Many movies in the 1950s, American and Japanese, played off fears of the Cold War and the bomb, but for the most part in metaphors—monsters hatched from radiation (Godzilla) or aliens invading from outer space (too many to mention). I Live in Fear confronted the thing itself—and not just the fear of it, but the more common phenomenon: the suppression or evasion of the fear and the complacency that this engenders.