I’m happy to announce that the fall of 2027 will see the publication of Hellbrew of Hate: a Guide to the Great Anti-Communist Movies. The book is the result of the success of the first Annual Anti-Communist Film Festival, which was successfully held a few weeks ago. Our publisher is Bombardier, a great imprint run by conservative publishing veteran Adam Bellow.
I’ve launched a crowdfunding campaign for the book, which has a GoFundMe page, with a GiveSendGo page soon to follow. I launched the film festival and have worked on it now for well over a year without compensation. It would not have been possible without donors.
We also invite input from you all. What do you think are the best anti-communist movies of all time? You can also spread the word about the book and invite people to donate.
We hope to have the book ready for the 2027 Anti-Communist Film Festival, which we plan on having next October and simulcasting nationwide. We’re going into schools, cities, and universities.
The book will expand a 20,000-word essay I wrote about great anti-communist films. In 2024, I attended the American Film Institute’s series on the “Fabulous 50s.” The series highlighted American movies from the 1950s: Ben-Hur, Carmen Jones, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Night of the Hunter, Singin’ in the Rain, Sweet Smell of Success.
Also screened were some of the anti-communist movies of the Eisenhower era. Liberal audiences chuckled at what they saw as corny propaganda from the McCarthy era. In the 1960s, it became sport for cool people to mock movies like I Was a Communist for the FBI, I Married a Communist, or My Son John. Yet there were real communists in the government- and in Hollywood — who wanted to destroy America. Just like in 2026.
In 2026, with communists winning elections, these films from the 1950s seem prescient — and serious rather than goofy. In I Was a Communist for the FBI, an FBI agent infiltrates the communist party in Pittsburgh. He learned that their plan is “a hellbrew of hate” - urban riots intended to “divide and conquer” by pitting the races against each other and causing so much mayhem that the Left can come in to establish order and make huge profits off the court cases. Another character in the film is a high school teacher - “What better place to serve the party than in a high school?” It’s still true today.
Hellbrew of Hate: the Great Anti-Communist Movies will be a valuable resource to educated people about Communism and celebrate the great films that revealed the truth about this evil ideology. See you at the festival in October 2027.
Then there is the great 1955 movie Trial. Trial follows a young attorney named David Blake, played by Glenn Ford, who is hired to help represent Angel Chavez, a hispanic 17-year-old accused of killing a white girl. Chavez is innocent, but it soon becomes clear that the communists want Chavez purely as a money-making martyr. Blake tries to save Angel’s life while attorney Barney Castle, an actual hard-core communist, plans to let the boy hang so he can use his death as a fundraising tool. Adopted by Don M. Mankiewicz from his prize-winning novel, Trial is, in the words of critic Clyde Gilmour, “a hard-hitting realistic drama which shows with disturbing clarity how political racketeers skilled in the black arts of showmanship can flourish under the protection of the very laws they despise.”
Perhaps the most fascinating film is My Son John. Starring Helen Hayes and Van Heflin, it tells the story of an all-American family discovering that their son, who works in Washington, is in fact a communist spy. It is a methodical film without a lot of action scenes, but has tense emotional power. When John the communist tells his mother that “there are more important things than a mother’s love for her son,” it exposes the leftist goal of replacing the family with the state. In 1998, the Chicago Reader stunned its readers when critic Jonathan Rosenbaum put it on his list of the 100 Best Movies of the 20th Century.
I Married a Communist has a title that elicits chuckles, but the story of a man trying to leave his party dramatizes the brutality with which communists have always operated. When asked why he left the party. Whittaker Chambers, one of the great anti-communists of the 20th century, replied, “I heard the screams.” Murder, extortion, torture, lies — there was no evil beyond the bringers of a “bright new tomorrow.”
The first annual Anti-Communist Film Festival was a hit. Next year we’re expanding, and Hellbrew of Hate will be part of the package. Tell us what movies should be on the list, and please join us next October.