Dangerously They Live (1941)

Wow! Such a good movie.

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

best movie i've ever seen.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

I'm not surprised John Garfield didn't enjoy making "Dangerously They Live." It is a poor film with a weak plot and no imagination in the script at all. Even the action scenes are below par. John Garfield and Jack Warner weren't seeing eye to eye at this point over the films the actor was told to do. The plot involves a rather neurotic hospital patient (Nancy Coleman) and a bunch of Nazis led by Raymond Massey. That is all there is to this film. I only glance at this nonsense to see John Garfield.

After a very clumsy start things do gradually become suspenseful and intriguing. Although we do have the miscasting of John Garfield and a "deer in the headlights" performance from the main female actress, unconvincingly portraying a British spy. Fortunately, the propaganda is not as heavy as the movies to follow once America entered the War and the movie is better for it.This film comes off slightly above its contemporaries because of this restraint, but seems, justifiably, rushed and not very complex. It is this lack of sophistication (all the U-Boats just float ON THE SURFACE waiting to be bombed) and some unbelievable plot turns that diminish this to a watchable period piece and kept it from becoming a more engaging and effective effort.A potentially powerful work that the studio did not seem to embrace except as a programmer to program the audience toward and inevitable inclusion in the struggle against fascism that is marching menacingly through Europe and will soon enter our airspace the same year.

You can skip this one unless you're determined to see every Warner Bros. movie about spies and Nazis that the studio ever made. That's about the only reason for sitting through this turkey, despite a cast that includes such stalwarts as JOHN GARFIELD, RAYMOND MASSEY and NANCY COLEMAN, all of whom must have wished they were not floundering in a weak script.Garfield looks and acts like a hood, but he's supposed to be a respectable doctor taking care of a patient who claims to have amnesia. (The amnesia theme got quite a workout throughout the '40s as a convenient plot device). But here it turns out that the woman patient (Coleman) is only pretending to have amnesia because some Nazi spies are hot on her trail.When Garfield allows her to be taken to a private sanitarium where she will be taken care of by the seemingly helpful Raymond Massey, he soon discovers that the house she is sheltered in is really a place for her to be kept prisoner until she divulges some wartime secrets.There's a little suspense in all of this, but none of the performers seem to be in top form and Garfield seems ill at ease in his doctor role.Summing up: Not quality stuff. Has all the earmarks of a quickly produced potboiler.

John Garfield is an intern who cares for a young accident victim in "Dangerously They Live," also starring Nancy Coleman, Raymond Massey, and Moroni Olson. This looks like a B movie and is certainly short enough to have been a second feature. This is what Warners put John Garfield in after he made a big splash in "Four Daughters?" Jack Warner must have been punishing him for something.The accident victim in this film, Jane Graystone, played by Coleman, is thought to have amnesia. She is actually a spy for the U.S., and the Nazis are after information she has about a convoy in New Zealand. Moroni Olson poses as her father, a Mr. Goodwin, but she tells Dr. Lewis (Garfield) the true story and asks for his help. Garfield is a little waylaid, however, when one of his teachers, Dr. Ingersoll (Raymond Massey) appears as a doctor on the case. He doesn't realize Ingersoll is part of the Nazi team. Ingersoll allows Dr. Lewis to come "home" with Jane - but home seems more like a prison.Massey turns in an excellent performance and is quite scary as Ingersoll. Coleman, who went on to have a career in television, is pretty, reminiscent of Barbara Rush or Piper Laurie in their youths. However, she's not as good an actress as either of those women. Garfield is appealing but this is not his kind of role. It would be a few more years before he would be given parts more suited to his abilities. Fortunately, he'd have about five years of excellent roles before the blacklist and his early death.Though the movie was made right before Pearl Harbor, the handwriting was on the wall for the U.S. The theme of Nazis in our midst was in several films of that time, including "All Through the Night."