Submarine Raider

... especially if one is making a movie less than a year after one of the most brazen attacks on American soil in U.S. history, the attack on Pearl Harbor. Given that this is a B film and there is no time or desire to plug vital plot holes, this is an interesting little piece of B film history.

The premise of the film is outrageous enough - a Japanese aircraft carrier on route to Pearl Harbor spots a pleasure cruise yacht way out in the distance. The people on board are civilians, with one couple just arguing over whether or not they should get married without the least interest in what is going on in the sea around them. With discretion and surprise being key to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the captain of the Japanese aircraft carrier decides to start a potential international incident by blowing the yacht to kingdom come, then trying to kill the survivors in the life raft with one of his aircraft, then trying to sink the passing American sub that picks up the lone woman survivor.

Meanwhile back in Honolulu, American secret agent Bill Warren is having a hard time clearing out "fifth column" saboteurs, and no wonder. He openly discusses his true identity and his profession with his girl - nothing impresses the ladies like a little international intrigue! - and with the conversation clearly audible by his chauffeur. When another car pulls up next to his car and takes a shot at him and it turns out his chauffeur is in on the deal he is shocked!...shocked I say!... that everybody seems to know who he really is.

Back on the sub, commander Chris Warren is trying to get a message through to somebody - anybody - about the acts of war taken by the Japanese, but all they can do is pick up music from a club in Honolulu. The scene switches to said club where the rattled Bill Warren is discussing the attempt on his life and his fears of Japanese aggression to an acquaintance. Meanwhile in that very club a waiter/Japanese agent goes into the coat room, opens a secret panel and walks into a fully outfitted radio room manned by another Japanese agent! Clever agents to architect and add such a room without the owner or American staff ever noticing! What follows is the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese predicted by Bill Warren, and a cat and mouse game between commander Chris Warren's submarine and the Japanese aircraft carrier that blew up the yacht. Key to the plot - the sub commander and not-so-secret American agent are brothers, and the captain of the Japanese aircraft carrier is the father of the pilot lost at sea trying to sink Warren's sub.

The propaganda is blatant and the plot holes border on just too silly, but it is by no means boring. I'd recommend it just for illustrating that to make an effective war picture requires the passage of time so that some perspective can be gained. However, in 1942, the home front probably appreciated little pictures like this that likely raised morale.

What's particularly interesting is that it is the supporting ranks of the players here that had bigger careers later on, such as Bruce Bennett as the first officer of the sub and Larry Parks as the radio operator on the sub. Also note that is Lloyd Bridges' voice over the sub intercom in an uncredited role.

When the US entered WWII, Hollywood's studios suddenly became ultra-patriotic and they made a ton of propaganda films aimed at bolstering the war effort. Some were very good...a few were very poor...such as "Submarine Raider".

The story begins just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Soon after you see a Japanese aircraft carrier heading towards Hawaii, the ship blows up a nearby yacht and then sends a fighter plane out to strafe the survivors. What they don't realize is that an American submarine is nearby...and the captain of the ship is baffled as to why the carrier would attack a yacht. However, they soon get word that this and other Japanese carriers just attacked Pearl Harbor...and so the captain is determined to find the carrier and destroy it.

The basic story isn't bad and much of the acting decent. However, it's essentially a cheap B from Columbia and the Japanese are essentially cartoonish (such as pilots who laugh hysterically while bombing civilians) and their airplanes defy all the rules of aeronautics...such that if they REALLY could have flown this way (making tight u-turns, landing every second or two on the carrier, etc.) they would have won the war in a month! Additionally, the film promotes the commonly accepted myth that evil spies ('fifth columnists') abounded in Hawaii and this laid the groundwork for folks in the US accepting the internment of the Japanese-Americans.

Overall, a real mixed bag. The crew of the sub consists of some decent actors but one-dimensional writing make this a film that simply hasn't aged well.

As a WWII history buff, I try to watch every WWII film I can find. This one was watchable, but for the informed it was more for comedic effect and an understanding of the racial prejudices of the time than for anything else.

I don't even know where to start with this one but it plays to all of the boogeymen of the immediate pre and post Pearl Harbor attack with it's focus on subversion and sabotage when we later learned that even the Japanese themselves put little faith in the Japanese-Americans in Hawaii.

Perhaps the most laughable aspect was the presentation of a SINGLE Japanese aircraft carrier as being capable of the destruction wrought at Pearl Harbor, when, in fact, it took SIX carriers and on top of that, they portrayed the carrier as operating completely ALONE, when nothing of the sort would've happened.

There is also a scene in which the US Submarine remains on the surface with a single gunner dueling with the attacking Japanese plane when Navy doctrine would've had the sub crash diving upon detection of the incoming plane.

All in all, there are simply too many factual errors to even believe that this film actually had a technical adviser... at least one who had ever gone to sea in anything bigger than a rowboat! The only misinformation missing from this film that I can see is that they didn't try to pin on the blame on FDR as many other crackpots did!

For some reason an American causing yacht finds itself in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and in the way of a Japanese aircraft carrier. The bigger ship uses it as target practice leaving only "Sue" (Marguerite Chapman) as the sole survivor. Fortunately, she manages to get of an SOS and that was picked up by a nearby American submarine which races to her rescue. The submariners are puzzled by their inability to send or receive signals until they hear of the terrible news that Pearl Harbour has been devastated by a sudden, sneaky, attack. Now, complete with their damsel in distress, they concoct quite a cunning plan to lure the offending carrier to them and sink three fish into it! It's frequently interspersed with actuality and had the editing been a bit better, that might have helped out - but it isn't and coupled with a Japanese captain who was about as menacing as "Mr. Wong" and Peter Sellers' love child - on a bad day, the whole thing really just falls well short. Sure, it was made in 1942 and is a pretty shameless piece of propaganda but I'm not sure these are excuses enough for this rather cheap and cheerfully thrown together exercise in just about everything mediocre film-making has to offer. It doubtlessly made the audience feel a bit better at a very difficult time, but it has little to recommend it now.

It's easy to dismiss today the "slanty eyed Japs" statements and atmosphere in this film (why is "Kraut" not deemed "racist"?). However this took place only four years after the Imperial Japanese carried out the most appalling atrocities in China ( See here. WARNING EXPLICIT PHOTOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre#Massacre ). Compare with similar ISIS/Daesh atrocities and Presidents Trump's statements about Jihadist terrorists being "dirty, sneaky rats" and this film takes on an interesting dimension. At one point the intelligence agent refers to the Japanese 5th columnists as "rats". So where this film is relegated to obscure Freeview channels, deemed to be of exclusive interest to war movie die hard's, it actually throws a light on the peculiar modern tendency to deem criticisms and lurid remarks about the enemy as "racist" when lives are at stake. As noted above, the plot, acting and effects are not top notch but this piece has an interesting 1940's feel to it that can appeal to an audience beyond that of the historian.