Too many fans seem to be blown away

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

The first must-see film of the year.

Blistering performances.

When "Betrayal from the East" begins, it claims that the story is based on fact. However, how close it is to the truth is something I have no idea about...and suspect some of this might be overstated a bit due to the common narrative at the time that there were Nazi and Japanese agents all over the place trying to undermine America. Who knows the exact truth?Eddie (Lee Tracy) is an ex-army soldier who is seen by Japanese agents as possibly being willing to spy for them. He quickly realizes what's happening and pretends to play along with them...and soon seeks out Army Intelligence to alert them about the Japanese plans. They ask him to keep playing along but also advise him that previous folks working for them all ended up dead! But Eddie is a true patriot and is going to see it to the end...especially after the Japanese kill a lady he really liked.The quality of this film is pretty good and Lee Tracy is also good here....better than he was in most of his later outings following his years at MGM as a star. In particular, I appreciate that although the film was clearly a propaganda picture it was still entertaining and well written...and as a result the Japanese were not the usual sub-human, evil, sniveling sort they were in the more sordid films of the era.

The most surprising thing about Betrayal From The East is that Drew Pearson put his time to it. In post war America Pearson was one of the earliest and most consistent critics of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the brand of right wing conspiracies he was peddling. It shocked me that he would lend his name to this kind of propaganda claptrap.Lend it he did to this film which has the Japanese contacting former army guy Lee Tracy now a carnival barker to see if he could get the plans for the Panama Canal defense. Presumably Tracy's efforts in foiling the Japanese designs on the canal are the reason it was not a casualty of war.I'm still trying to figure out why American agent Nancy Kelly who Tracy sees killed in San Francisco winds up in the Canal Zone on another assignment on the same case where Tracy is now. What were the writers thinking with? The film is a cheap imitation of one of Humphrey Bogart's and John Huston's lesser films Across The Pacific. This makes that one look like Gone With The Wind.

***SPOILER*** Shocking expose of an attempted Japanese take-over of the United States west-coast by a gang of Japanese spies and their American counterparts, ethnic Japanese Americans. Based on the 1943 block-buster book "Betrayal from the East" by Alan Hynd the movie shows how closed we, the USA, was in being taken over from within. Getting wind of the massive Japanese conspiracy in early 1941 US Embassy officials in Tokyo Marsden & Hildebrand, Louis James Hyde & Jason Robards Sr, try to warn Washington and the US military about it but end up dead; Marsden falling overboard on a Japanese passenger ship going back to the states and Hildebrand falling to his death from a high-rise building in Tokyo.In charge of this conspiracy back in the USA is the UCLA Football teams lead cheerleader Tani who's really Japanese Lt. Cmdr. Miyazaki, Richard Loo, and his band of Japanese agents led by Kato & Yamato, Philip Ahn & Abner Biberman. Kato gets in contact with his American friend and girlie show barker Eddie Carter, Lee Tracy, who served in the US military in the Panama Canal Zone a major target of Japanese Imperial Navy in the event of a war with the US.Eddie broke and in need of cash quirky falls for Kato's offer to pay him for information abut US defenses in the Panama Canal and even gives him the name of a friend of his Sgt. Scott, who like Eddie is broke and willing to sell out his county for a few dollars, who still stationed there for further references. Little does Kato and his boss the secretive Lt. Cmdr. Miyazki know is that there's no such person as Sgt. Scott and that Eddie is setting him and his fellow spies up to be taken out and caught by the US military and FBI.Eddie is later contacted by Peggy Harrison, Nancy Kelly, an undercover G-2, the forerunner to the CIA, agent on a train trip to L.A about the Japanses conspiracy. Told b Peggy to play along with his Japanese cohorts in order to find out what their up to she's later exposed as a G-2 undercover agent when Kato plants a hidden camera in Eddie's apartment. Peggy together with Eddie's and his Japanese house boy Omaya,Victor Sen Young, are secretly working with the G-2 US military Intelligence Agency. Grabing Omaya the Japanese spies force Eddie to witness him being tortured and murdered by them to strike home to him what's to happen to anyone who cross' them. Peggy now knowing, from Eddie, that the Japanese spies are on to her has herself run over,in a G-2 staged accident,in order to make them think that she's dead.Eddie is now given a ticket, on a Japanese freighter, to travel to the Canal Zone and get in contact with Sgt. Scott and get the vital information about US defenses there back to Lt. Cmdr. Miyazki. The whole operation is being monitored by the US military with a phony Sgt. Scott, Regis Toomey, planted there to make the Japanese spies feel that both Eddie, as an American traitor and spy for Japan, and Sgt. Scott, a real flesh and blood person, are legit.Getting in touch with his Japanese contact in the Canal Zone a Mr. Araki, Dr. Hugh Ho Chang, Eddie is told to get all the information he can from Sgt. Scott about it's, the US military in the Canal Zone, defenses. Eddie also finds out that the "dead" Peggey Harrison is very much alive vacationing there undercover as a German tourist named Sandra Borough who not only changed her name but her hair, she dyed it blond obviously to look more Aryan,and blows her cover when she foolishly rekindles her love affair with him. This leads to Peggy being caught by the Japanese spies, and together with their German allies, boiled to death in a steam or Turkish bath.Eddie has it out at the end of the movie with Lt.Cmdr. Miyazaki and even though he does the UCLA cheerleader in he ends up losing his life but eventually stops Miyazki's master plan to bring down he US with a coordinated outside Japanese military and inside Japanese sabotage assault on America.The movie "Betrayal from the East" is done in a "Now it can be told" style narrative with syndicated columnist Drew Pearson inserted into the film giving it's both prologue and epilogue. Pearson telling the audience how close we were from being taken over by the Japanese Empire really hits home.For all the Japanese meticulous planning it all in the end came apart because of the bravery and self-sacrifice of men and women like Eddie Carter and Peggy Harrison who put, and lost, their lives on the line in order to stop them.

I taped Betrayal From the East when BBC2 screened during the early hours at the beginning of this year (2006). They screened several obscure movies at this time.Japan has sent several spies to California to get hold of secrets of the Panama Canal. Two spies fall in love, but the woman is killed by the Japanese. The other spy bites the dust during the shoot out at the end.The cast includes Lee Tracy, Nancy Kelly (Tarzan's Desert Mystery, The Woman Who Came Back) and Richard Loo.This is quite an enjoyable little movie.Rating: 3 stars out of 5.