Escape in the Fog (1945)
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 5 minutes of runtime, rated 5.9 by 467 cinematizens.
Genre: Mystery.
Verdict: Foggy.
In a dense fog on the Golden Gate Bridge walking from There to Where, Nina Foch sees a man set upon by thugs and screams….herself awake to find that the noise has brought to her hotel room door the very man of whom she dreamed! Seeing Nina lying there, Dreamboat has enough sense not to rock.
She is an Army nurse on R and R, albeit nothing is made of her experiences, perhaps, in the Pacific. The bloodbath at Iwo Jima had ended only a fortnight before the release date of this balderdash, so maybe she is on leave from that inferno. DreamBoat is a Top Hush-Hush guy who cannot shut up.
Because he can speak Hollywoodese, DreamBoat is charged with a super secret mission to Japanese occupied Hong Kong to buy jade for Otto. Sure he will fit in. Abstracting that jade will crush the Nips, intones Otto as only he could, and lead to final victory. There is a reference ‘to our allies, the Chinese.’ Recognition of Allies is rare in Hollywood and so noteworthy. (It is altogether unknown in Washington D.C. with one exception: The haunting Korean War Memorial.)
Though DreamBoat can tell her nothing of his mission and does so at great length, Nina pledges to stay dry until he returns, but no sooner does he set off than he is set upon. It is child’s play in trapping him.
Nina knows something is up and goes to the secretive Otto by finding him in the telephone book under SPIES but Otto feigns ignorance and leaves it at that. No wonder the Japanese held out so long with spies like this. Then as scriptwriting would have it, the opening dream sequences is played out for (un)real. With me so far? Still Otto smokes his pipe.
The man Trappers are Caucasians with enemy accents who hole up in ChinaTown. They Nina-nap her to blackmail DreamBoat into handing over the super-duper top secret jade order, and he would if he could, but… In the stunt fight on the Bridge it fell into the void.
There are some nice touches as both sides try to dredge it up from that void. Once again it is child’s play to outwit DreamBoat, though by this time Otto’s pipe has gone out and he is stirred to action. Why DreamBoat did not turn to Otto in the first instance is down to SOP which in this case means Stupid Operating Procedure, a favourite of scriptwriters.
Nina seems indifferent to being trussed up and threatened, but none of that is related to her experiences as an Army nurse. More’s the pity.
With the help of some local Chinese, our allies, Otto rescues her as DreamBoat postures.
It was Budd Boetticher’s first director’s credit and it shows around the edges. Budd later made some of the best Westerns that are bleak in style and complex in morality. These include Decision at Sundown (1957), Buchanan Rides Alone (1958), Ride Lonesome (1959), and Comanche Station (1960). Each of these titles is discussed elsewhere on this blog. He developed a fascination with bullfighting and directed and wrote at least five movies on that theme.
The film at hand was released on 5 April 1945, four days after the start of the Typhoon of Steel on Okinawa that cost 77,000 US casualties and even greater number of Japanese. There would have been plenty of nursing needed there.