Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Nice effects though.

A Major Disappointment

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Columbia Pictures was in the second tier (the Little Three) of the major Hollywood movie studios of the golden age, and it put out just a few B level war films during World War II. "Counter-Espionage" of 1942 is one of those. It has a more prominent cast than many Columbia films of the time and genre Warren William stars in this film that is as much a crime-mystery film as it is a war film. Espionage is the matter that links the two subplots. William plays Michael Lanyard, a character who appears in a number of mystery films of the period under the alias, "The Wolf." William was a very good actor who played some of the best villain roles in the early years of sound pictures. He was versatile and played a number of romantic leads and then played a dashing, debonair and sophisticated crime-stopper in various roles that were serialized over time. Philo Vance was one, Perry Mason was another, and Michael Lanyard is his most well-known. William may have been better known today, but he died of blood cancer (multiple myeloma) in 1948 at age 53.An additional trademark of the crime-stopper films was comedy. Sometimes it came through a sidekick, often through dumb or inept police detectives, and sometimes with both. In this film, we have both. And a big plus is the presence of Eric Blore as his servant-sidekick, Jamison. Blore was English and played supporting heavier roles as butlers, valets, etc. that were much meatier and with great humor. I always have some good laughs from Blore's roles in movies.The rest of the cast are OK, including a number of well-known actors. Forrest Tucker plays a German thug, Anton Schugg. The plot is a simple and familiar type of story about Nazi spies trying to get hold of plans for a secret weapon. What elevates the movie are the film clips and/or segments of the London bombing. Columbia must have gotten its hands on some actual newsreel film from London to intersperse with its story. It gives a very real sense to picture, where some of the rest of it seems a little hokey.

Wartime restrictions being what they were if Great Britain had some kind of secret weapon called a beam detector, we couldn't get too specific about it. Suffice it to say the Nazis want the plans for it real bad and it's in the safe of British spy-master Stanley Logan who gets himself killed. For some plot reason I can't quite fathom Logan's aide Leslie Denison is kidnapped by the Nazi spies and its the other aide Morton Lowry who actually is betraying his country. Or is it his country, spy ring head Kurt Katch uses a German name to refer to him, I suspect he was one of those British citizens with German ancestry pressed into service for the fatherland like Peter Graves was in Stalag 17.But these Nazis haven't reckoned with the fact that Logan hired the Lone Wolf to ferret out that spy ring. With the beam detector plans as bait, Warren William goes on his mission and while it doesn't go as smoothly as a Mission Impossible mission the job gets done.Whenever these pulp or even classical heroes like Sherlock Holmes got shoehorned into a World War II flag-waver the results didn't really make for lasting cinema. The same can be said for Counter-Espionage. Two future players of note, Forrest Tucker and Lloyd Bridges are a pair of Katch's associates. The film is noteworthy for early appearances by Bridges and Tucker and little else.

Taught direction, well-paced. A fairly serious Warren William (but still charming) and Hillary Brooke (she was truly a master of the B-movie genre) are teamed up with a good director to make this the best of the Lone Wolf series for me. "Counter-Espionage" is proof once again that a big budget is not necessary to produce a good film. This is a classic example of cheap dollars spent, but nevertheless being able to display talent and high quality craftsmanship.Serious WWII Nazi spy plot dovetails nicely into the shady safe-cracker format of The Lone Wolf. Who better than The Lone Wolf to crack safes and steal war secrets (or did he?), then sneak around dark London streets amid the falling bombs.Sidekick Eric Blore is actually very good in this movie, and as a bonus you also get a solid early Lloyd Bridges performance.

I really enjoy watching B-detective films, such as Charlie Chan, the Saint or the Lone Wolf. However, although these breezy little pictures are a lot of fun, they do sometimes suffer from plots that are just too formulaic. In particular, Columbia Pictures' Boston Blackie and Lone Wolf films are too often so similar that it's easy to not be able to remember which you have seen and which you haven't. Both films feature a reformed master thief who is now working for good and stupid cops who again and again and again accuse them of whatever crimes occur on their beat. And all too often their plots are nearly identical.It is in light of this that I really enjoyed COUNTER-ESPIONAGE since it offers a new and very unusual locale and a change in the usual plot. Instead of the likable Michael Lanyard being in the States, here he is in London and is mixed up in a spy ring. About the only negative about this is that the same old inspector and his idiotic sidekick are somehow ALSO here--talk about a contrived plot! The film begins with a kidnapping as well as Lanyard stealing some top-secret defense plans all from the same home. The viewer no doubt will think that in spite of it all, Lanyard is STILL on the side of good--and of course this is the case. After all, who would cast the hero as a Nazi?! But despite this being a bit predictable, the film is a nice little diversion--one that will not bore or blend in with all the other many B-detective films out there.