British Intelligence

***Spoilers*** 1940 movie made during the hight of the German Blitz on England in WWII about a German Zappaline air attack on London in 1917 during WWI with a complicated story about British and German spies and double as well as even triple agents in both England and Germany.

Boris Karloff is at his creepiest best as the German spy or British double agent Valdar, you never really know until the end of the movie who he really is. On the bloody Western Front in France every British military operation is met by the German Army with the British being soundly beaten. Someone is supplying the Germans with secret British military information which has them get the jump on the British forces before they even start their attack.

The British have their top spy Williams inside Germany and in an attempt to get him out of the country plan to pick him up behind the German lines with an airplane flown by Let. Frank Bennett, Bruce Lester. As usual the Germans get the information about Bennetts's flight and shoot him down over the battlefield. In the field hospital the badly wounder Bennett is cared for by a British volunteer nurse Helene, Margaret Lindsey, whom Bennett falls in love with. It later turns that Helene is really the German spy Helene Von Lorbeer who back in Berlin is sent to England to work for British Cabinate Minister Arthur Bennett, Holmes Herbert, who's also Frank's father.

The movie "British Intellengence" goes on with Helene getting in touch with her fellow German spies in England including Valdar who also works for the Bennett household. You never really know who Helene and Valdar work for, the British or the Germans or both, until almost the very end which leaves you up in the air to whats happening in the film. There's also this top German spy Strendler who is giving the British all this trouble on their efforts in breaking the up and stalling the German advance on the Western Front. You also don't know until the very end of the movie just who he really is even though it's not really that hard to figure out.

The movie takes a surprise turn later on when Let. Bennett who was recovered from his wounds and with his air unit sent back to England. Coming home Let. Bennett finds Helene at his father estate and recognizes her as the nurse who treated him back in France and who he fell in love with. It's then when we get an idea just who Helene is and for what country, Germany or England, she's spying for.

The ending is very contrived with the German Master Spy Strendler, guess who, setting up the entire British Cabinate to be blown up at the Bennett Estate, where their to meet, with a bomb that he planted there. Strendler is unexpectedly foiled by the Germans themselves by them staging a zeppelin attack on the city of London killing Strendler and his fellow German spies in the process: Poetic Justic I presume?

Whats so interesting about the movie is how it treats the Germans at a time when those who made the movie were either at war with Germany or very sympathetic to the country that was fighting the Germans at that time in 1940 the United Kingdom. There was one scene in the movie that really hit me when Valdar tells Helene about how the German Army murdered his wife and child and left him for dead with two bullets in his back which in fact was a lie on his part. Helene very convincingly defended the Germans by telling him that in the heat of war both the Germans like the British commit unspeakable acts in order to win.

This statement by Helen came across as both honest and eye opening, totally minus of wartime propaganda, for a war movie that was made during the time when the country or countries who made it, the US & UK, were either at war or about to go to war against the country of the person, Helene, who made that very profound and intelligent statement.

"British Intelligence, from 1940 when Britain was locked in deadly combat with Nazi Germany, tells a tale of German espionage in The Great War (aka The War to End All Wars). Well-acted and with a tricky plot that leaves the viewer guessing who is a loyal Brit and who is a Kaiser's spy, the one-hour film also delivers at beginning and end a hefty, grave propaganda message warning that those Germans can be trusted - to produce warmongering megalomaniacs.

Boris Karloff is Valdar, the butler/valet every man wants. Obsequious and efficient, he claims to be a refugee from war-scarred Euope, a fellow who has lost his family to the murdering Hun. He is ensconced in the home of a powerful Englishman who consorts with the cabinet. Projected into the household in a convenient but not necessarily convincing way is Helene von Lorbeer, played by the very pretty Margaret Lindsay who had a good run in both "A" and "B" pictures in the 30s and 40s before she decided to fatten up thus losing her screen sex appeal.

Helene under another name was a nurse in a British field hospital and she took care of the wounded RFC pilot son of the man in whose home she is now a guest. They fall in love but she can't let him know that since she's a Florence Nightingale with a Mata Hari mission. Of course the recovered pilot returns home to find her there.

British Intelligence desperately needs to terminate a German master spy, Strengler. Who is he? How is he able to glean military secrets before, as one exasperated senior officer exclaims, junior officers are even briefed on the operational plans.

What follows is a fairly taut cat and mouse game seeking the deadly spy.

It's good fun, nice acting. Director Terry O. Morse, who edited more films than he directed, did a better than average job here.

Dated, of course, but that's part of its charm. I wonder if London moviegoers in 1940 needed to be exhorted by speeches denouncing the depraved Boche. Probably not but I'm sure they appreciated Karloff and Lindsay.

7/10

This is an especially interesting film because although on the surface it is about WWI, it seems essentially about patriotism and fifth column activity for the coming WWII. It's second release as Enemy Agent (1940) testifies to the notion that the film is prophetic rather than historical. In fact, while watching the film it is very easy to forget that it has anything to do with WWI, except in terms of the young soldier who reappears late in the plot, originally having been introduced as wounded in a German hospital. Also, the statement by Thompson of "How many millions have been killed...and how many millions more must die just because one man sets himself above the almighty" seems like a timely reference to Hitler.

This is actually quite good.

The setup is easy to describe, you have several spies, two in particular. There's a sort of mystery about where their allegiance lies.

Its a simple idea, but done well, because this was a long-running play, so had the time work out the dramatic and narrative effects, much more attention than the normal script would have.

Its Germans as the bad guys, of course, evil just dripping in the way that it only could between the great German wars.

I like this because of the way it co-opts the detective form. The viewer is drawn in. Clearly there are bad guys and good ones, but you don't know which is which — who to cheer for — until the end. You're drawn in as a sort of virtual detective.

Everyone is watching everyone else. Its the motive and roles you must learn.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

In between making horror pictures at this time, Boris Karloff made this spy movie and I quite liked it.

A female German spy is sent on an undercover assignment to live in London with a British official where she teams up with the butler there, Valdar, who is also a spy. While there, she helps him to transmit secret war plans back to Germany but are found out at the end and Valder is shot and the lady spy falls in love with one of the residents where she has been staying.

Valder is played well by Boris Karloff and the female spy is played by Margaret Lindsay. The cast also includes Bruce Lester and Holmes Herbert.

British Intelligence is worth seeking out, especially for fans of Baris Karloff.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.