CIPHER BUREAU (1938)

Three menacing looking men riding in a car one night arrive at a suburban home. They look like bad guys, but when they enter the house looking for a man named Wormer, a German-accented man claims he's not there, and by Hollywood rules, we know they're good guys looking for a Nazi spy (though neither Germans nor Nazis are actually mentioned at any point). The three men, led by Philip Waring (Leon Ames), find code books, but another man in the house manages to set off some tear gas, and the two spies escape. They contact Grood, their boss, and get the codes changed for messages that are about to be sent. Philip, head of the government's Cipher Bureau, sends his younger brother Paul, a naval officer, on a mission to take readings on the code transmissions to find out where they're coming from. On a train back to Washington, Paul flirts with Therese; he is first given the brush-off but later she goes with him to the train's observation platform where they get better acquainted. We soon see Therese report to Grood and we discover she is setting what they call a "honey trap" in which to ensnare Paul. Paul begins dating Therese and one night, his cocktail is drugged and Grood's spies take his government papers. Paul is dishonorably discharged, but what he and the judge don't know is that the papers were plants containing unimportant information in order to draw out the spies. Meanwhile, Therese seems to have developed real feelings for Paul; can Philip enlist her to help track down the spies for good?

This B-spy film was made before WWII broke out which is why the nationality of the spies is never made clear—though with the heavily accented actor Gustav von Seyffertitz playing Grood, the spymaster, there is little doubt that we're dealing with Nazis. The unique aspect of this movie is the focus on code breaking. There is a lengthy (and, unfortunately, not very compelling) scene showing Ames and his co-workers breaking a code, and a more interesting scene later showing a message being coded into music to be performed over the radio. Otherwise, it's par for the course for a second-feature spy thriller, which means it's watchable if it doesn't stand out from the crowd. Ames made his name playing nice-guy fathers so it's always fun to see him in one of his earlier films going against type. Here, he's only slightly against type; he's a good guy but a heroic brother instead of a beleaguered father. There’s a barely developed romantic connection between Philip and his secretary Helen (Charlotte Wynters) that gets a small pay-off at the end, and there was also a follow-up film with Ames and Wynters playing the same characters. Joan Woodbury, who had a long career as a B-character actor, is fine as Therese, and I always enjoy seeing Seyffertitz as a Germanic villain. Don Dillaway, in his mid-30s at the time, still looks young enough to be playing the semi-juvenile role of the younger brother. There is a MacGuffin here, the plans for a new long-range gun, but it's forgotten almost as soon as it's mentioned. Made by Grand National, a short lived indie company, it is a bit slow, but at only an hour, it serves as a fine distraction for a Saturday afternoon. Pictured are Ames and George Lynn, a fellow spy. [YouTube]