Escape in the Fog

In 1945, Dutch-born actress Nina Foch had the good fortune to star in a pair of economical, satisfying thrillers. She was a damsel in distress in Joseph H. Lewis' My Name Is Julia Ross, an updated Gothic set in England. In Budd (then ‘Oscar') Boettischer's wartime espionage drama Escape In The Fog, she's a dame in distress in the city by the bay.

It opens in a nightmare she's having. Walking one fog-bound night on the Golden Gate Bridge, she sees three men piling out of a taxi trying to kill a fourth. She screams – and the screams bring to her room in Ye Rustic Dell Inn other guests running to her aid. One of them is the intended victim in her dream (William Wright), whom she's never before laid eyes on. They hit it off, though, and he persuades her to join him for a few days in San Francisco.

Their fling seems destined to be a short one, however, as Wright's a government agent who receives orders from his operator Otto Kruger to courier top-secret documents to Hong Kong. But he's waylaid by agents of the Axis powers, led by Konstantin Shayne. Luckily, Foch believes that her nightmare was in fact a premonition, and rushes off to the Golden Gate Bridge, this time for real....

It's not an especially memorable movie, but it's clever and atmospheric. If its ingenuity at times seems a bit stretched, it's stretched in the (pop)corny way of Saturday matinee serials of the era. There's of course the obligatory dose of wartime rhetoric, with much derision of `Japs,' while the Germans all speak in the most guttural tones they can reach without doing irreparable damage to the larynxes. Still, Boettischer keeps those fog machines churning, and there's plenty of skullduggery in Chinatown at Midnight. Not a bad way to while away an hour-plus.

"Escape in the Fog" is an intriguing 1945 B movie directed by Budd Boetticher and starring Nina Foch and Otto Kruger.

Foch is a nurse, Eileen Carr, honorably discharged from the service after a something akin to a nervous breakdown. She has a nightmare where she witnesses a man being attacked on the Golden Gate Bridge.

Once awake, she meets the actual victim in her dream, Barry Malcolm (William Wright) who is staying in the same place. There's an immediate attraction, and he offers to take her to San Francisco with him.

Once there, Malcolm, a special agent, gets orders from his boss, Paul Devon (Kruger) to go to Hong Kong to deliver a package to the Chinese underground. Devon's house has been bugged by the Axis, and they follow Malcolm to get the package.

When it's revealed that the people who picked up Malcolm were not sent by Devon, Eileen realizes her dream is about to come true, and she rushes to the Golden Gate Bridge. The rest of the story takes place from there.

This is a pretty preposterous tale, but entertaining nonetheless, with a strong performance by the lovely Foch. Baby boomers like myself remember her as an older woman and a constant television presence. Here she's young, and she and Kruger do an excellent job of holding this film together.

If you can overcome the plot holes, you'll enjoy this one.

Did I have a dream too, as the woman in this film? This is a short length Columbia Pictures thriller, where the villain is not George Mac Ready !! I can't believe it. Otto Kruger is however effective here, but in a role in the total opposite of what the villain character that George Mac Ready should have had. The villians here are of course Nazis; a couple of years later, it would have been the Commies.... Anyway, yes, Nina Foch is the predictable character for this cheap Columbia - but so effective though - film, but, I repeat, the usual villain Mac Ready is missing. So, even without him, this early Budd Boetticher programmer is worth the catch, as any other Budd boetticher's film anyway. Some Hitchcockian elements in this movie too.

This wartime thriller follows conventional plot directions, but the framing of its story in a dream of murder makes it pretty interesting. Foch is excellent and very sexy. The suspense lags after the dream occurs in real time, and we have to see Foch tied up as Kruger (excellent as always) tries to find a missing envelope. Nicely photographed and directed; if only more thought had gone into its conception.

Another wartime programmer that Hollywood was turning out by the hundreds. The only unusual angle is the mixing of espionage with psychic dreams, apparently an everyday occurrence in this scripted world. Except for the bland male lead (Wright), it's an excellent cast of stereotypes, including professional Hollywood Nazi, Ivan Triesault who made a career of these cruel types. There's also the incredibly smooth Otto Kruger playing a good guy, for once, but then who could do oily villains better than his smiling cobra. And what guy wouldn't like to partner-up with newcomer Nina Foch in an extended game of mixed doubles. With his penchant for cool blondes, I wonder why Hitchcock didn't enlist her obvious talents at some point. Anyway, cult director Boetticher helms in efficient style, the fog machine gets overtime, and a number of practiced players do their thing. (In passing, note how slickly Boetticher stages the shootout near movie's end—a foreshadowing of the classics to come. Note too, that Malcolm represents a generic federal agency and not the FBI by name. That way possible legal problems are avoided.) Nothing exceptional here, just a demonstration of how the studio assembly line turned out an entertaining product even under straitened wartime conditions.