Submarine Alert (1943)

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Absolutely brilliant

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This Pine-Thomas film from Paramount's B picture unit has not stood the test of time all that well. It's a World War II flag waver that casts Richard Arlen as a resident alien who gets tempted by the Nazis to work for them. They need his special skills as a radio man to help operate a prototype short wave system that is signaling a Japanese submarine the whereabouts of cargo ships to sink.For dramatic purposes the film doesn't have Arlen working all along undercover. Instead he and other radio people are summarily fired at the direction of the FBI with the hope that the Nazis would contact him as he was both available and disillusioned with America. Female agent Wendy Barrie keeps Arlen under surveillance at all times and of course the inevitable romance ensues.In a gimmick more suitable to one of Sam Katzman's Monogram extravaganzas, both Arlen and Barrie are captured by the Nazis and locked in a room that fills with poison gas. The slowest acting poison gas in the history of film. Arlen comes up with an idea and sends a signal with radio equipment that some junior G-Man kid picks up and the spies are rounded up and Arlen and Barrie are saved.It was eerily prescient about poison gas and the Nazis. But if this was the stuff they used at Auschwitz, a couple million people would have survived. Also Nazis and Japanese work a lot more coordinated than they ever did in the real war.I'm sure the cast must have looked back with a shudder at Submarine Alert.

It's a shame someone would equate this film to a propaganda reel. Unnecessary jingoism was part of American culture at the time. Only three brief instances of possible propaganda exist here -- 1) when our protagonist says he wouldn't want to join the New World Order because he doesn't like their tactics. Saying that is a bad thing? I guess it was not fair since we didn't get a Nazi response to how their way of life really is. 2) the quote over the intercom "You know what to do, boys" when the air squadron heads out for a combat mission. Unnecessary cheerleading in a movie, yes, but part of American film culture at the time. 3) at the end, when our antagonist becomes an American citizen, he says "We know our way of life is best, and we're fighting to keep it that way." Again, should the movie have been fair to Nazis by giving their point of view on their way of life? Seriously?!? Sometimes we know wrong is wrong and there doesn't need to be a defense of it. Therefore, not propaganda.Lastly, this movie does NOT defend the right to be an illegal alien. Nothing is illegal about our antagonist. He's a legal alien but not a citizen. Illegal status never once enters the conversation.Overall, an okay, swift moving crime/war drama that isn't very memorable but definitely not a terrible 76 minutes.

**SPOILERS** With the Nazis having stolen this advanced radio transmitter from American electronic expert Johann Bergstrom they now have the upper hand in transmitting information to theirs allies the Japs in when and where US oil tankers will be in the South Pacific. With that important information the Japs can get their subs to track the oil tankers down and sink them before they reach and resupply, with their precious cargo, the US Navy on the battlefront. This has a lone Japanese submarine being able to pick off the oil tankers almost as soon as they leave port with the US Military, during all the confusion, not being able to come to their rescue while the sub is able make its escape.Looking ahead the FBI realizes that the transmitter sooner or later would need repairing and, with the cooperation of the electronic industry, has all the top electronic engineers on the West Coast fired from their jobs. In the FBI knowing that one of them will end up being hired by the Nazis, without his knowing it, to do the repair job for them. This has Lee Deerhold without a job and desperate for cash in paying his bills as well as for a brain operation on his step-daughter Tina, whom he rescued from Nazi Germany after the Nazis murdered her parents, end up working for them. Unknown to Lee he's being secretly tracked by the FBI in the person of Agent Ann Patterson who used the occasion, that was planned in advance, of her purse being snatched to get introduced to him. It isn't long when Lee realizes that he'd been set up by Ann and that makes things worse not just for him but the FBI who now are in danger of their scheme, in planting Lee inside the Nazi spy network, coming apart at the seams!The usual Hollywood made war film during WWII with a slight twist to it. In that it shows that even non-American citizens who Lee Deerfield is one of them are just as patriotic and willing to fight and die for their country as any red blooded American. This, being a non American citizen, is in fact the reason that Lee felt that he was canned from his electronic job as the company's top radio repairman. And it was that very reason that Lee's Nazi employers who were running, as a cover, the phony Old Mill Hot Spring Spa tried to recruit the disillusioned Lee into their spy-ring.***SPOILERS*** With him knowing that the security of the United States is on the line Lee does his best to alert the FBI in what the Nazis, and their Japanese cohorts, are up to! This has Lee get stymied by the head Nazi Dr. Honeker by him doing his impersonation act in him impersonating someone that's, whom Honeker had murdered, already dead! Locked inside a steam room at the Old Mill Spa together with FBI Agent Patterson Lee's only chance of surviving in being, together with Ann, steamed to death is both his own electronic expertise and teenage radio ham operator Johnny. It's that combination of good old Amerian ingenuity and inventiveness that brought the Nazi spy-ring to a sudden end before it could do any more damage. It also has Lee not only become, by and act of Congress, an instant American citizen and, lucky for him, get drafted into the US Army but get Tina that brain operation, free of charge, that ended up saving her life.

Some one is using a new radio system to alert submarines of the course tankers and supply ships will be taking. When the radio signals go silent and a radio expert turns up dead the FBI thinks something has happened to the radio. Taking matters in to their own hands they have several other radio men fired hoping that the saboteurs will contact one of them to repair the radio. One man is contacted and he begins working for the enemy agents unaware what he is working on or that the FBI is keeping an eye on him. Very good war time spy thriller moves along at a good clip. While it doesn't have any big names it does have plenty of atmosphere including a spooky mill that plays a nice role in the closing portion of the film. This is a solid little film that seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle. Worth a look.