Submarine Alert (1943)

Purely Joyful Movie!

Expected more

A Major Disappointment

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

It's a hurried story of enemy spies sending signals to German U-boats offshore about the sailing of American cargo ships down the coast. Of course it's low budget and rude but I kind of liked it. (The Morse code used is real, not just gibberish. That is, somebody CARED.) It's 1942 and the US is having a tough time with so many freighters and tankers being sunk off the coast. And they were being sunk in numbers, too. The U-boats called it the second "happy time." But it didn't require Nazi spies. The US had just entered the war and unlike Britain had no clear idea of how to proceed with the business of protecting its shipping. The coast was considered safe from submarines because of the submarine's short cruising range. But they were supplied mid way across the Atlantic by Milchkühe, "milk cows." The cities along the coast -- Boston, New York, Charleston, and the rest -- left their lights on at night, so U-boats could silhouette our ships easily. It was so easy for the U-boats that the crews sometimes greeted survivors and distributed food to the lifeboats. "Charge this to Churchill." In this movie, the FBI, realizing that the unnecessary transmitter must be tiny and portable, and must be carefully attended, sees to it that dozens of radio engineers are fired, hoping that one will be approached by the Nazis. Richard Arlen is one of the experts fired and the Nazis offer him a job which, all unwittingly, he accepts.True. It's as improbable as all hell. Furthermore, these white-collar types lead stuffy lives. They all wear suits and ties, their shoes are shined, and their manners unimpeachable. Dwight Frye ("Renfield") is cast as a Nazi agent. The non-diegetic music is out of a Saturday-afternoon serial, popular at the time. But please, let's not get off on a tangent. Let's stick to events, shall we? It's a little puzzling that after the FBI's machinations that result in the firing of all these radio experts, those that are offered jobs are treated as potential traitors. After all, they've done nothing but legally exercised their skills. Frankly, I didn't get the logic. But in any case, the lead character, Richard Alrlen, a dull actor, is followed by an FBI agent, Wendy Barrie. He falls in love with her fifteen minutes after they first meet. The evildoers try to steambath Arlen and Barrie to death. It doesn't work. It's dumb but comforting, like hearing a Kindergarten child recite the ABCs flawlessly and everyone is happy.

It's a shame someone would equate this film to a propaganda reel. Unnecessary jingoism was part of American culture at the time. Only three brief instances of possible propaganda exist here -- 1) when our protagonist says he wouldn't want to join the New World Order because he doesn't like their tactics. Saying that is a bad thing? I guess it was not fair since we didn't get a Nazi response to how their way of life really is. 2) the quote over the intercom "You know what to do, boys" when the air squadron heads out for a combat mission. Unnecessary cheerleading in a movie, yes, but part of American film culture at the time. 3) at the end, when our antagonist becomes an American citizen, he says "We know our way of life is best, and we're fighting to keep it that way." Again, should the movie have been fair to Nazis by giving their point of view on their way of life? Seriously?!? Sometimes we know wrong is wrong and there doesn't need to be a defense of it. Therefore, not propaganda.Lastly, this movie does NOT defend the right to be an illegal alien. Nothing is illegal about our antagonist. He's a legal alien but not a citizen. Illegal status never once enters the conversation.Overall, an okay, swift moving crime/war drama that isn't very memorable but definitely not a terrible 76 minutes.

Don't be too quick to judge this WWII espionage caper, while it appears to labour early on, it picks up the pace and delivers a coherent, economical jaunt through a Nazi plot to scuttle oil tankers en route to the allies, after acquiring a top secret transmitter that's capable of pinpointing the location of ships using pre-determined supply routes. Arlen is the recently unemployed radio engineer who inadvertently finds himself wanted by the FBI when he's duped into assisting the enemy.Arlen is stoic in his patriotism, even giving a little call to arms rally in the film's post script, while Asther, Biberman and the prolific Marc Lawrence play the principal bad guys within contemporary stereotypes. Wendy Barrie plays an FBI operative whose ends up fighting the good fight alongside our noble hero.It's a shame the film ends the way it does, as there needn't have been the unnecessary jingoism - this is a film after all, not a propaganda reel. Nevertheless, for your 66 minute investment you'll get a reasonably well paced espionage pot-boiler with a hint of intrigue, the usual raft of clichés and for bonus material, there's even a "MacGyver" moment to rally the allies into action. Solid plot and taut execution, just a shame that it morphs into trite propaganda.

Director Frank McDonald takes Maxwell Shane's screenplay and uses World War Two-era paranoia to make a nice, swift crime drama. Well experienced radio engineer Lee Deerhold(Richard Arlen)is fired from his job at a time when people are pinching pennies and looking for any kind of job. He is all part of an FBI scheme to unwittingly infiltrate a gang of Nazi saboteurs, who have stolen a recently developed small radio transmitter. Deerhold is to gain the confidence of the Nazis as he "fine tunes" the stolen transmitter that is to be used to send top secret shipping schedules to an offshore Japanese submarine nest. Deerhold realizes that he is caught in a trap, when he is told of his own involvement with the government and begins running from the Nazis with their newly calibrated "code sender". The story moves rather quickly, because it only runs 67 minutes. Filmed completely in Los Angeles. Other players: Wendy Barrie, Nils Asther, John Miljan, Patsy Nash, Roger Pryor and Dwight Frye.