David Harding, Counterspy

Chief of counterintelligence Howard St. John calls in broadcaster Alex Gerry. Gerry has been complaining on his radio that America has been letting nuclear secrets get through to foreign nations; none is specified, but he mentions a mustache. St. John tells him about a wartime case in which he sent Navy Lt. Commander Willard Parker to a plant manufacturing submarine torpedoes after his friend, who had been doing the work previously, had been killed under suspicious circumstances.

It's derived from COUNTERSPY, a long-running (1942-1957) radio drama devised by Phillips Lord, who also produced the better known GANGBUSTERS. This has everything a lover of cheap drama could wish for : spies, people with machine guns shooting up airports, romance in the person of Audrey Long, and a Murphy Bed. Obviously shot cheaply, it's typical of the second features that Columbia was turning out in the dying days of B series. Look for John Dehner in a small role.

Tough luck if you are a woman to happen to this: you have no life of your own, it is entirely controlled and manipulated by others, your destiny is not in your own hands, and if you are ordered to marry someone in a position just to further the espionage interest, you just have to do it and be completely powerless when your husband has to be murdered for having discovered or even suspected your double play. It's a grim and fast thriller about the facts of espionage, how it works, how relentlessly efficient every move must be to curtail the actions of the robbers of state secrets, and how every detail of the technique must work perfectly to get everything in order. This was a successful radio series for 15 years which was transferred for a film like this, it is not easy to follow all the sudden turns of the actions, but it sure is efficient. Howard St. John as Howard Parker is the chief actor and character, while Willard Parker and Audrey Long just have to follow along. The plot becomes quite plausible and reasonable when it appears that Audrey Long is the daughter of her doctor (Raymond Greenleaf), which no one could suspect. A kind old gentlemanly doctor is always absolutely above any suspicion. Only his motives are never explained.

I am sure you have too much of the five fingers of your hand to count how many non western films Ray Nazarro directed. He made nearly ONLY westerns, as Lesley Selander. Nazarro also made CHINA CORSAIR and FLAME OF STAMBOUL; adventure flicks. So this one is very surprising for a western more than specialist, because we talk here of a spy intrigue, and very well done. Well paced, superb photography, excellent cast, i would have neevr guessed that Nazarro made this film. But the producer was not the awful Sam Katzman either - after all this is a Columbia movie. But the biggest problem is that it is predictable, as you can guess. But it's worth watching.

"David Harding, Counterspy" is a low budget B-movie that is set during WWII though it was made a few years later and looked more like a Cold War film than an anti-Axis movie. In fact, while the film is supposed to be about Axis spies, you NEVER hear about the Germans or Japanese and the story could have just as easily been a film about Russian spies. The clothing the folks wear (particularly the women) didn't help, as they looked like they were from 1950 fashion and hair-wise.

The story is told as a flashback in order to explain why the government sometimes has to be very tricky and use a lot of disinformation to catch evil spies in the USA.

So why did I give this one a 5? Well, it is entertaining...though the acting isn't superb nor is the story. It smacks of the word 'adequate'...adequately entertaining and with an adequate story...nothing more.

"David Harding, Counterspy" is a low-budgeter almost exclusively populated by indistinguishable men in suits, mouthing enough hard-boiled dialogue ("when somebody throws surprises my way, I throw punches") to fry an egg factory. Ironically, the only source of life comes from the single female cast member, the beautiful (if little-known) Audrey Long, as a woman caught between dual loyalties. Apparently this was based on a popular at the time radio series: on radio obviously you only need dialogue to get the story across, but on the screen you need to visualize it as well, and this film lacks the means to do that. *1/2 out of 4.