In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Dr. Karl Decker(J. Carrol Naish)is a well known and respected optometrist with an office on a San Francisco waterfront. It is not common knowledge that he is a front man for a cell of the Third Reich. A henchman named Marlow(John Carradine)is to arrive from Germany and collect a code book full of top-secret information; but Decker is mugged and is robbed of the little black book. An upset Marlow makes the rounds visiting possible German Americans, who may have the book. It is not above him to use terror tactics on those with relatives in concentration camps. The cast also includes: Maris Wixon, Edwin Maxwell, John Bleifer, and Olga Fabian.

Whenever I see that a film has been made by PRC, I assume the worst. After all, of the so-called 'Poverty Row' production companies, PRC was one of the poorest in overall quality. Quite simply, most of their films were hastily written and had very low production values---and it showed. However, here they have a film, while not great, is still quite enjoyable. I think it's because it was nice to see to fun old hammy B-movie stars in the same film--John Carradine and J. Carrol Naish. These men, along with the likes of George Zucco and Lionel Atwill made a huge number of Bs--and they thrived in this sort of low-brow but highly entertaining fare.The film is clearly a propaganda film and it's about a spy ring run by an optometrist (Naish). He manages to have his secret code book stolen (oops) but not by the US government--but in order to help one of the people that Naish is blackmailing into helping him. Oddly, Naish simply doesn't seem terribly concerned about this (a shortcoming in the film, actually) but when another Nazi comes to help him (Carradine), things heat up, as Carradine's solution to EVERYTHING is to shoot people! Subtle, he ain't! Eventually, Carradine's rash ways are the undoing of these rather stupid spies.While the film was highly entertaining and fun, the FBI lab guys incorrectly identified Carradine's murder weapon as a Mauser. The gun clearly was a Luger--as Mausers were newer guns and less available in the US (if at all). I'm no expert, but am positive of this--so why didn't the FBI guys get this right?!

I just saw this movie and thought, on the whole, that this is a worthwhile WWII spy flick.John Carradine provided a very good, very chilling performance as the lead "bad guy". Other performances were sound. The script seemed to me to be fairly solid as well. The general flavor of foggy, drippy, SF waterfront "trouble" was effective and appealing.This was produced in 1944 when, of course, domestic spying was a real concern, and ethnic heritage in an Axis nation could sometimes excite not always fair concerns about loyalty. All the more impressive, then, is the sympathetic depiction of a German-American family.All in all a film worth seeing if you like WWII-era flicks about the war and espionage.

**SOME SPOILERS** Nothing new here in this B movie about a Nazi spy network working out of San Francisco. At the very beginning of the movie we see what's obvious the Brooklyn not Golden Gate Bridge as San Francisco optometrist Carl Decker, J. Carrol Nash, is mugged by this dock worker Adolf Mertz as he's leaving his office.Decker who's secretly working for the Nazi gestapo as a spy had this secret decoder book on him that Mertz took and is in no way going to report it to the police. It becomes certain that Mertz was no ordinary mugger but someone who knew how important that book is and now is willing to sell it back to Decker for a hefty price. Decker's controller Victor Marlow, John Carradine, is sent from Germany to check out Decker's progress and what he's up to but is really interested in taking over the Nazi West Coast spy operations himself.With the knowledge that the secret decoder book is in Mertz's hands both Decker & Marlow track him down to this gin mill on the docks named the Anchor Bar & Café owned by Oscar Zimmermann, John Bleifer, who also happens to be a Nazi spy. Marlow going on his own murders Mertz and dumps his body in San Francisco Bay but comes up empty with the secret book which ended up in Zimmermann's office safe. Zimmermann working together with Max Kramer,Edwin Maxwell, another Nazi spy seems to be completely ignorant of what Decker, the head Nazi spy in the city,is involved with! Which goes to show just how ineffective the entire Nazi espionage department was and why it had a lot to do with Germany untimely losing WWII. Meanwhile the treacherous Marlow is now targeting Zimmemann who's trying to blackmail him. This leads to Zimmerman getting himself shot and killed by Marlow as he came to his office, to hand over his blackmail money, who then ends up taking off with the decoder book.As all this is happening pretty German-American girl Freda Hauser, Maris Wrixon, who works for Kramer and in who's house Marlow is a tenant has him threatened her mother Emma, Olga Fabian, that if she doesn't let him stay there he'll have the gestapo put her family, who are stranded in Germany, in a Nazi concentration camp. Marlow is so ridicules that he's willing to reveal his being a Nazi spy and risking being executed just to stay at the Hauser home? Was the food and the room that he stayed at so good that it was worth losing his life for?Marlow somehow finds out that a frightened Kramer is about to spill the beans on his Nazi comrades by confessing, in writing, his involvement with the spy ring in order to get a lighter sentence. It's then that he again goes into action with him sneaking into Kramer's office and murdering him just to keep Kramer from not only talking to the police but implicating himself, and Decker, as well as being Nazi spy's.Things start to go very bad for Decker as his spy network of 19 men gets busted by the FBI and he goes into hiding in this waterfront dive only to have himself get tracked down and shot by his fellow Nazi spy Marlow. The ever so eager to impress his superiors back in Berlin Marlow not only feels that Decker let the Fatherland and his Fhurer down but that he can do a far much better job of spying on the United States.The police in the film are almost as incompetent as the Nazi spy's are as they mistakenly arrest Freda's boyfriend Jerry Donovan, Terry Frost, for the murder of her boss Kramer! This made no sense at all since he was Kramer's best friend and there was nothing stolen, except Kramer's secret confession, from his office. We later see what a total jerk Marlow is when Olga now not caring what happens to her relatives back in Germany tells her daughter Freda that he's is working for the Nazi gestapo and is spying on America, which the arrogant and not so bright Marlow himself told her! Both her and Freda decide to go to the police and have Jerry, who's being framed for Kramer's murder, released with this new and explosive piece of evidence. Marlow getting weirder and more obnoxious by the minute then tries to kidnap both Freda and Olga and take them back home with him to Nazi Germany? In a German U-boat? In the wild shootout that follows with the police who were alerted about Marlow's bizarre behavior, by a number of tenants in Olga's rooming house, he ends up getting cold-cocked by Butch, Billy Nealson, one of the tenants and falls down a staircase and on his head, no damage there. It's then that police come on the scene and grab and arrest him with Butch breaking his right fist that he smashed into Marlow's jaw.One of the lesser efforts by Hollywood in showing the American public how dangerous the Nazis were but as usual making them so ineffective that those watching the movie back then wondered to themselves how they got as far as they did in almost winning WWII, against more then three quarters of the world's population and nine tenths of it's economic power base, in the first place?