User reviews

**SPOILERS** Pre-Pearl Harbor depiction of the danger from the east that threatened America represented as a very militaristic Chinese regime that also seems to be allied at the time with Hitler's Germany. With one of the bad guys being a very German looking, with a thick German accent, Wihelm Von Brickner playing one of the Chinese espionage rings henchmen Marlin.

In just two years after "Panama Patrol" was released the roles of the bad guys from the Orient were completely reversed with the Chinese being our friends and comrades in arms instead of our deadly enemies. There's also the fact that Chinese-American actor Richard Loo is in the movie portraying for once in a film a Chinese, who he is, instead of a Japanese, who he isn't.

Going down to the Marriage Licenses Bureau to get hitched Maj.Leon Waring,Leon Ames,gets an emergency phone call to report to the State Department's Cipher Bureau. Waring leaving his bride Helen Lane, Charlotte Wynters,who's also a government decoding specialist, making her very angry to say the least on both her future husband and his boss.

The D.C police Picking up this Chinese embassy worker Tommy Young, Richard Loo, who's been seen handing papers that he snuck out of the State Department. The D.C police have trouble getting him to talk about his covert activities. Young refuses to cooperate with his American captors by not speaking any English or handing over to them his passport. Chinese-speaking and also encrypted specialist Arlie Johnson, Abner Biberman, is then called in to get the closed-mouth Young to open up. As Johnson finally starts getting something out of the Chinese embassy worker in Chinese he's shot from behind from a hidden peephole in the wall by Marlin a German thug working for the Chinese government.

Later we see Johnson as well as Marlin together at this New York Curiso Shop run by one of the heads of the Chinese spy-ring the half American half Chinese Eli Ming, John Smart! Johnson it turns out is a spy who infiltrated the US Government Chipher Bureau and has been handing over sensitive information to the Chinese Government concerning the Panama Canal. The Chinese are planning, possibly with their future German allies, to blow up the canal locks and bottle up the US Pacific Fleet keeping it from being reinforced after a Pearl Harbor-like attack! this is two years before such an event did in fact happen, on America!

Lame action sequences with Maj. Waring getting captured at least twice by the fumbling and butterfingered Chinese spies and all but walking away from them to freedom. There's a really insane scene later in the movie with Maj. Waring having it out with his kidnappers in a plane at 6,000 feet and after quickly dispatching the bad guys. It's then that the Major takes the controls and lands the aircraft as easy as Charles Linberg did in landing the St.Louis in Paris back in 1927.

The film is very interesting when it come to the art of decoding secret massages without the help of super computers, which weren't invented at the time, that shows how much brain power and hard work coupled with old fashion luck it took to break then Chinese secret code.

Helen also gets into the act by getting herself kidnapped by Johnson as his spy girlfriend Lia, Adrenne Ames, the exotically beautiful daughter of Chinese spy-master Eli Ming. In the end Helen saves the day by leaving a trail of clues that leads her boyfriend Maj. Waring together with the local police and FBI to the Chinese spy's secret headquarters. It's then that the spy ring that included Johnson Lia and the big boss of the whole operation Suri, Philip Ahn, end up getting arrested after a brief struggle and shootout.

In the end both Maj. Warnig and his finance Helen Lang drive down to Elton Md. where they'll be in the middle of nowhere and not be disturbed, like at the beginning of the movie, to finally get married.

"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.

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.