Universal's 52nd sound-era serial (and the second of three with the Dead End Kids and Little Tough Guys billed above the title) with its biggest drawback being that the "adult" hero is played by William Hall, a Universal contractee that the studio had long ago given up on as a lead player. (See 1938's "The Spy Ring" for reasons why. The film, not the site listing.)
This one kicks right of when the Sea Raiders, a band of foreign agents, led by Carl Tonjes (Reed Hadley) and Elliott Carlton (Edward Keane), blow up a freighter on which Billy Adams (Billy Halop) and Toby Nelson (Huntz Hall) are stowaways, seeking to avoid Brack Warren (William Hall), a harbor patrol officer assigned to guard a new type of torpedo boat built by Billy's brother, Tom Adams (John McGuire.) Intended targets or not, getting blown up does not set well with Billy and Toby and, together with their gang coupled with the who-dat members of the Little Tough Guys, they find the Sea Raiders' island hideout, investigate the seacoast underground arsenal of these saboteurs, get blasted from the air, dragged to their doom, become victims of the storm, entombed in a tunnel and even periled by a panther (in various chapters titled as such) before they don the uniforms of some captured Sea Raiders and board a yacht that serves as headquarters for the Raiders. Edward Keane was the most-at-home-on-a-yacht player in Hollywood's history.
Reed Hadley should have played Brack Warren and Hall one of the Henchies. Otherwise it is what it is and serves the purpose for which it was intended, and the producers and the intended audience thought it served that purpose very well (and it did), and neither gave a thought to what critics in the next century might think about it.
