Nazi Spies on the Waterfront

I am, as any regular reader of this blog knows, I'm huge fan of B-movies from the 1930s, '40s and '50s. At the time, "B-movie" was a reference to low budgets but not usually to low quality. The B-movies produced by the major studios were often superbly told stories. The old Studio System, which placed actors and other creative staff under contract to specific studios, meant the big studios had a strong pool of talent to draw from even for their lower budget fare.

When you get down to the Poverty Row studios, which produced nothing but "Bs" as quickly as possible, the quality was more hit and miss. They simply didn't have the same variety of talent available to them. But all the same, they produced a fair percentage of good stories.

Waterfront is a 1944 film from PRC (the poor relative even by Poverty Row standards) that was very fortunate in the actors who appeared as the villain. J. Carrol Naish, a talented character actor able to play a seemingly infinite variety of roles, plays an eye doctor with an office on San Francisco's waterfront. Eye exams are just a side roll for him. His main job is running a Nazi spy ring.

John Carradine is a Gestapo assassin who shows up for a specific assignment. But someone has stolen Naish's code book and is attempting to blackmail him, so Carradine is soon involved in getting the book back and paying off the blackmailer--with a bullet.

The Nazis manage to raise their "despicable" factor by threatening the families of German immigrants (people who have no love for Hitler) and forcing the immigrants to help out with the spy ring. ("It would be too bad if your mother back in the Old Country ended up in a concentration camp.")

Both men are great in their roles. Like other actors from the Golden Age (Karloff, Lorre, Price, etc), they never phoned in a performance no matter how minor the film is. They were pros who always gave their best.

This is especially notably in John Carradine's case. His real love was theater, especially Shakespeare, and appeared in scores of B-movies to finance a theatrical troupe. (Listen to THIS episode of radio's Information Please to hear the ease with which Carradine answers questions about the Bard and quotes long passages from memory.)

But Carradine always gave real personality to his roles. Here, he exudes menace as the Nazi assassin, giving an average movie more depth than it would otherwise have had.

Certainly the villains are more interesting than the protagonists. B-movie vets Terry Frost and Maris Wrixon play a rather dull couple who get involved in the shenanigans, with Frost getting framed for one of Carradine's murder. Fortunately for him, Carradine's habit of doodling sketches might just provide a badly needed clue.

Waterfront doesn't belong on the same level as Charlie Chan or Hopalong Cassidy, but it's still a fun, well-made B-movie that's worth a little more than a hour of our time: