Panama Patrol

This espionage film from poverty row Grand National Pictures seems to advance the proposition that our soon to be oriental foes in the upcoming war would be the Chinese. Worse than that we have a traitor in our midst in the cipher section of the War Department. Is there no end to the treachery of these oriental folks whomever they might be?

Leon Ames and Weldon Heyburn are on the trail of saboteurs looking to do in the Panama Canal essential to the navy and our sea security. Secretary Charlotte Wynters suspects who the traitor is and is nearly done in for her troubles.

Very little production value here and the climax is rather anti-climatic I couldn't believe this was a sequel to another film starring Ames and Wynters. Could this fil have done well enough to warrant a sequel?

The mind boggles.

"Panama Patrol" is a low budgeted B-movie...and as such my expectations were relatively low. So imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a pretty good action and adventure film!

When the film begins, Major Waring (Leon Ames) and Helen Lane (Charlotte Wynters) are about to get married. However, an emergency phone call interrupts their plans...some very big espionage ciphers MUST be decoded NOW and their wedding will have to wait. Little do they know that soon they'll both be caught up in a life and death struggle with Asian agents! And, little do they know that one of their own people is actually working for these evil no-goodnicks!

In some ways, this movie plays like a movie serial because there is a lot of action and something always seems to be happening. But it generally works well and the acting is good for this sort of nonsense. My only reservations are WHO these Asians were...the film never tells us, though they would appear to be Chinese--which is odd since the Chinese were essentially friendly with the US at the time. Also, the scene where Miss Lane gets captured is a bit lame...she did seem a tad silly to let this happen so easily.

Leon Ames is about to marry Charlotte Wynter when a spy is killed in a locked room with a coded message, so it's back to the Cipher Bureau in Washington, where they both work.

It's an exciting spy thriller directed by Charles Lamont for producer Franklyn Warner, distributing through Grand National. Apparently 1938's CIPHER BUREAU, starring the same leads, was successful enough to warrant a sequel. I have a few problems with the production. First, there is a lot of yellowface in the casting, starting with Abner Biberman -- he was often cast as a Chinaman or South Seas Island, hailing, as he did, from exotic Milwaukee. Second, the soundtrack, which kicks in for the action sequences, is a poorly chosen excerpt from a library. Finally, as someone interested in cryptography, I found a few -- ahem! -- peculiarities and shortcuts in their code-breaking methods.

In the end, it is a solid story, with a good mystery at its heart and Leon Ames is, as always, a solid performer.