This is the film quite rightly regarded as the best George Formby vehicle, with a much more interesting suspense story mixed together as usual with some rousing tunes on his banjolele. I think Leslie Halliwell even included it in his top 100 films of all time, probably pushing the boat out a bit too far for most people!
At Dover George is on his way to Blackpool with the rest of his Dinky Doo troupe, but in the wartime blackout gets lost and ends up in Bergen Norway instead. There through a case of mistaken identity (what happened to the real uke player?) he finds a job awaiting him in sinister Garry Marsh's dance band. The trouble is Marsh is a Nazi agent (spoken incredulously: "A British subject working for Hitler") passing on information to U Boats - George helps decode his messages with the assistance of British agent Phyllis Calvert. He not only has the Nazis to contend with but an outraged Norwegian Bernard Lee popping up throughout to get him for asking his wife if she was a Dinky Doo. The doped up dream sequence where he manages to get to Berlin and sock Hitler on the jaw went down well with the British audiences at the time too definitely not as subtle as Chaplin's Great Dictator though! Great songs: Granddad's Flannelette Nightshirt in the refreshment room to Hal Gordon's utter delight, Mr. Wu's A Window Cleaner Now at band rehearsal, Count Your Blessings And Smile (with the badly dated hep swing trio) & Oh Don't The Wind Blow Cold both in the nightclub. This was Marsh's last Formby film, he joined the RAF just after for the duration of the War; George's mate Ronald Shiner was only given one line in here; Phyllis Calvert got paid the princely sum of £20 a week for the 6 weeks it took to film, and apparently didn't think much of the hero she was supporting a very dull man who seemed to be always tinkering about with watches being some of her more charitable comments in the 1980's.
Well, it's not a dull film, a low budget period propaganda piece that worked in all departments with plenty of inconsequential but memorable scenes and one I watch every few years with no lessening of enjoyment.
