Conspiracy

This 1930s matinee style movie is a fun watch!

It begins with the unexpected and then takes us on a journey that has just enough adventure to make it a good time filler.

Allan Lane Is the accidental hero and for once isn't riding the range as he navigates a treacherous journey doing his best to avoid the secret police. Linda Hayes as Nedra pulls us in and leaves viewers wanting to know more about the multitalented character.

The obviously low budgeted film still offers a few scenes that can keep you on edge while also having some silly realism in the midst.

American radio operator Steve Kendall (Allan Lane) and his freighter The Falcon arrive in a foreign port. He fails to stop seaman Carlson from sending an unauthorized message. Carlson is killed by port police while trying to escape. Steve is falsely accused and manages to swim ashore. He encounters Nedra Carlson (Linda Hayes) who is the dead seaman's sister and a part of a conspiracy to stop Falcon from unloading its deadly cargo.

A lot of this does not make sense. Right from the start, Carlson should not be killed. The authorities would want to interrogate him. He's not getting away like that. Yet Kendall escapes exactly like that. I have issues with both parts. The questionable actions keep piling up. The movie tries to say something against Germany without actually naming the country. After all, the poison gas is targeted against London. Then there is Allan Lane trying to be funny. This is a light-weight espionage thriller trying to do some heavy-lifting and faltering.

I just finished watching this movie on TCM. Conspiracy was made in 1939 and was released just before the start of WWII. It stars Allan "Rocky" Lane as an American radio operator on a ship. He gets mixed up in a murder on board and jumps off and swims to a small fascist controlled country. Fortunately, he meets cafe singer Linda Hayes who is a member of the resistance and helps him try to get out of the country before the secret police gets him. Americans Robert Barrat and Charles Foy help. The movie is action packed with lots of action packed into its 56 minutes. Allan Lane does OK in a non-western, even without his trusty horse Blackjack to ride. Linda Hayes really stands out. Her foreign accent was convincing and she proves she could really sing! She should have been a major star. I won't spoil the ending, but it may remind you of Casablanca (1942). The country is never identified but it seems to be a combination of Italy, Germany, and maybe Russia. This movie received an A-1 rating from the National Legion of Decency, which means it is not objectionable to general audiences. Conspiracy (1939) is a good little movie and I found it worth watching on a Saturday morning.

This is a visually stunning but muddily written spy thriller. Within the first minute, the question arises: when the spy wants to send a coded message, he sets the radio to the correct channel, holds a gun on the radio operator and tells him that he know Morse Code.... so why not just slug the operator and send the message himself? It took me two viewings to begin to make any sense of the story and the second viewing was interrupted by thoughts like this. Alan Lane spends the entire movie confused and I don't blame him. It looks to me as if they were trying to do a Graham Greene movie, not realizing that Greene's work is always about moral confusion, not situational confusion. Oh, well.

The cinematography is quite lovely, but then this is the fourth RKO movie I've thought that about and discovered the DP was Frank Redman. The man started in the silents and worked through the 1960s, with over a hundred episodes of PERRY MASON -- and that was some good-looking television work. It seems to be movies like this that kept him in the Bs, though if you can find BAD LANDS -- a western he photographed in 1939 -- you'll see this one is no fluke. There's plenty of proto-Film Nor shadows in this one.

Still, this is one that, despite the lovely pictures and what sounds like a German version of "I Can't Help Falling in Love With You", I would avoid.

Conspiracy is one of those murky mysteries where the protagonist isn't quit sure who to trust until the end. Allan Lane who later concentrated on westerns plays a freighter radio operator who catches Henry Brandon sending an illegal wireless message to shore. The port authorities board the ship and both men swim for shore.

J. Farrell MacDonald's ship is carrying the chemical fixings for poison gas. An item of concern to the world who witnessed it being used by Mussolini in Ethiopia. Gave the film a dimension of immediacy not appreciated by an audience of today.

Anyway Lne runs into Linda ayes anda couple of expatriate Americans Charlie Foy and Robert Barrat and all their roles are murky.

Mediocre programmer from RKO.