When I was a kid in the early 80s, me and my friends loved to play war. The woods and fields around our homes were ripe for adventure and flights of imagination. We carried toy guns that looked real, got scraped up and rubbed dirt on it, killed imaginary bad guys by the bushel, and did all the things that would make modern parents either pass out or send us off to therapy.

One or two of us would inevitably get “killed,” but we were the good guys, so we always won. And who were the bad guys? Well, I already told you it was the early 1980s, so who do you think the bad guys were? The Soviets, silly. The Ruskies. The Commies. The Pinkos.

The Soviet Union was such an easy enemy to pick. They were all over the nightly news. Our parents and our teachers spoke of their evil ways, their hatred of freedom, their dislike for America, how their massive military was poised to send us straight to hell with the push of a button.

We would speculate endlessly, kids and adults alike, about what set of circumstances could lead us into a war with the Soviets. What would a shooting war look like? Would they invade Western Europe? Would they ever dare try to occupy American soil?

According to the 1984 movie, , yes. Check out this scenario that opens the film:

When I was a kid in the early 80s, me and my friends loved to play war. The woods and fields around our homes were ripe for adventure and flights of imagination. We carried toy guns that looked real, got scraped up and rubbed dirt on it, killed imaginary bad guys by the bushel, and did all the things that would make modern parents either pass out or send us off to therapy.

One or two of us would inevitably get “killed,” but we were the good guys, so we always won. And who were the bad guys? Well, I already told you it was the early 1980s, so who do you think the bad guys were? The Soviets, silly. The Ruskies. The Commies. The Pinkos.

The Soviet Union was such an easy enemy to pick. They were all over the nightly news. Our parents and our teachers spoke of their evil ways, their hatred of freedom, their dislike for America, how their massive military was poised to send us straight to hell with the push of a button.

We would speculate endlessly, kids and adults alike, about what set of circumstances could lead us into a war with the Soviets. What would a shooting war look like? Would they invade Western Europe? Would they ever dare try to occupy American soil?

According to the 1984 movie, , yes. Check out this scenario that opens the film:

– Soviet Union suffers worst wheat harvest in 55 years.

– Labor and food riots in Poland. Soviet troops invade.

– Cuba and Nicaragua reach troop strength goals of 500,000. El Salvador and Honduras fall.

– Green Party gains control of West German parliament. Demands withdrawal of nuclear weapons from European soil.

– Mexico plunged into revolution.

– NATO dissolves. United States stands alone.

Red Dawn was our pre-teen backyard war games come to life. On a crisp September morning, a small Colorado town finds itself on the front lines of a massive airborne invasion by combined Soviet, Nicaraguan, and Cuban forces. A group of teens makes a break for it as guns blaze and people are killed all around them. They grab supplies and head for the hills under a sky filled with fighter jets. World War III has begun.

One thing leads to another, and the group finds themselves forming an armed resistance against the Soviet occupiers. They become known as the Wolverines, the name of their school sports team, and raise all sorts of hell to reclaim their homeland.

Red Dawn featured a great cast of actors who would go on to become some of the biggest stars of the 80s: Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, and Jennifer Grey. It also included some heavy hitters among the “adults:” Powers Boothe, Harry Dean Stanton, Ron O’Neal, Ben Johnson, William Smith, and Frank McRae.

The film was directed by John Milius from an original story by Kevin Reynolds. Milius was considered a Hollywood bad boy, namely because he was an outspoken conservative who liked guns. But his reputation as a storyteller was undeniable. He had written several successful films, including the first two Dirty Harry pictures and the Vietnam War classic Apocalypse Now, and he co-wrote and directed Conan the Barbarian, which launched Arnold Schwarzenegger’s film career.

Milius’s macho style made for a perfect fit to handle Red Dawn. The action scenes are well crafted, and there is plenty of gunplay. At the time of its release, Red Dawn was considered the most violent movie ever, with more violent acts per minute than any other film out there. (This seems laughable by today’s standards when you can turn on the TV and watch zombies rip out a person’s steaming guts. And that’s just commercial cable.)

In fact, Red Dawn was the first movie to be released with a PG-13 rating, that nebulous ranking that was created after a rash of Steven Spielberg-produced movies — Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Poltergeist, Gremlins — proved a little too much for the standard PG label.

But don’t be fooled. This is not a kill-‘em-by-the-dozen-while-your-pecs-glisten-in-the-sunlight action flick. Red Dawn keeps a tight focus on the core group of teens it starts out with, and it chronicles how the war changes them. They are not one-note killing machines. They question the morality of their actions. They pay a high price not just in blood, but also in loyalty, morality, and humanity, the casualties of war not easily tallied. By the film’s end, the teens who have survived are tired of the fight, as are some of their opponents, particularly Ron O’Neal’s Colonel Bella, who wants only to return home to his family and leave the madness behind.

As far-fetched as an armed invasion of the United States seems, it wasn’t hard for some of us in 1984 to imagine Red Dawn as the shape of things to come. Ronald Reagan was challenging the Soviets like no president before him. The arms buildup he called for scared some into believing that World War III was right around the corner. The Russians were fighting wars in Asia, Africa, and Central America to spread their socialist ideology. They had brutally crushed a labor movement in Poland. They even shot down a passenger airliner they claimed had entered their airspace. There was lot of belligerent rhetoric flying back and forth. It was not a relaxing time.

Red Dawn is very much a product of that era. It is at heart a fantasy, so it does not address the political or moral issues of the day. But it does ask some fascinating ‘what if’ questions about what life in America might be like if the Cold War turned hot and began on our doorstep.

The Cold War is an important time in history, and it deserves a great deal of attention. And if you want to get a glimpse into its impact on the American psyche during the 1980s, then you should take a close look at Red Dawn. It’s more than just a war movie. It’s a well made, thought-provoking glimpse into an alternate world where some of America’s greatest fears of the time were realized.