ESCAPE IN THE FOG

US, 1945, 63 minutes, Black-and-white.
Otto Kruger, Nina Foch, William Wright, Konstantin Shayne, Ivan Triesault.
Directed by Oskar Boetticher Jr.

A small espionage film from the United States released towards the end of World War II. The focus is on German agents in the United States but also on Japanese plans and their expansion in China.

However, this is also a film about dreams and premonitions. Nina Foch plays Eileen who is on leave after active service, resting her nerves. She has a dream where she walks across a bridge, stopped by a policeman, but then seeing a vehicle, a group of men attacking another – and she screams, waking up. She encounters the man in the dreams at the hotel where she is staying. He is high-ranking and also on furlough. Not only do they strike up an acquaintance, but she becomes very attached, she agreeing to go into San Francisco for a night out and then stay with his family.

In the meantime, he is asked to call into what looks like a private home but is in fact a headquarters for an espionage chief. He is given a special mission, to go to Hong Kong, pretend to be a German agent, deliver secret papers and thus thwart Japanese action. However, the watchmake, part of a German spy ring, has replaced a clock in the house and installed a radio, thus getting the information, calling together the local nest of Spies.

Needless to say, the spies are shrewd, organise a way of abducting the agent by phony phone calls. Then, with his disappearance, Eileen goes back to the bridge and the whole scenario happens again. But, this time, the container with the secret documents goes over the bridge – falling onto a passing boat at midnight which happens to be top-secret and therefore no record.

Various adventures follow. The spies infiltrate the port authority and get information about the boat and the documents, sending one of their spies to retrieve them. Eileen goes to the police as well as to the head of the spies but he denies all knowledge. In the meantime, the agent is able to do some tracking down himself, help recover the documents, help with the roundup of the nest of spies. There is a big showdown and shootout at the clockmaker’s headquarters in Chinatown.

Certainly a film of its time in style and content – but an interesting enough look back at past movies. Direction is by Oscar Boetticher Jr who then became Budd Boetticher making a series of well admired action films, especially westerns with Randolph Scott in the 1950s.