User Reviews

The generically titled Spy Ship (1942) represented Warner Brothers' first film to deal with Axis spies stateside after America had entered the war. Originally entitled Caught in the Fog, Spy Ship amounted to little more than an updated remake of the Bette Davis-Donald Woods urban crime thriller Fog over Frisco (1934), based on George Dyer's 1932 mystery novel The Five Fragments. The production history of Fog over Frisco is interesting because Warner Brothers bought Dyer's novel and then changed several major plot elements. First, Dyer's novel consisted primarily of flashback sequences recounting the death of Arlene Bradford and the abduction of Arlene's half sister Valkyr 'Val' Bradford. An older man summons three people, a newspaper report, a police detective sergeant, and a Coast Guard Officer to piece together what they know about the death of Arlene and the disappearance of Val. Bringing these men together turns out to be a ploy to expose the killer who is a narcotics smuggler specializing in heroin. As it turns out the host had been hiding Val until he could get the heroin smuggler to expose himself. When Warner Brothers adapted The Five Fragments as Fog over Frisco, they had to comply with the Production Code provision that forbade both the mention and the use of narcotics. Scenarists Robert N. Lee and Eugene Solow concocted an entirely new plot, substituting illegal Wall Street bonds for the heroin. The chief villain strangles the movie heroine, Arlene Bradford (Bette Davis), when refuses to hand over incriminating letters that he had sent to her. As it turns out, before Arlene left on her date, she entrusts the cache of letters to her half-sister, Valkyr 'Val' Bradford (Margaret Lindsay). Val grows concerned when her sister does not return from her date. Eventually, Val receives what appears to be a telegram from Arlene. Meanwhile, the protagonist news reporter Tony Sterling (Donald Woods), who is head over heels in love with Val, discovers quite by accident Arlene's body, stuffed unceremoniously into the rumble seat compartment of her roadster. Tony sends in his story to the newspaper, while Val sneaks out, takes the vehicle with Arlene's dead body and goes to the location in her sister's telegram, only to find herself the captor of dangerous men. The newspaperman hero and the police track the villains down to a boat and arrest them.

Scenarist Robert E. Kent altered the characters for Warner Brothers' "B" movie remake of Fog over Frisco. The Arlene Bradford character became world renowned aviatrix Pam Mitchell (Irene Manning) who delivers speeches around the country for the isolationist group America Above All. Actually, Pam is a traitor who obtains shipping information from a boyfriend in her father's shipping insurance company. During her nationally broadcast speeches for the AAA, she encodes secret shipping information to a group of Axis spies in America, both German and Japanese, who radio the coordinates to U-boats. The U-boats sink one ship after another on its way to England. An investigative newspaper columnist, Ward Prescott (Craig Stevens), suspects that Pam is working the Axis and that the America Above All is nothing more than a front for fifth columnists. Ward shows Pam's sister Sue and his friend, insurance investigator Ernie Haskell, evidence that Pam's broadcast correspond with the dates that German subs sink cargo ships Although she accepts money from Axis spies, Pam could care less about fascism. She performs her traitorous acts strictly for the money. When her long-time boyfriend Martin Oster (William Forrest) returns from Honolulu after a two-year absence, Pam rushes into his arms. Later, during a date, Oster introduces Pam to Hiru (Keye Luke), a smug, bespectacled Japanese spy who divulges to the Germans, Pam, and Oster that the Japanese plan to launch a Sunday morning sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Hiru assures his conspirators that the Japanese will destroy the entire American fleet while it officers and seamen lie asleep in their bunks. Pam learns to her chagrin that Oster has fallen in love with another woman, and he wants Pam to return to him his love letters. Naturally, Pam refuses. Martin strangles her accidentally trying to prove to her the importance of the letters. Stuffing her body into the trunk of her car, Martin drives it back to her wealthy father's estate. At first, Sue Mitchell (Maris Wrixon) thinks that Pam has just come home for the evening. Oster quickly searches Pam's room, finds nothing, and slips away before Sue walks in on him. Pam's mysterious disappearance alarms Sue, until she receives a telegram from Pam. Actually, Oster sent the telegram in the hope that Sue knows about the letters and will deliver them if Pam tells her. Ward stumbles onto Sue's body in her car. When he goes in search of Sue to tell her about Pam's death, Sue drives off in Pam's car without the least thought that her half-sister lies in the trunk. Wade phones the police, and they bring the riot squad to join them at pier where the interned Danish ship is anchored. A brief but noisy gun battle ensues. Sue escapes and kills Martin Oster. The police give Wade and Sue a ride home and along the way, they start kissing and do not stop.

Since Warner Brothers produced their "B" movies on a tight schedule and completed them in two to four weeks, the Production Code Administration ordered told Jack Warner to: (1) minimize the consumption of alcohol, (2) hold to a brief flash the sight of Pam's corpse, (3) avoid gruesomeness in the concluding shoot-out scene and minimize the number of deaths, (4) treat with care the suicide death of a character, (5) minimize as well as mask violence administered to women, and (6) change a line of dialogue so that a newspaperman does not act unethically in failing to report a homicide. In the final cut of Spy Ship, Warner Brothers complied with virtually every objection, but numbers three and six.

***SPOILERS*** It's December 1941 and antiwar and isolationist firebrands Pam Mitchell,Irene Manning, the head of the AAA, America Above All Committiee, is at the top of her game. Pam is hard at work, on her radio program, convincing the vast majority of the American People to reject that "warmonger", FDR, in the White House requests for helping the beleaguered United Kingdom, as well as USSR,in its life and death struggle with Nazi Germany. What the American public doesn't know is that their heroine Pam Mitchell is actually working with the Nazis in revealing the shipping routes of US supply ships, under foreign flags, to the German Navy! It's the German's wolf pack fleet of U-Boats that's been sinking those US ships at an alarming rate!

Trying to stem the tide of Pam's popularity is newsman Ward Prescott, Craig Stevens, who suspects that her concern for American interests is just a front for her serving her far off Fuhrer in Berlin Adolph Hitler! Ward coming up with evidence that Pam's radio broadcasts coincides with US supply ships being sunk in the North Atlantic has her fellow travelers, the Nazis, try to knock him off.

After Ward survives an assassination attempt at his office Pam's step-sister Sue, Maris Wrixon, join him in trying to not only expose Pam but those that are in league with her that includes her lover Gordon Morrell, Ted Andrews, who runs a shipping insurance company. It's Gordon also supplies Pam with information, and get paid for it by her Nazis friends, of when and where those ships will be in order to have them tracked down an sunk by Hitler's U-Boats

If the story isn't confusing enough already we then have an old flame of Pam's Martin Oster, William Forrest, suddenly show up to really muddle or gum up the works. Oster was the person who had recruited Pam into spying for Nazi Germany two years ago when he was Pam's lover. Now running the pro-American but also pro-war Liberity Committie as a front for his Ani-American Pro-Nazi activities Oster want's the love letters he sent Pam at that time to be destroyed. It's those letters that if made public will reveal Oster's real purpose in life: Searving Hitler's Germany!

****SPOILER ALERT*** It's this round robin love affair with Pam and Oster, who now want's nothing to do with her romantically, and her present boyfriend Gordon that sets the stage for Pam falling out with her Nazi comrades. This leads to Pam ending up dead in order to keep her big mouth shut.

To keep the movie interesting as well as keep the audience awake and watching were also given this Japanese villain Hiru, Keye Luke, who's the main man, sent by Tojo himself, to orchestrated the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor from the safety of Amerian soil. The film "Spy Ship" does in fact end on a Nazi spy ship with the good guys, the US Army Marines Coast Guard and FBI thrown in for good measures, taking on Hiru and his Nazi allies, all five of them, in what turned out to be a South Chicago gangland like shootout. It was good to see the good guys win but it at the same time was somewhat disheartening to see that they needed odds of something like 20 to 1 in their favor to do it! It made American audiences wonder, back then when the movie was released in 1942, how our boys will stand up against the both brutally effective German and Japanese Armies on the field of battle!

P.S The movie "Spy Ship" also has as its theme song the recently released, the year before in 1941, great Johnny Murcer instrumental arrangement of his song "This Time the Dream's on Me" which was about the best thing in it.

When World War II came along, Warner Brothers dusted off some of their old products and turned them into propaganda grabbing B programmers. In the casse of this one, it is a remake of "Fog Over Frisco" where nasty socialite Bette Davis ends up involved with the wrong people and ends up murdered half way through the film even though she gets top female billing. Here, that nasty victim who becomes a corpse due to her own greed and possessiveness is Irene Manning, a cool looking Lana Turner type blonde, regal but deadly, especially when you find out that she's selling American naval secrets to the Nazi's simply for profit. Craig Stevens is the columnist she hates, speaking out against him and against the possibility of America getting involved in the war in Europe, which makes it clear from the start that she is up to no good. Before leaving for a secret meeting, she leaves a case full of private letters with her sister (Maris Wrixon) who had previously promised Stevens to keep an eye on her sister out of his suspicion of Manning's being a traitor. Even their father (George Irving) furiously declares that he would kill his own daughter if he found out that she was a traitor, but Irving fortunately does not have to resort to daughterside, as somebody on the side of the Nazi's obviously does that for him.

This high spirited action thriller is enjoyable as a propaganda and patriotic driven reminder that during times like this, you don't speak out about possible military secrets because "loose lips sink ships", which in the case of this movie is absolutely true. The timing is set as December of 1941, so there is a very strong reference to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Keye Luke gets the unfortunate part of a stereotypical Japanese visitor to the states, using all the cliched terms that were attributed to Japanese villains during these war set films. "Excuse, prease", and "Solly" (sorry) are all repeated over and over every time he is on screen, and when the attack is shown, an image of Luke takes over, once again uttering those sadly racist expressions that in excess become extremely ridiculous. In spite of all that, this is enjoyable for the type of film it is, and Manning becomes one of those cool hateful villains that makes you very leery of cool looking blondes with femme fatale traits which later became a source of plot in the genre of film noir.