Escape in the Fog
               
Director: Budd Boetticher
Year: 1945
Rating: 5.5
Nicely done B film from Columbia and directed by Oscar Boetticher, not credited as Budd until Bullfighter and the Lady in 1951. It wasn't until the 1950s that Boetticher really found his groove with a series of very good Westerns, in particular those starring Randolph Scott. This is a nice piece of work though shot mainly in the fog! It is San Francisco and the fog machines are working overtime. It stars William Wright (Philo Vance Returns) who was sadly to die of cancer a few years after this, Otto Kruger (Murder, My Sweet, Saboteur) who is billed first but gets much less screen time than others and Nina Foch who was in the middle of a series of B films until An American in Paris came along. She has a very unique and interesting face that can't be mistaken for any other actress.

 

The film begins with her on the Golden Gate Bridge. In the fog. A taxi stops and a few men tumble out fighting - and as one of them is about to stab one of the men, she screams. And wakes up. It was a nightmare and two men have broken into her hotel room because of the scream. And one of them - William Wright - is the man about to be stabbed in her dream. A strange and cute introduction to one another. They hit it off - love is in the fog - but then he is called in by Kruger. Wright is a secret agent and is to go to Hong Kong pretending to be a German agent and to contact the underground. But a group of German spies learns of this through a tape-recording device and need to get the papers Wright is carrying. It takes them to the Golden Gate Bridge where they plan to kill him . . . and Foch is waiting to see if her dream comes true.  And to save the man she loves. I didn't recognize her, but that cute blonde taxi driver was a young and thin Shelley Winters - along with a few other solid B character actors - Ernie Adams and Konstantin Shayne as German spies.