When Indiana Jones fought Nazis back in his movies made in the 1980s, any old German war criminals hiding out in Brazil and keeping up their subscription to Variety were probably just grateful to be remembered. They sure didn't call any press conferences. But now that Indy is fighting a hot KGB agent (played by Cate Blanchett in She-Wolf of Siberia drag) in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, some old Russian Communist party members are peeved. These guys have been stubbornly holding onto the faith since the collapse of the Soviet Union more than fifteen years ago, and now, as if they didn't have it tough enough, they have to put up with Harrison Ford prancing across the screen to rub it in their faces? "What galls," says one party member, Viktor Perov, "is how together with America we defeated Hitler, and how we sympathized when Bin Laden hit them. But they go ahead and scare kids with Communists. These people have no shame." Sure, sure, but what have done for us lately? And don't think we've forgotten about The Blue Bird, Comrade.
The new Indiana Jones movie opened last week on more than 800 screens in Russia. The party members are concerned that ill-informed youngsters will come away from it with their heads stuffed with lies about Russian activities in the previous century, which they equate with "ideological sabotage." Example: "In 1957," insists St. Petersburg Communist Party chief Sergei Malinkovich, "the communists did not run with crystal skulls throughout the U.S." Oh, I don't know, everybody thinks they know their history so much better than the kids these days. As Criswell used to say, can you really prove that it didn't happen? In any case, there's a late-blooming, presumably doomed campaign to ban the film. There's also a call to deny Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett, described by one aggrieved party member as "running dogs of the CIA"-- just like Omar Sharif,-- entrance to the country. This last move they maybe could have thought out a little better. If you've seen Ford's face while he's been doing his publicity chores, having his chest waxed to raise awareness of the plight of the rain forests and staring in disbelief at someone who asked him whether Indiana Jones would beat Han Solo in a fight (Indiana Jones and Han Solo would never get in a fight, because Han Solo lets his Wookie kick people's asses for him), you might suspect that he'd consider being called a running dog a small price to pay not to have to meet the Moscow equivalent of Regis and Kathie Lee.
