tortured to death by the ISF....but not before spilling their latest evil scheme, blowing up the West Coast power grid and blaming it on the rebels. To help thwart the plot, Strange appeals to the Colonel's surviving brother, a holier-than-thou priest who looks upon all this political strife with sanctimonious disdain....and who's played by none other than.....drum roll, please....a young Gene Hackman, fresh off his breakthrough 'Bonnie And Clyde' appearance.
Bullets fly freely, bodies tumble off of high places and cute starlet Carol Lynley, briefly playing Strange's g.f., strips to her underwear.....presumably for those viewers who didn't mind a little cheesecake thrown with the struggle against totalitarianism.
Our favorite scenes....(and we swear we're not making this up...)The Leader makes life miserable for innocent travelers at airports, confounding and detaining them with ridiculous, sinister rulings (Oh Thank God, that could never ever happen in real life!!) Since the film takes place on Christmas week, the ISF goons wrestle Santa Claus to the ground during their brutal round up of dissidents.....presumably to check his bag for explosive-laden candy canes.
Our favorite insane factoid about "Shadow On The Land"......all this craziness was created by Sidney Sheldon, who also gave you those hard-hitting projects "I Dream Of Jeannie", "The Patty Duke Show" and the scripts for numerous frothy MGM musicals. ('Shadow' owes more of a kinship to Sheldon's other fabulously lucrative career as the author of pulpy melodramatic bestsellers, mostly consumed by women readers under beauty parlor hair dryers.)
The question is.....is "Shadow On The Land" a silly alarmist daydream.....or a preview of Coming Attractions? (We know what the bookstores think....they're loading up on copies of "1984" and Sinclair Lewis' "It Can't Happen Here") While you ponder, BQ fires off 4 glorious freedom loving stars (****) for "Shadow On The Land" a feverishly entertaining piece that didn't realize how Nostradamus-like it could become. Long Live the Society Of Men...and Women.
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