Let's be realistic.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

"Tail Gunner Joe" was a three hour blockbuster for NBC on Feb 6 1977, detailing the rise and fall of Senator Joe McCarthy, played by the imposing Peter Boyle, then riding high on his multifaceted Creature in Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein." The left wing slant of the narrative shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, but Boyle's inherent likability shines through, enabling the more unsavory traits of McCarthy's nature to slide by in somewhat engaging fashion. Even at this length it's never really boring, guest stars galore offering their version of events to reporter Heather Menzies, the first up being John Carradine's 'Wisconsin Farmer,' discussing Joe's background before going into politics: "they say he left his mark on this country, I don't know about that, but he certainly left his chickens!" Boyle was nominated for an Emmy for his performance, as was Patricia Neal, but only Burgess Meredith took home the trophy as Joseph Welch, the attorney for the US Army who tried to turn McCarthy's accusations back on him, saved for the climax. In actual fact, Welch had indeed hired a young lawyer, Fred Fisher, who truly was employed by a Communist front group, the National Lawyers Guild, so in hindsight 'Tail Gunner Joe' successfully called out Welch, though neither man lived long after these hearings. John Forsythe, Jean Stapleton, Ned Beatty, and Andrew Duggan's Dwight Eisenhower come off best, with Richard M. Dixon still typecast as Vice President Nixon!

A terrific piece showing the insanity that even a democracy can fall victim too, when the public's imagination and fear are stoked by outright lies and liars.'Tail Gunner Joe' covers the story of Joseph McCarthy (called by President Truman, "that most lamentable mistake of the Almighty") and his skyrocket to national prominence with claims that the State Dept harbored known Communists. This, of course, during a time when America lived in dread fear of Communism and the term 'Commsymp' had been created as a means of destroying a person who couldn't be accurately labelled a 'Communist' so they were 'communist sympathizers' or commsymp's.The horror of McCarthy's lust for power was beautifully captured in an exchange between McCarthy (Peter Boyle) and Army lawyer Welch (Burgess Meridith, who was himself labelled an enemy of America by McCarthy's gang back in the day), where Welch had hit McCarthy right between the eyes legally, and instead of trying to counter Welch, McCarthy instead names a random member of Welch's team and smears him as a communist. Knowing that just a person's name coming from McCarthy's mouth was a career death sentence, Welch gave his famous remark, "At long last senator - have you no shame?" McCarthy had destroyed a career just because someone made him feel uncomfortable.It's a matter of some significance that McCarthy went into a career spiral himself not long after being brought down by Welch. Had McCarthy's beliefs and accusations been real, they would have been picked up by another person and brought to fruition - the proof that McCarthy was a liar and a political gangster is in the fact that not one of his list of "207 known names of communists" was ever brought to light, McCarthy never proved the existence of a single communist in the State Department, and he himself died of alcoholism 3 years after his fall from fame.

This is a great made for TV film, sporting a deep bench of wonderful actors. This is the kind of made for TV stuff above budget and vision of the major networks now. However, is this movie accurate history? Well, very few honest intellectuals could defend Joe McCarthy unless maybe after several big gulps of Jack Daniels. That said, a few facts? HUAAC was a House organ, not directly tied to the Senate in any way, and McCarthy was a Senator. Point being, there were lots of witch hunters back then. For purpose of drama, both this film and history have settled on McCarthy as the sole and thorough bad guy.McCarthy directly hurt very few lives. He did amplify a current of nervousness already running through America, and this spawned many imitators. These Monkey-seers Monkey-doers were even more hurtful than Joe, by sheer force of numbers alone.To honest intellectuals, it seems obvious Joe McCarthy couldn't catch a cold at the North Pole. As "The Haunted Wood" (Allen Weinstein) reveals, from briefly opened Soviet archives, there were plenty faithful Communist spies operating in the US. McCarthy...Keystone Cop versus Houdini basically.If one can understand there were dangerous Communist spies working hard in the US in the early 1950's, but they weren't in Hollywood, they were in Washington. If one can understand early 50's Red Scare was kind of hangover from VE & VJ day, following Soviet detonation of A-bomb. If one can understand Joe McCarthy was not evil genius of persecuting many good folk who just held harmless unpopular views (personally, I wouldn't trust Joe McCarthy to mow my lawn) but only somebody who blew on something already smoldering? Then by all means watch this movie and enjoy it. It is well made with some wonderful actors. But it ain't accurate history.

It is a source of continual amazement to me that, if a person lives long enough, the opposite of Shakespeare's saying proves true. The bard said something like "The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones." The opposite is all too often true. This appears to be the case with McCarthy. The longer he is dead, the more people forget about what a truly vile maggot he was. This movie does a reasonably good job of portraying McCarthy as he was and not as the new bunch of neo-conservatives want him to have been. His reckless disregard for the truth (often under the guise of looking for the truth) made him the functional equivalent of a twentieth century inquisitor. It also points out how Eisenhower stood by and did absolutely nothing to curb McCarthy. Of course, Eisenhower did virtually nothing for eight years, so this was nothing new...