The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!

The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (1966) is Norman Jewison's Cold War farce you can watch online on iFILM. A Soviet submarine clumsily runs aground off a tiny New England island.

To get free without triggering an international incident, second-in-command Lieutenant Rozanov (Alan Arkin) sends a landing party ashore for a boat and insists his crew are stranded Norwegian sailors. Nobody buys it. Within hours the islanders are sure an invasion has begun, and the whole place tips into glorious panic — a militia, cut phone lines, shouting in the streets. Carl Reiner plays a vacationing TV writer, Eva Marie Saint his wife, Brian Keith the unflappable police chief.

Jewison points his satire not at Russians or Americans but at fear itself, and the way a rumor turns decent people into a mob. Arkin's film debut landed him an Academy Award nomination, and the picture collected four nods in all, Best Picture among them. For 1966 it's a rare comedy where the enemy turns out to be just a scared man on the opposite shore. Stream The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (1966) online on iFILM.