David Edward Martin It's interesting and difficult to assess films with extremist viewpoints that were made at times when their viewpoints were considered perfectly acceptable. BIRTH OF A NATION is one such flick, with its heroic Ku Klux Klansmen saving the day. BIG JIM MCCLAIN is another film of this ilk. It was made in a time when a small but unfortunately powerful political and media cabal successfully convinced the public that Commie Spies were infiltrating everywhere. To stop them, all we needed to do was rip up the Constitution and set up a secret police to arrest these evil foreigners and their native-born Fellow Travellers. That we had just spent five years stopping a similar system in Germany never entered into most folks' minds. But I digress.... Wayne and Arness star as agents of the secret police.... err, investigators for the House Un-American Activities Commission ferreting out a group of obviously intellectual and well-traveled Commies and Commie Dupes who use the Constitution to prevent their prosecution. That's pretty much sums up the film. The film is a sad recitation of various bugaboos held by the conservatives. The Commies are highly intelligent, well-educated, and philosophical, and possess a wide view of the relationship between nations and an even better understanding of the rights inherent in the Constitution. The Good Guys are common folk without any intellectual pretense, possess a strong nationalistic bias, and dislike the Constitution because it prevents their actions. Hmm, sounds like the Bush Adminstration....The film is ripe for revival. The same script performed now could be a riotous dark comedy. Maybe throw in a few catchy song and dance numbers.

Robert J. Maxwell "Big Jim McClain" is distinctive in several ways. First, it features three of the tallest men in the movies. 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. It reflects accurately Wayne's view of the Communist Menace. This is the John Wayne who carried a cigarette lighter inscribed "**** Communism." Boy -- are they shifty -- and ruthless too.Allan Napier is the Russky head of the Hawaiian cell. He says something along the lines of, "I hate these domestic communists. These 'committed' party members. But we need them until we take power. Then -- liquidate." This is a staple of spy movies. They sacrifice one another remorselessly for the good of the cause. They're getting in all over too. After a professor takes the fifth, Wayne grumbles, "Now he's free to go back to teaching economics at the university and contaminate more young minds." We never learn about the nature of the contamination. There is a lone reference to Marx and several bitter comments about "the party line" and "all that baloney," but all we ever see of the Red Menace is that they plot to infect everybody by releasing a horde of sick rats in Honolulu. They could be pod people from outer space. 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. There is also a plot hatched by Napier to unloose all sorts of evil on the islands and halt shipping -- what with strikes and those infected rats. Arness is accidentally killed by the commies, but Wayne and the Hawaiian police capture the evildoers.It's a terrible movie but fascinating too. Never dull. It's hard to generalize about the acting. Some performances are decent, others are ludicrous. Wayne exudes his usual John Wayneness. Arness, who was The Thing in Howard Hawks' "The Thing From Another World," is likably competent as the sidekick. Nancy Olson is beautiful, in an extra-ordinary way. She plays a medical student and she should know how to do it, medicine having been demystified by her physician father. Captain Liu of the HPD cannot act. Neither can a couple of other members of the cast. An elderly Polish refugee is played like a character role in a movie from the early 1930s -- only badly. The lack of talent on display is embarrassing.As if in compensation the movie takes us on a tour of the sights. See the Pali? Notice John and Nancy riding the surf in a catamaran at Waikiki. Aren't the little native girls cute, doing a slow, hip-swinging hula? It's those darned Russkies who cause trouble in paradise.The intent of the flag-waving should reach the most "low-information" of voters. The opening scene has Daniel Webster practically rising from his grave and asking, "Neighbor, how stands the union?" The chief narration is by Wayne, who sometimes seems to shout his apoplectic, angry pronouncements into the microphone. He gets extra points for believing what he says.There's a humorous interlude involving Veda Ann Borg as a good-natured, alcoholic, nymphomaniac who refers to Wayne as "76" because he is 76 inches tall. "Oh ho, manama nui!" It's at once gripping and hilarious to see Wayne try to shepherd her through a dinner at the Royal Hawaiian.It occurred to me, as Wayne's plane is about to land and the stewardess announces that several fancy hotels can be seen on Waikiki through the window -- the Manoa among them -- that when I was a teaching assistant at a semi-exclusive university, I had cause to counsel a student who was agonizing over her low grades in my class. She didn't want to fail because she'd have to leave and attend a state university and it would kill her father. He was the manager of the Moana Hotel. I never could afford to see the inside of the Moana but years earlier I stole an over-sized towel with the Moana logo from its beach front. I squeaked her through, partly out of guilt.All apologies for that digression into the ironic but, really, it wouldn't have been much more helpful if I'd stuck to a discussion of the movie. It is to film what Grandma Moses is to painting.It's an awful movie, but you might enjoy it. I know I did.

Mike Newton 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. The villains could have been gangsters or hoodlums and nobody would have taken the position that maybe these people were just misunderstood. Granted, John Wayne may have been outspoken in his politics, but his movies were popular because of the image he projected. The men that went to see his movies may not have been as big or strong as he was but would have liked to have been. The John Wayne image was classic Hollywood wish fulfillment. Just as the Joan Crawford or Bette Davis image was for a lot of women. In those days, you picked your hero or heroine and stuck by them so regardless of what anybody else said or did, you went to see their movies. These people who delight in revealing what they have heard about your favorite star are doing it out of a sense of meaness. Movies originally were meant to entertain. That's why they ran them in theaters. Those films meant to educate were usually shown in classrooms. How many kids would have shown up at a theater if there was going to be a film about the pioneers crossing the desert and their hardships, but no Indian attacks. No drama, just historical fact. Aside from its topical subject matter, Big Jim McClain still would have drawn a crowd because John Wayne was in it. Like him or not, the guy had to have some sort of charisma to have lasted as long as he did.

yardbirdsraveup I know what you're all thinking. Yes, most of the comments center on the anti-Communist agenda of the late 40's to the mid-50's and rightly so. John Wayne was one of those actors who believed in "CYA" (cover your 'butt') when it came to keeping his job in Hollywood. And rightly so again! With the likes of Wayne and cravens like Elia Kazan, they chose to appease the witch hunters rather than stand up to them. 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. Obviously the ruse worked.However I'm straying from my one line summary here. I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed the subliminal content of this film. Yes, it reeks of good ol' flag waving Americanism vs the no-good commies, but has anyone noticed the "law and order" theme of this film? Has anyone noticed that it takes place in (of all places) Hawaii, which was then only a "Protectorate" of the United States? Hawaii didn't get statehood until 1959, seven years after this film was released. I really believe (I wonder if anyone else does!) that the movers and shakers of 60's television got the idea of "Hawaii 5-0" from this film. There are quite a few similarities. First of all, the head honcho is a white guy (Jack Lord, John Wayne). Secondly, they both hunt down criminals (Lord goes after the common garden variety type and Wayne goes after the same, only a little "redder"). 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"??? Am I imagining all of this or does someone else out in the ether have the same opinion as I do? Somebody, please tell me if this is so!