Dean Jagger is a forger -- in the United States, not Europe. A gang led by John Carradine and Sidney Blackmer break him out of prison, kill some one to convince the authorities Jagger is dead, then hide him behind the scenes at a funfair, where they have him forge things. It soon dawns on Jagger that they're not gangsters looking for someone who can produce fake currency that will pass. They're Nazi spies, trying to inflate the US and neutral countries into bankruptcy, and blow up stuff in the US. Jagger hates being cooped up, and he comes to appreciate freedom in a way he never did before.
It's a production of the King Brothers as they worked they way up from awful movies to ones that look like they have something more to say than "this is a story". I'm not sure if they do, but they certainly give the impression of something more important, with some fine performers, including Mary Brian and Ian Keith, and wild sets that suggest something other than what they show: the blank walls and discarded machinery of the fun fair, the strange, huge metallic shapes of an oil refinery. Releasing, as they did, through Monogram, I'm sure they didn't spend much money, but DP Ira Morgan certainly knew how to shoot things dramatically, and director Harold Young, while never out of the B movies, knew how to let the actor, dialogue, and images carry things along. Perhaps that's the subtext of this story: do your job right, and it will all come out well in the end.
It's a production of the King Brothers as they worked they way up from awful movies to ones that look like they have something more to say than "this is a story". I'm not sure if they do, but they certainly give the impression of something more important, with some fine performers, including Mary Brian and Ian Keith, and wild sets that suggest something other than what they show: the blank walls and discarded machinery of the fun fair, the strange, huge metallic shapes of an oil refinery. Releasing, as they did, through Monogram, I'm sure they didn't spend much money, but DP Ira Morgan certainly knew how to shoot things dramatically, and director Harold Young, while never out of the B movies, knew how to let the actor, dialogue, and images carry things along. Perhaps that's the subtext of this story: do your job right, and it will all come out well in the end.