In 1987 the press went absolutely nuts over a new television mini-series entitled Amerika. The telefilm followed the exploits of former presidential candidate Devin Milford, portrayed by Kris Kristofferson, and his attempt to free the nation from the tyranny of a Soviet occupation after being released from prison camp. The right wing journalist believed portrayal of the U.S.S.R was too soft and didn't capture their true brutality and threat. The Liberal Media believed the portrayal was too harsh and would jeopardize detente and antagonize the Kremlin.
Amerika generated more pre-broadcast phone calls and letters than any other program ABC aired, even more than the combined pre and post air reaction to the recently aired nuclear war series "The Day After." It was controversial, more so perhaps because ABC had spent nearly $40 million on what seemed to be a more political and dramatic rehashing of the same themes seen in Red Dawn. Despite this level of hype and controversy, it did poorly. Amerika's rating slumped almost immediately and nobody seemed to like it, not even the stars.
"I don't know if people will sit through the first two hours. . . . It's like the beginning of a slow Russian novel."Kris Kristofferson
Once it was viewed it hardly seemed worth the effort to lambaste it. It's reported that the film extended the length of the cold war some six to ten hours. Despite a top dollar cast for the time, that included Sam Neil, Robert Urich and Mariel Hemmingway, the acting was wooden and un-provocative. You never got the impression that they were dealing with anything more stressful than ordering latte's at Starbucks during rush hour. It was the eighties though, and America ( the real one, with a 'c') was at the climax of the cold war. Practically any movie about the Soviet Threat could be made and have a small audience of nut jobs and reactionaries. Almost to prove my point, for years after the airing the only way to get a copy was to order bootleg VHS copies from the Freedom Network, who believed that the film was being repressed as part of some conspiracy.
The idea for Amerika was apparently spawned by a comment that Ben Stein from the Herald Examiner had made in his criticism of The Day After. Stein had posed a question about what life would be like under Soviet occupation. Brandon Stoddard, president of ABC Circle Films, wanted to pursue that story but couldn't figure out how to do it without getting bogged down in the actual struggle to assert foreign control. So in the grand tradition of Hollywood, he just skipped it, setting the film ten years after the occupation. To be fair though, it was the idea of Stoddard's wife, not his own.
So what we're left with is a badly acted film about a nation taken over by the Soviets with the assistance of NATO troops in a bloodless coup because Americans have grown too apathetic to care that they are being driven into slave labor camps and are having their basic civil rights trampled upon. The only man with the charisma and will power to reunite the nation and get rid of that stupid K in favor of the more traditional C, is inexplicably released from prison by a foreign government that imprisons people for buying bread from the wrong line. We are never treated to an explanation of how such a thing ever came about, other than vague references to NATO, EMP weapons and lengthy soliloquies on the apathy of the American television generation. The irony was not lost on me.
"The premise of the show is still objectionable to me. That the Russians would ever occupy the United States is total fiction." Kris Kristofferson
Every cloud has a silver lining though, and this cumulonimbus was no exception. It was wonderfully produced for a television mini-series and the crew did a very convincing job of turning the location shots of Toronto into the American Heartland. Additionally it was the film debut of actress Lara Flynn Boyle whom you may remember from Wayne's World, Twin Peaks and Jacob: A TNT Bible Story.
Despite any redeeming qualities, the Berlin Wall fell just two years later and the Soviet threat quickly fell out of favor as international boogeymen. Amerika slipped into relative obscurity to the conflicted delight and horror of militia groups and conspiracy theorists everywhere. It was available for a time in a VHS boxed set but in recent years has fallen out of print, potentially because the New World Order is afraid of the films message, but more than likely just because it's a fourteen and a half hour long, boring political message that is no longer topical or even relevant and nobody was buying it.
Kris Kristofferson .... Devin Milford
Kelly Proctor .... Billy Milford
Keram Malicki-Sánchez .... Young Caleb
Jason Wild .... Youth Communist Leader
Graham Beckel .... Clayton Cullen
Richard Blackburn .... KGB Agent
Pete Boughn .... High School Principal
Lara Flynn Boyle .... Jacqueline 'Jessie' Bradford
Richard Bradford .... Ward
Ivan Dixon .... Dr. Alan Drummond
David Ferry .... Laird
Dorian Harewood .... Jeffrey Wyman
Mariel Hemingway .... Kimberly Ballard
Marcel Hillaire .... Dieter Heinlander
Wendy Hughes .... Marion Andrews
Christine Lahti .... Althea Milford
Piotr Lysak .... Mikhail
Armin Mueller-Stahl .... General Petya Samanov
Sam Neill .... Colonel Andrei Denisov
Cindy Pickett .... Amanda Bradford
Ford Rainey .... Will Milford
Don Reilly .... Justin Milford
Allan Royal .... President
Raynor Scheine .... Major Helmut Gurtman
Robert Urich .... Peter Bradford
Sources:
www.imdb.com
http://www.lgoldberg.com/Clipbooks%20Pages/orange_county_register_amerika_on_abc_(jan__1987).htm
http://www.mbcnet.org/ETV/A/htmlA/amerika/amerika.htm