British Intelligence

There aren't that many World War I spy movies around. At least I haven't seen that many. Hitchcock's "Secret Agent," (1936) Sternberg's "Dishonored" (1931) and Garbo's "Mata Hari" (1932) are the only three great classics I have seen. Blake Edwards's "Darling Lili" was a waste of celluloid.

Made at the beginning of World War II (1940), there are clear reference to the war situation at that time in this movie. The talk about madmen taking over the war is clearing about Hitler and not the Kaiser.

The movie showed bombing raids against London from both zeppelins and aircraft. I assumed that these were fictional, but I was surprised to find out that there were a few zeppelin raids and 22 aircraft raids against England in the war.

Acting by Boris Karloff (creepy and effective) and Margaret Lindsay (subtle and clever) make the picture a lot of fun to watch. Although the plot is overly complicated to follow and jumps around a bit too much, there is a surprising amount of tension built up over who are the real German spies.

Some people have complained about how easy the spies had it in the movie. They seem to just need to lurk a bit and they overhear all the war secrets they need. We should remember that people were more trusting back then and the idea of an organized spy ring was quite fanciful. Today we have an ultra security conscious society.

This is a fun and easy to watch 62 minutes. I would recommend it for any spy film fan and any Boris Karloff fan.

I wonder if the name for Harry Potter's arch-villain, Valdemar, had anything to do with the name of Karloff in this movie, Valdar.