One small sample of a movie 'summing up' McCarthy was the character loosely based on him in "The Manchurian Candidate" 1962 played by the great character actor James Gregory. He is meditating how many Communists to claim have infiltrated the State Department. He is tapping the back of a ketchup bottle as the scene fades. . . into a scene in Congress where he holds up a piece of paper no one can read and is screaming "FIFTY SEVEN COMMUNISTS!" (let me know if you need the humor of this scene explicated)
That encapsulates the fictional nature of the real McCarthy's sources amd the demagoguery of the times. Plot spoiler in The Manchurian Candidate that those who were pushing the anti-Communist message the loudest were themselves Communists hiding under the canopy of fear they wrapped round themselves.
Not for nothing President Truman called McCarthy: 'The Kremlin's Greatest Ally'.