Waterfront

Dr. Carl Decker runs an optometrist shop on the San Francisco waterfront, but he also doubles as a Nazi spy for the Bay area. Decker is robbed of his code book, which also contains the names of all the enemy agents in the area. Decker and Marlow, another spy who just arrived in San Francisco to have his orders decoded by Decker, go off in search of the present owner of the book, who is also one of the Nazi spies operating on the west coast. Marlow, however, has a nasty streak to him, blackmailing the owner of a boarding house owner, Mrs. Hausner with impending threats to her family still living in Germany, and not being shy about using his gun when the situation arises. Marlow eventually shoots another Nazi collaborator Kramer, who is running out and Marlow believes will rat on him and Decker, and the crime is pinned on Jerry Donovan, the fiancé of Mrs. Hauser's daughter, Freda. Eventually Marlow has to prevent the Maxwell murder from coming back to him, while avoiding capture at the same time. Pretty good war time espionage flick with good performances from Carradine and Naish. The rest of the cast is standard for a PRC production. The climax of the film is really a drawback, lacking much excitement and seemingly rushed. Rating, 7.

Whenever I see that a film has been made by PRC, I assume the worst. After all, of the so-called 'Poverty Row' production companies, PRC was one of the poorest in overall quality. Quite simply, most of their films were hastily written and had very low production values---and it showed. However, here they have a film, while not great, is still quite enjoyable. I think it's because it was nice to see to fun old hammy B-movie stars in the same film--John Carradine and J. Carrol Naish. These men, along with the likes of George Zucco and Lionel Atwill made a huge number of Bs--and they thrived in this sort of low-brow but highly entertaining fare.

The film is clearly a propaganda film and it's about a spy ring run by an optometrist (Naish). He manages to have his secret code book stolen (oops) but not by the US government--but in order to help one of the people that Naish is blackmailing into helping him. Oddly, Naish simply doesn't seem terribly concerned about this (a shortcoming in the film, actually) but when another Nazi comes to help him (Carradine), things heat up, as Carradine's solution to EVERYTHING is to shoot people! Subtle, he ain't! Eventually, Carradine's rash ways are the undoing of these rather stupid spies.

While the film was highly entertaining and fun, the FBI lab guys incorrectly identified Carradine's murder weapon as a Mauser. The gun clearly was a Luger--as Mausers were newer guns and less available in the US (if at all). I'm no expert, but am positive of this--so why didn't the FBI guys get this right?!

1944's "Waterfront" is a reasonable example of a Poverty Row spy picture, this one from PRC rather than Republic or Monogram. None could be considered classics of course, generally set in the US and inexpensively confined to just a few tiny sets. What makes these stand out at all isn't the script but the actors involved, in this case John Carradine and J. Carrol Naish, both undercover Nazi agents working the San Francisco waterfront. Naish's Dr. Carl Decker is an optometrist in possession of a code book that can decipher the secret instructions for Carradine's Victor Marlow, newly arrived and impatient to get started. The film opens with the code book being stolen, and by the time it's over all the bad guys are captured or dead (no one comes off very smart). Just a few months before the iconic PRC "Bluebeard," Carradine relishes his villainy, playing his final Nazi role, while Naish provides good support, as do Edwin Maxwell and John Bleifer, veteran performers all. Actress Maris Wrixon previously worked with Boris Karloff in both Warners' "British Intelligence" and Monogram's "The Ape," and reunited with Carradine in Monogram's "The Face of Marble."

A lot of murders are committed for the sake of a little black book. We all know who the murderer is, since he commits every murder in the focus of the camera lens. He is elegant and smart, he always makes a good performance and makes an interesting impression, he is an ornament to every film in which he takes part, although his roles are almost always nasty criminals - he was Heydrich in one of Douglas Sirk's first American films. But this film is very low budget, and you will mark it in almost every scene, it's about Nazi spies in San Francisco harbour and rivalry between them, resulting in a gradual collective massacre. The direction is good, the cinematography is all right in the constant darkness of the fog, and the actors do as well as they could under the circumstances. But the film is only watchable for John Carradine's elegantly eerie performance.

If you don't pay attention too closely, this is a fairly entertaining film. J. Carrol Naish is fine as the Nazi spymaster. John Carradine just wasn't sinister or psychotic enough to make his character believable, but was better than most of the rest of the cast, though John Bleifer stood out as the slimy, double-dealing blackmailer. I thought it was pretty well directed, too.

I can see why the police arrested the male romantic lead, but if the FBI had really done their job he would have been quickly released, since he had no gun and none was recovered at the scene, had no gunfire residue on his hands (The paraffin test had been mentioned in movies of the 1930s.), and had a legitimate reason for being at the murder scene. Yet he went to trial for the murder. I don't know much about guns, but I recognized the iconic Luger pistol used by the murderer. The FBI identified the murder weapon as a Mauser. A pretty clumsy portrayal of the FBI for this marginally propagandistic spy drama.

I watched a copy downloaded from The Internet Archive. The print from which the file was made had seen better days.