Atlantic Convoy

This was 68 minutes pretty well spent. Seldom do you get an inferior picture from Lew Landers, and on what seems like a 19 dollar budget. This one is about Nazis in the North Atlantic and a Navy plane squadron that tries to ride herd on them, if I might mix metaphors. But guess what? There is a traitor somewhere in their midst who is tipping off the U-boats (I'll bet you guessed). All concerned do a workmanlike job selling the thin plot, especially Base Commander Bruce Bennett. Virginia Field was appealing as the female in the picture and a young Lloyd Bridges is in attendance with little to do. The main character, however, is John Beal and he was bland as well as good.

Apparently this film is hard to come by, as the DVD copy I bought was barely passable in spots - very dark. But I would say it was worth the trouble and money as the movie moved along without hitches or 'bog-down' interludes. Allow for some plot contrivances and don't ask too many questions, as it is only a 68 minute "B" at bargain prices.

Seeing as it was actually made in the war this was obviously meant to be a warning to the public and troops alike that spies and collaborators could be very real and really did walk amongst us. There's one scene that is done so well that it took me completely by surprise. Chilling in it depiction of the ease of switching between a trusted compatriot to a Hitler saluting NAZI. Although the film is not quite as accomplished as works such as Hitchcok's Saboteur, the piece had me watching right to the end when it was shown on the "Movie's for Men" channel here in Blighty. There's not many films on that channel that have me watching for long, but Atlantic Convoy had acting that pulled me in (there's one scene between that main character and his love interest that has strong 1940's flavour romatic overtones) as well as as having a character all of its own. Tally ho !

John Beal and Lloyd Bridges work at an US Navy base in Iceland run by captain Bruce Bennett. They're there to safeguard the convoy route from the United States to Britain, spot the German U-boats from the air and bomb them to the bottom of the Atlantic, and to rescue survivors. They've just picked up some of the last, Virginia Field shepherding some orphans to the United States, including Clifford Severn. Bennett also inspects the commercial ships in the harbor, like Victor Kilian's fishing smack. But not everyone is who he -- or is it she? -- appears to be.

There's a respectable amount of heil-ing by the nasty Nazis in this definite wartime programmer, but director Lew Landers keeps things moving along at a brisk pace. He was never a distinguished director, just one of those guys who came in on time and budget and kept the product rolling out the studio gates. When the B movie died off, he directed TV shows in enormous quantity. Here he is at work, with a decent script and an entertaining product. The only thing that strikes me as poor is some of the foley work in the fist fight, and that would have been added after Landers had moved on to the next of the dozen movies he directed in 1942. He died in 1962, age 61.

Lew Landers was a very prolific director during many years, several decades, all kinds of films: thrillers, horror, adventure, westerns, comedies. And also war films, especially during WW2, propaganda films. Very short, fast paced, and not widely known movies. Lew Landers was a big provider of such stuff, and those movies were not that bad, if you keep in mind that they all were propaganda. This one is interesting for those who have never heard nor seen any propaganda films of this period. But for those old timers like me who have seen so many of them...Bruce Bennet often played Nazis in war films of the forties.

Bruce Bennett was only ever a competent B-lister, and here he performs pretty much to type in this routine wartime maritime drama. It's his job to lead patrols from Iceland to try to prevent submarine attacks on allied shipping heading to Britain from North America. The Nazis have clocked that this is happening, and so dispatch a team of agents to sabotage the facility and ensure that this useful flotilla is trapped in the harbour for the duration. It's really just a piece of feel-good propaganda with a solid enough story taking an hour to reach a predicable ending that flies the flags and keeps spirits up. I doubt very much whether most of the adequate cast and/or the crew even knew where Iceland was, much less filmed there - but given it was made slap bang in the middle of the conflagration there are enough pyrotechnics and fist fights to keep it moving and it just about does what it says on the tin.