Submarine Base

This movie was made in 1943 along with several dozen other short (only 65 minutes here) movies like this during WWII. Starring John Litel and Alan Baxter (as protagonist Joe Morgan) both standard contract actors for Warners at the time. Movie was made to show an element of the war effort and was formulaic for the time. Usual plot lines of such a movie set around an outlaw ex-gangster from NYC (Morgan) who fishes an ex-cop out of the water (Litel as Taggert). Usual plot twists and Nazi suspense (it was shot in 1943!) Shot in B&W some visual not too many special effects and only a couple of sets used for a 1 hour movie. No particular high drama or special effects - decent predictable all around acting for a staple war picture. Basic plot is that Morgan was initially thought to be a trailer to the US by many including his old NYC nemesis Taggert, but turns out he has his own secret plan to aid the Allied effort.

Merchant mariner John Litel has another ship blown out from under him. He's picked up by Alan Baxter. When they both lived in New York, Baxter was a mobster, and Litel a police detective trying to jail him. When things became too hot, Baxter settled for being a fisherman off the coast of South America. He drops Litel on an out-of-the-way island right on the Equator, where the eccentric locals -- including Eric Blore, Fifi D'Orsay, and Luis Alberni -- keep up a shoddy brand of normality with German spies, ineffective French governors, German U-boats off the coast, and so forth.

Three years earlier, Litel had been playing second leads and authority figures at Warner Brothers, and here he is, slumming at PRC. Whom had he offended so badly? Baxter speaks his lines like he has a head cold. The script is blah, with Litel giving a rah-rah speech at the end, which comes out of nowhere. Another PRC C movie.

This film takes place on a small island in the Atlantic Ocean near the equator, featuring an exiled American named "Joe Morgan" (Alan Baxter) and his British employee "Spike" (Eric Blore) secretly loading torpedoes onto a German submarine during World War II. Not long afterward, while sailing his fishing boat in the open seas, Eric notices a man clinging to a piece of wreckage from a ship that had been torpedoed two hours earlier. Upon pulling him aboard, Joe quickly recognizes him as a former police officer named "James Taggert" (John Litel), who had once investigated him for murder in New York. Although not particularly fond of him, Joe still arranges for his meals and lodging at the local hotel, but makes it known that he wants nothing to do with him from then on. What Joe doesn't realize, however, is that Taggert suspects he is hiding something and immediately begins to uncover what it is. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this movie was made right after the American involvement in World War II and, as a result, there was a great demand for films of this sort. It isn't very long (about 65 minutes) and, as one might expect, fully supports the war effort. Be that as it may, while I don't consider this to be a bad film necessarily, it clearly wasn't one of the better films made during this time, and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

My girlfriend bought me a 16mm print of this PRC flick a few weeks ago, and we projected it last night for the first time on the big screen! Before I get into the review there was something of interest about the print. First off this print is what we used to call in film exchanges a "Cannibalized Print" That is to say they used three prints to make up this one. The first part of the print was struck on Kodak stock in 1945, and the last part of the print was Kodak 1944. However most of the body of the print was brand new, and struck on Kodak stock made in 1976. Which means they were still making and exchanging 16mm prints for television as late as 1976! It is a reduction print which means it was a print down from 35mm negatives. The picture and sound quality was very close to 35mm. I do know that in the 1970's Bonded Film Services shipped the PRC library to television stations nationwide. By the early 1980's most of the exchange prints were junked. I love owning and projecting these old pictures rather than watching them on DVDS or YouTube. The motion picture film print makes watching these old films very special. PRC which people in the 1940's would jokingly call "Pretty Rotten Cinema" (yes even then they didn't fall for most of this crap!) PRC was one of my favorite studios - and I just love every piece of crap they turned out! If I could own the ultimate 16 or 35mm film print collection it was be all of the PRC pictures! I started collecting film prints in the 1970's in high school, and I loved PRC films! "The Lady Chaser" 1946 was the first film print of a PRC ever owned, I wish I still had that print now! So when I see them on line in 16mm I buy them! Who cares if it's crap! They are still better than pictures made today in Covid-19 2021! I look forward to a second screening in the summer of 2021! Plus I love Iris Adrian she has 160 plus screen credits and when she was in her twenties she was a babe! And just because the plot was so bad, I give it ten stars! I loved it! I can't wait to get my Covid-19 vaccination so I can get sick and die! Cheers!

There are a few real hidden gems that few people see, because there aren't big name stars, particularly in 1940s and 1950s films.

This one is a war time flick about American civilians dealing with German U Boats. The main character, Morgan, is an American hoodlum who is dealing with the Nazis, or is he? We immediately get the feeling that Morgan is not what he seems, but he is in over his head in trying to hoodwink the Nazi Navy, but he doesn't know it. This makes it somewhat credible.

He is at odds with a former cop named Taggart, who serves as the stable character of the film. There are many other interesting characters, and great atmosphere, with superb directing, that makes this a hidden gem.

The shots all follow logical patterns, and we follow the plot very easy. This is a directing triumph. The scenery is engaging, and this is put together extremely well. We are kept interested in the plot, because of the characters. This is how a film should be made, yet many with much larger budgets can't accomplish what this film did. A must see film, and very surprising, because unlike most Hollywood films, the bad guys don't win all the time.