They Raid By Night is a wartime propaganda film on the cheap side from PRC Pictures. It follows the Hollywood's first rule about casting American actors in the lead, make them Canadian.Lyle Talbot plays a Canadian leading a British commando raid into Norway to rescue a Norwegian army general who presumably will lead a Norwegian liberation army, possibly become a Scandinavian DeGaulle. As we know that never happened.They sneak in and get to the camp to rescue Paul Baratoff playing the general. Along the way they are betrayed twice. One of the members of Talbot's team is George Neisse who is Norwegian who left a girl behind played by June Duprez. She's made herself quite comfortable with the new rulers and twice she betrays them. That's something that someone there should have figured out.Victor Varconi plays the German colonel who just can't seem to get good help among his troops from the Fatherland.All and all They Raid By Night strained credulity in 1942. I doubt we'll see a remake demanded.

What can I say. I started watching the movie with no expectations at all and were slightly disappointed at some parts, but actually amazed at some other parts.One of the biggest let downs was the post-production. Apart from taking a lot of photage used for either documentaries, news reals or who knows what else, the sound effects were really bad. You'll hear a second long sound of a propeller looping for a very long time, simply because they didn't have any other more realistic sound effect to make it sound like they're on the airport.Too many things happen to easily and that makes the film unrealistic. Don't get me wrong, it's not that the commandos would have an easy job (on the contrary, that part is good), but some other parts... Well, they just happen to stumble on everything at once, so the whole thing can happen within a time-frame of a single day (if not less). Judging by instructions given to one of the rescue party, the entire interrogation and escape and travel tot he meeting point lasted no more then three hours... Those were the downsides. Not to mention the clearly visible painted scenes in the background and people walking around the same rock every time they entered the forest.Still some other parts were really fresh and thrilling.Spoiler ahead!!! I really liked the way how commando captain Bob got out of the interrogation. The German officer offered him a smoke, which he naturally accepted. Upon being put to the lie detector, he answered to all given meeting locations with NO, but before the interrogator would ask for the right place, the captain burned himself with a cigarette, so the lie detector would show the answer given at that time a lie. For me, this was one of the highlights of the film and a very original idea. The lie detector has been done in many movies (although I think this is the oldest one I've seen using a lie detector), but there was always a person lying and trying to pass it off as the truth. This time it was the truth, but it was passed off as a lie, which in my opinion was just brilliant.Another part I really loved was the character of Inge. Her fiancé Erik was one of the people in the rescue party and they met. She betrayed them. There was no remorse, but for the first time I've heard somebody explaining how it was like for the people left behind! She explained they found out she helped Eric escape, she blamed Eric for the death of her father and her own imprisonment. Her character was the one that really turned the tables. This wasn't another "We're heroes, fighting for freedom, without the slightest speck of dirt upon us" movie, but there were also some realistic portraits of real people handling war time situations.Also the fact that Eric cracks under torture quite fast is a commendable scene. Most of the people fighting weren't great heroes, who could stand for inhumane tortures, but were ordinary men with a breaking point - and when that point was reached, they broke.End of spoilers! So the characters, although not developed enough, are still much deeper then in most war movies (even compared to most successful and big hit war movies), unfortunately all the other elements showed it was just a second rate production with very limited budget.It would be interesting to see a remake, after all, how many movies have you seen covering the Allied offensive against Norway (one of the pre-operations that made D-Day possible)?

Yes, the production values are lacking. Yes, there are abundant plot holes -- however, for a Poverty Row war movie from the 1940s, the movie is actually not half bad. While there are numerous shots of stock footage and people walking in to poorly painted curtains doubling for the winter-bound grandeur that is Norway, the acting is better than one would expect in a movie of the genre. The writing seems to be a half-tick better than the average fare of the time and genre. The fellow playing the Nazi commander isn't the normal "one note" evil Nazi so often seen both then and later in such movies. The fellow playing the chief commando on the raid is fairly effective, if not entirely believable in the part.All in all, I recommend it for those who are World War II buffs and have 70 minutes to kill.

I should have seen this ambush coming, from the very first office/room whose walls were constructed out of curtains. This movie, amongst others, was required pre-school for mega-talents to come, eg Edward D Wood Jr. Actors walking past painted backdrops, actors arriving through one curtain, and leaving by another, characters finding it difficult to get in & out of cars, none of this is an element of making fine films. It is however, common place for a movie made on a budget shorter than a shoe-string. A movie only for those who collect quantity, rather than quality.