Code of the Secret Service

Early in Ronald Reagan's career, he made some surprisingly good films such as LOVE IS ON THE AIR, BROTHER RAT and SECRET SERVICE OF THE AIR. While they weren't exactly masterpieces, they were competently made and good B vehicles for the struggling young actor. However, among these films came the awful CODE OF THE SECRET SERVICE--ostensibly a follow-up to SECRET SERVICE OF THE AIR, though the films really aren't all that similar (besides, CODE OF THE SECRET SERVICE was written by chimps, the other one was not).

Reagan once again plays the character "Brass Bancroft", though oddly, he isn't a pilot in this film nor does it have much to do with the last one--especially in tempo. Instead of an action-adventure film, this film lacks depth and has so many logical errors that it looks like a bad movie serial (such as SPY SMASHER) and condenses it all into one very brief movie. Again and again, characters defy logic and the plot is amazingly banal because the emphasis is on fist fights and guns like a bad B-Western--making Reagan seem to have the charisma of a tomato. Some examples of how bad it was were the plane Reagan rode on at the beginning of the film changed from a Lockheed airliner to a Douglas DC-3 (taking off as one and landing as the other), a car that whipped around corners on a dirt rode that sounded exactly like one on asphalt and Reagan almost getting killed again and again by the Mexican police yet all he had to do was show him his i.d. and let them know he was a US Secret Service agent!! The bottom line is that this is a super-bad B-picture that is bad enough it should be considered a "C-picture"--it's THAT bad. Warner Brothers should have been ashamed of themselves.