Underground

A couple of times this year, TCM ran the movie Underground. I watched it not too long ago, and it's available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive collection, so now you get the post on it.

Philip Dorn plays Eric Franken, a chemist who works at a German research institute in the early days of World War II (the movie was released in June 1941, before the US entered the war). Of course, all the research these days is military-related, and Eric has a brother Kurt (Jeffrey Lynn) in the army.

But Eric goes out one night and helps a bunch of people get in a truck with a radio transmitter and send out a clandestine broadcast telling people the truth about the Nazi regime! Of course, this is highly illegal, and the Nazis home in on the source of the broadcast, leaving Eric and his confidants to make a hasty escape.

Unbeknownst to Eric, Kurt has returned home, having been injured in the war. Kurt is a dedicated Nazi, while Eric is actively fighting against them and their parents just want peace. With Kurt back home, Eric knows he's in a bind. If he keeps going out at night, it's going to raise Kurt's suspicion. But he has to keep the resistance movement going.

In fact, Kurt has already noticed that Eric goes out at night, and has traced one of Eric's destinations as a restaurant where Sylvia (Kaaren Verne) plays the violin. Sylvia, as you can probably guess, is a member of the underground too, although Eric tries to pass her off as a girlfriend. Kurt, for his part, decides to start putting the moves on Sylvia!

This means, as you can probably guess, that Kurt is going to figure out that Sylvia is part of the underground, meaning that either Eric is in danger, or he's actually part of the underground too. Not that Kurt realizes yet that his own brother is fighting the Nazis.

Undergound is an interesting little B movie from Warner Bros., released at a time when the US Senate was ramping up to investigate Hollywood's decidedly non-neutral stance on the situation in Europe. (The attack on Pearl Harbor would obviously quash all this.) It's clearly propaganda of sorts, although it's relatively mild compared to what we'd get during the war and especially the stuff directed at the Japanese.

Still, it's there, and it results in an ending I found unrealistic, on top of what is already a relatively thin plot. Underground is certainly worth a watch, but all in all it's one that never really rises above being a B movie.