Anti-Fascist propaganda at its most fear mongering, this D grade film wasn't even made at PRC, the poverty row studio that released it. General Motors made this film for its employees, and it certainly needed a more professional screenplay than the one it got. With a better script, this could have been an interesting B feature at Warner Brothers or Columbia, but what ends up on the screen seems forced and manipulative and considering that the war was almost over, pointless.
With the always gripping Claude Rains in the lead role, you'd think that they'd have something a little more professional, but unfortunately, this is like a rushed out "Crime Does Not Pay" short or one of those poor RKO educational shorts that really failed to deliver anything interesting. Rains is the editor of a newspaper who goes on a fishing trip and when he rushes back on Friday the 13th, discovers that the town is basically abandoned, and when he goes home, he's knocked over the head and put in prison. When he wakes up, he's brutally questioned and tortured by the most stereotyped of movie Nazis, Martin Koszleck.
So in two weeks time, the United States has been taken over by fascists (presumably the Nazis), and Rains' family is missing. He does get to see wife Gloria Holden, but he's not allowed to get any news on his children. This seems as if the script was edited and large globs of pages were either never filmed or edited out because so much seems missing. I don't want to go I wouldn't want any more running time on this version anyway because the agenda driven drama goes for shock value and reaction over reason and reality. PRC had more than their share of hideous exploitive propaganda films during the war, and this is near the top of the list as the most horrendous. Even the ending makes you want to throw bricks at the screen.
With the always gripping Claude Rains in the lead role, you'd think that they'd have something a little more professional, but unfortunately, this is like a rushed out "Crime Does Not Pay" short or one of those poor RKO educational shorts that really failed to deliver anything interesting. Rains is the editor of a newspaper who goes on a fishing trip and when he rushes back on Friday the 13th, discovers that the town is basically abandoned, and when he goes home, he's knocked over the head and put in prison. When he wakes up, he's brutally questioned and tortured by the most stereotyped of movie Nazis, Martin Koszleck.
So in two weeks time, the United States has been taken over by fascists (presumably the Nazis), and Rains' family is missing. He does get to see wife Gloria Holden, but he's not allowed to get any news on his children. This seems as if the script was edited and large globs of pages were either never filmed or edited out because so much seems missing. I don't want to go I wouldn't want any more running time on this version anyway because the agenda driven drama goes for shock value and reaction over reason and reality. PRC had more than their share of hideous exploitive propaganda films during the war, and this is near the top of the list as the most horrendous. Even the ending makes you want to throw bricks at the screen.