Secrets of Scotland
Yard
Director: George Blair
Year: 1944
Rating: 5.5
Produced in 1944, this low budget film from Republic
has a very good premise but not really the budget to do right by it. It begins
at the end of WW1 with Germany defeated. The German military credits Room
404 in the English military as the cause for their defeat. Room 404 are the
code breakers. Here it is a small group of men rather than the large organization
that it was in reality and no mention obviously of Alan Turing. It was a
complete secret. The Germans decide to get a man in now to be ready for the
next war. The next war came and Room 404 was brought together again to break
codes. One of them is a German agent and all of them fall under suspicion.
The audience has no idea who it is.
A member of Scotland Yard is brought in
undercover when his brother is murdered after he breaks a code. They look
so much alike that even his girlfriend can't tell the difference. Except
a pinky is missing from the dead brother - perhaps a nod to the 39 Steps.
It runs 68 minutes in black and white and the copy I saw was watchable but
no better. There are a few names in the cast that are recognizable - Sir
C. Aubrey Smith who runs Room 404, Lionel Atwell as one of the code breakers
as is John Abbott, Martin Kosleck of course gets the sad duty of playing
a German agent again who owns a restaurant, Forrester Harvey is the messenger
and Henry Stephenson as a Commander. The two main players though are less
known - Edgar Barrier as the Scotland Yard man and his dead brother and Stepanie
Bachelor as the girlfriend. It was a nice contingent of the English community
in Hollywood other than the two leads who tried their best to sound English.
