Dreadfully Boring

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

A Nazi war criminal on the run after the end of World War II, assumes an Australian scientist's identity and sets up shop in England where he develops germ warfare experiments which he and his masters hope will return the Nazi regime to prominence. His plans are complicated though when he develops feelings for his pretty lab assistant.This British dramatic thriller was made very close to the end of the war, so its story revolving around an ex concentration camp commander who was notorious for carrying out sadistic experiments on inmates is one which must have been touching on a grim subject which was extremely recent at the time. The Nazi is played by Mervyn Johns who was familiar to me from the brilliant Ealing anthology horror film Dead of Night (1945) and he is once again very good in a character who is not presented as one dimensionally evil as you might expect. His feelings for his lab assistant bring out the humanity within him, which most probably is his downfall ultimately too. The story perhaps could have had more suspense in it and it is also maybe slightly over-long but I thought it was definitely an interesting one nevertheless. It ends on a blackly ironic ending, which finished things off on an appropriate note.

If in 1949 you were casting for a German leading part whom would you chose if it were not a German actor?Maybe Anton Walbrook or Curt Jurgens but not Mervyn Johns.It is bad enough that this escaped German POW has a Welsh accent,but he then kills an Australian doctor but still has the same voice.At a dance he meets the commander of the POW camp from where he escaped but is still not recognised.He is helped throughout by this Nazi cell which somehow exists in London despite the war having been over for 4 years.At ever twist and turn the illogicality of the plot hits you squarely in the face.The ending of course is pure irony.However at 99 minutes the film is far too long for one to give it the benefit of the doubt.Little wonder that it has not been shown on TV here.

A Nazi scientist escapes from a British POW camp. Instead of rushing back to Germany, he oddly sets up a lab in London and assumes the identity of an Australian researcher. There, he works on a biological warfare experiment. However, when the murdered Australian guy's niece arrives, the Nazi's plans could be in jeopardy.The biggest problem I had with this film was the ill-explained lack of a German accent in the Nazi (Mervyn Johns). He sounds 100% British. Had they said he had escaped to the UK from Nazi Occupied Europe it would have made a lot more sense. On the other hand, it is odd that "Counterblast" (also known as "Devil's Plot") is included in a cheap 20 DVD pack from Mill Creek, as this film is way too competently made. The acting (aside from the missing accent) is quite good and the story isn't bad. Well worth seeing and quite original.

A good solid piece of British movie making of its period. No classic but watchable. In the hands of a director like Hitchcock, and there are some very Hitchcockian themes here, this material would have made a minor classic. The former Concentration camp doctor's comeuppance (he is gassed in the hold of a ship being fumigated) is wonderfully ironic.The DVD watched was part of a 50 movie boxset from Mill Creek called Nightmare Worlds and the transfer is far from good. The image was fuzzy and broke up from time to time towards the end, and, somehow, presumably to save space on the disc, the frame had been cropped on all four sides. This was especially apparent during the opening credits and in a scene on a train where the evil Doctor and a padre are seated facing each other in a carriage having a conversation - all we see is their noses peeping out from the sides of the frame.