A Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC) film from 1943 set on an island somewhere on the equator about a hoodlum from New York who is supplying torpedoes to German U-Boats and a shipwrecked former cop James Xavier 'Jim' Taggart from New York who happens to drift by the hoodlum's boat (and who knew him in New York!) and begins to suspect something is not right. Mix in a bunch of chorus girls and men from various nations and you get something far fetched and rather dull. The plot is thin. For instance, where does Joe Morgan get the torpedoes from? He's not connected to the US Navy. You can't buy them at the local store and he only had one guy, Spike, to help him. All rather silly.Alan Baxter as Joe Morgan is rather insipid and seems to wear the same expression throughout the film. Familiar face John Litel plays the ex- detective as best as the lame script will allow. The great Eric Blore plays Spike with a dodgy cockney accent and brings the only entertainment to the film.Made as a patriotic film to support the war effort which is laudable but it is also laughable.

"Submarine Base" is a film by the ultra-tiny PRC Studio and in one of the 'macho' roles is Eric Blore--these alone are reasons to suspect it's a bad film! And, this is pretty much the case.The film begins with an American gangster on an island where he is meeting with Nazi submarines to supply them with torpedoes!! Talk about a silly and impossible to believe scenario. Well, unfortunately it gets even sillier as he and his macho friend (Blore) find a sailor floating in the sea in the middle of the ocean. This guy just happens to be the same cop who had tried to capture the gangster for murder some time back. So, we are expected to believe this sort of coincidence! Talk about suspending disbelief! Well the rest of the film is pretty trivial but by the end (in a VERY jingoistic finale), the two join forces to defeat the forces of international evil! Saying this is contrived is a huge understatement. While I love a good patriotic WWII propaganda film, this one was just dumb.

I agree, Alan Baxter was kind of dull in this. But my main beef with this movie is it's simply too hard to believe that this guy can cause six UBoots to sink and the Germans don't figure out to stop sending boats there for resupply.Our hero, a character with a questionable history, has set up his own little anti-submarine corps. Supplying torpedoes to the Kreigsmarine. However he rigs one to explode on it's own and tells the captain to go out and sit on the bottom for four hours, supposedly because of the tide. Of course it's really so...well you get the idea. He then pays for a party so there's too much noise to hear the submarine blow up...and never any wreckage I suppose. Why not just let the thing sail out and blow up at some random time? So six boats go missing right after making contact with this guy and yet the Nazis don't suspect a thing. Oh well, there was a war on and they needed to keep the morale up so they made movies like this.Normally I can suspend disbelief but this one is just too far-fetched. Even though I do like this movie, 5/10

This movie was made in 1943 along with several dozen other short (only 65 minutes here) movies like this during WWII. Starring John Litel and Alan Baxter (as protagonist Joe Morgan) both standard contract actors for Warners at the time. Movie was made to show an element of the war effort and was formulaic for the time. Usual plot lines of such a movie set around an outlaw ex-gangster from NYC (Morgan) who fishes an ex-cop out of the water (Litel as Taggert). Usual plot twists and Nazi suspense (it was shot in 1943!) Shot in B&W some visual not too many special effects and only a couple of sets used for a 1 hour movie. No particular high drama or special effects - decent predictable all around acting for a staple war picture. Basic plot is that Morgan was initially thought to be a trailer to the US by many including his old NYC nemesis Taggert, but turns out he has his own secret plan to aid the Allied effort.