Sealed Cargo [Region 2] [import]

This is well plotted, good story that never quite lets you relax as you wonder what will happen next! - I saw it years ago and it's lost none of its appeal today and once again, if you just want to relax and be entertained with a film that no longer seems to be shown on the box on a Sunday afternoon, you won't go far wrong in this instance and I will say the transfer from the film to DVD is not bad at all, bearing in mind the age of the film itself.

A very well made wartime suspense film, with a strong cast and a well plotted story. Gets your interest and keeps it. A good DVD transfer, apart from one short sequence (where it appears some footage may be missing).

One of those now completely forgotten commercial pictures the studios used to regularly churn out, 1952's Sealed Cargo is a well-crafted and thoroughly entertaining WW2 mystery with surprisingly lavish production values for RKO that sees Dana Andrews' fishing boat skipper finding himself with an unexpected passenger in the form of Carla Balenda and a Nazi spy on board who may be one of the new Danish crew members (Philip Dorn and Eric Feldary) the wartime manpower shortage has forced him to take on. As if a smashed radio and mysterious signals - both from unseen submarines signalling to each other in the fog by machine gun fire and a light from below his own decks - weren't enough to contend with, he soon stumbles across an abandoned Danish schooner. Well, not quite abandoned. Along with its cargo of rum and a single dead body, there's the dazed captain Claude Rains, who also may not be all that he seems. Towing it to the nearest isolated Newfoundland harbour against Rains' wishes, Andrews can't help shaking the suspicion that he's actually doing exactly what the circling wolf pack of German U-Boats want him to do...

Based on a Saturday Evening Post serial and playing at times like a cross between a nautical film noir and a WW2 propaganda film, Alfred L. Werker's film may not add up to much, but it's surprisingly well done: atmospherically photographed by George E. Diskant with a decent supporting cast (Onslow Stevens, Skip Homier, Arthur Shields, Whit Bissell) and a screenplay co-written by future creator of Maverick, The Rockford Files and The Fugitive Roy Huggins. The sealed cargo area itself seems unfeasibly large for a ship that doesn't ride that low in the water and credibility gets increasingly short shrift once the film deals its big reveal at the halfway point, but while it may not be `the most daring adventure the screen has ever known' promised by the wonderfully over-the-top but spoiler-heavy trailer included on the DVD, it is a satisfying 89 minutes of high quality hokum. Odeon's UK DVD offers an acceptable print, though at times it looks like a standards conversion from NTSC and there is one very noticeable tramline in one sequence, with the trailer the only extra.