Foreign Agent

Let's cut to the chase--this is a cheap and rather dopey film. This isn't exactly a surprise, as it's from Monogram Studios--a production company that specialized in making low-budget B-movies. Occasionally, their Bs were pretty good--but often they were just quickly made and dreary....and "Foreign Agent" is clearly in the latter category. Plus, like so many of the wartime films, it has all the jingoistic clichés you'd expect.

The film begins with a bang. In a well-conceived and filmed opening scene, a dead man is found hanging in an apparent suicide. Naturally, it's really a murder and Axis agents are behind this because they wanted to steal this man's invention. What follows are tons of Nazi and Japanese agents in America that look JUST LIKE Nazi and Japanese spies!! They are about the most unsubtle lot you could imagine and I almost expect one to look just like Hitler!! In addition, like many Bs, there are supporting characters tossed in for laughs who aren't the least bit funny nor the least bit believable. Subhuman, perhaps...but not the least bit believable.

The bottom line is that unless you really like bad B-movies, there are thousands of better made films from the era that clearly would be more interesting and entertaining than this film. Not horrible but also not good at all apart from the opening scene.

Two American couples defeat Axis plans to relay military intelligence to off-shore subs.

This Monogam programmer was made right after the start of WWII. What surprises me is that the Nazis and Japanese are not as caricatured as I would expect. They're more scheming than malevolent, though Okura (Lebedeff) grunts more than he speaks. That's probably because Lebedeff had trouble with Japanese inflections.

Anyway, if you can figure out how the message interception method works, you're smarter than I am. Note too how the blue-collar duo of Collins (Moran) and McGurk (Lytell) do the gritty barroom fighting. That prefigures Hollywood's heightening of the common man's role in defeating the Axis. Then too, there's that soapbox speech from an apparent isolationist who wants the US to steer clear of war. Isolationism from European wars was a controversial topic of the time. Here, however, it's used as part of a Nazi plot. But maybe most telling of the time are the very real fears of a Japanese attack on the West Coast, following their success at Pearl Harbor.

Good thing that Gale Storm is cast. She sparkles, as usual, while the rather homely Moran also shows engaging personality. Together, they lift the energy level beyond the colorless leading man (Shelton). Then there's the climax that's so sudden and flat, it's like Monogram ran out of film, which they probably did. Anyway, the movie remains an interesting little time capsule, livelier than the usual poverty row product.

I vaguely remember Gale Storm from "My Little Margie," or maybe it was "Oh Susanna," though possibly one or both of these were in syndication by the time I saw it.

Here she plays Mitzi Mayo, a Hollywood starlet whose father had plans for a searchlight filter which would be helpful to the Allies. She and her friend Jimmy (John Shelton) attempt to keep both the Japanese and the Germans from getting the blueprints after her father is killed.

There is no point going into how dumb this film is, with its bad print, the Germans and Japanese joining forces, and a Hollywood starlet foiling their evil plot.

Gale Storm sings a couple of songs. She made a ton of movies of this ilk before turning to television, with two successful series. "My Little Margie" had silent movie star Charles Farrell in it. Both Farrell and Storm lived nice long lives - maybe it was something in the water.

Ordinary B, probably made in two days for less than $100.

**SPOILERS** One of the 350 movies and TV shows directed by the legendary William "One-Shot" Beaudine in being that he never re-shot a scene no matter how bad it was. "Foreign Agent" has to do with this group of Nazi spies working right out of Hollywood who are trying to get their hands on this blueprint of a defused military search light. The search light will be able to spot and detect enemy planes and at the same time not give away its position. Thus preventing it from being blown to pieces by the attacking war planes when they get sight of it.

The Nazi Agents lead by American hoodlum Nick Dancy and his Japanese cohort Okura break into the hotel room of Hollywood studio electronic expert Mr. Mayo ransacking the place after murdering him and, by hanging Mayo from the ceiling lamp, making it look like a suicide. For all their hard and murderous efforts Dancy & Okura fail to find Mayo's important blueprint of the defused search light in that he never had it with him in the first place. Being chewed out by their boss head Nazi Spy Dr. Warner for screwing everything up the two decide to track down Mayo's daughter Mitzi whom their sure, and right for once, has the blueprint in her possession.

Trying to fill up some one hour of screen time were made, among other things, to sit through a boring fight scene that really has nothing to do with the movies, thin as it is, storyline involving Mitzi's friend and roommate Joan Collins and her hard headed as well as hard drinking boyfriend Eddie McGurk. It turns out that the Nazis mistaking Joan, who was driving Mitzi's car, for Mitzi mugged her and stole Joan's $10.00 engagement ring given to her by Eddie! How the Nazis could mistake a cheap ring, that looked like it came out of a box of Crackerjack, for a search light blueprint is never made clear in the movie!

Later when Eddie confronts the two Nazi Agents at a local bar he has it out with them in the most exciting, if you can call it that, scene in the film. The hard hitting Irishman's boxing ability resembled that of the swishy and cream puff style of "Slapsy Maxie" Rosenberg then that of the explosive one two combination knockout punches of Jack Dempsey and Joe Louis!

Were also given to understand in how successful the Nazi Agents are in a newsreel involving an attack on a, what seems like , American convoy in the North Atlantic. This is all done so haphazardly that you have no idea who not only the good and bad guys are but aren't really sure in what ocean, the Atlantic or Pacific, the action is taking place in!

As you would expect it's the Nazis headed by Dr. Warner who end up fumbling the ball, or search light, and end up getting caught red handed by the FBI and local police. Not only is Dr. Warner on the outs with the US Government, facing a quick trail and execution for espionage, but his fellow Nazis as well. That's in Dr. Warner being set up, by Mitzi and her boyfriend Jimmy, in framing him in secretly turning his by now very confused and disoriented fellow Nazis Spys over to the US Military Authorities.

The future "My Little Margie" Gale Storm, as Mitzi Mayo, is about the best reason for watching this mess of a movie. Gale not only does a fairly good job of acting but sings the films two songs:"Down Deep in my Heart" and the patriotic and butt kicking, for the boys on the front lines, "Taps for the Japs".

With William "One Shot" Beaudine directing, Monogram reacted to the US entry into WWII with its typical style........cheap and cheaper. Starring John Shelton (whoever that was) and Gale Storm (better known as "My Little Margie" from early television), the story, what there is of it, concerns a group of spies ("group" in a Monogram film means two or three individuals) ineptly working at espionage. There are basically two sets, an apartment and the spies' hideout and the acting is what you expect from Monogram Studios.

The story is unimportant here......needless to say the spies get caught in the end before any damage is done. But there are a couple of things worth noticing. In the beginning of the film there is a shot of the Hollywood Blvd. and Gower street sign. "Gower Gultch" as it was known was the home of the poverty row studios, Monogram, PRC, etc. It appears Beaudine ran outside the building to take a shot of the street sign as a lead in to the film. Sure beats location work.

Secondly, in an earlier part of the film the conversations of the spies are recorded by the good guys. In order to flesh out the film's running time, the recording is played later in the story and we have the chance to hear a total repeat of the earlier scene of the aforementioned conversation. It is this kind of thing that is endearing about the poverty row studios. They found a way to make films on a shoestring using little tricks like that.

This film isn't much but it is not as bad as some of Monogram's offerings. So if you are a fan of Monogram, Mascot, PRC or Tiffany studios, give it a watch. You just have to love these little footnotes to Hollywood history.