Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

There's not much to say about Waterfront. It's a typical PRC production with the usual cheap sets and corny dialog and a cast of forgettable players for the most part. It's also a product of its times, a World War II era espionage film.But this one has a pair of acting professionals who in their time managed to create entertainment out of less than this. J. Carrol Naish and John Carradine are a pair of Nazi spies and Naish does an incredibly stupid thing. He gets robbed of his code book while carrying it on his person at the same time Carradine is over from Berlin on a mission.Unfortunately Carradine can't even find out what the mission is without the code book. So even after getting back with a couple of murders the mission whatever it was still can't get done. Carradine and Naish really loath each other and spend the entire film criticizing what each other did.You have to credit these two. John Carradine with that lean and sinister countenance and that menacing voice and J. Carrol Naish that most chameleon of players who could blend into a role of any ethnic and racial type imaginable. Waterfront becomes a great exercise in watching a pair of the best professionals working to make a really laughable film somewhat entertaining.

Dr. Karl Decker(J. Carrol Naish)is a well known and respected optometrist with an office on a San Francisco waterfront. It is not common knowledge that he is a front man for a cell of the Third Reich. A henchman named Marlow(John Carradine)is to arrive from Germany and collect a code book full of top-secret information; but Decker is mugged and is robbed of the little black book. An upset Marlow makes the rounds visiting possible German Americans, who may have the book. It is not above him to use terror tactics on those with relatives in concentration camps. The cast also includes: Maris Wixon, Edwin Maxwell, John Bleifer, and Olga Fabian.

**SOME SPOILERS** Nothing new here in this B movie about a Nazi spy network working out of San Francisco. At the very beginning of the movie we see what's obvious the Brooklyn not Golden Gate Bridge as San Francisco optometrist Carl Decker, J. Carrol Nash, is mugged by this dock worker Adolf Mertz as he's leaving his office.Decker who's secretly working for the Nazi gestapo as a spy had this secret decoder book on him that Mertz took and is in no way going to report it to the police. It becomes certain that Mertz was no ordinary mugger but someone who knew how important that book is and now is willing to sell it back to Decker for a hefty price. Decker's controller Victor Marlow, John Carradine, is sent from Germany to check out Decker's progress and what he's up to but is really interested in taking over the Nazi West Coast spy operations himself.With the knowledge that the secret decoder book is in Mertz's hands both Decker & Marlow track him down to this gin mill on the docks named the Anchor Bar & Café owned by Oscar Zimmermann, John Bleifer, who also happens to be a Nazi spy. Marlow going on his own murders Mertz and dumps his body in San Francisco Bay but comes up empty with the secret book which ended up in Zimmermann's office safe. Zimmermann working together with Max Kramer,Edwin Maxwell, another Nazi spy seems to be completely ignorant of what Decker, the head Nazi spy in the city,is involved with! Which goes to show just how ineffective the entire Nazi espionage department was and why it had a lot to do with Germany untimely losing WWII. Meanwhile the treacherous Marlow is now targeting Zimmemann who's trying to blackmail him. This leads to Zimmerman getting himself shot and killed by Marlow as he came to his office, to hand over his blackmail money, who then ends up taking off with the decoder book.As all this is happening pretty German-American girl Freda Hauser, Maris Wrixon, who works for Kramer and in who's house Marlow is a tenant has him threatened her mother Emma, Olga Fabian, that if she doesn't let him stay there he'll have the gestapo put her family, who are stranded in Germany, in a Nazi concentration camp. Marlow is so ridicules that he's willing to reveal his being a Nazi spy and risking being executed just to stay at the Hauser home? Was the food and the room that he stayed at so good that it was worth losing his life for?Marlow somehow finds out that a frightened Kramer is about to spill the beans on his Nazi comrades by confessing, in writing, his involvement with the spy ring in order to get a lighter sentence. It's then that he again goes into action with him sneaking into Kramer's office and murdering him just to keep Kramer from not only talking to the police but implicating himself, and Decker, as well as being Nazi spy's.Things start to go very bad for Decker as his spy network of 19 men gets busted by the FBI and he goes into hiding in this waterfront dive only to have himself get tracked down and shot by his fellow Nazi spy Marlow. The ever so eager to impress his superiors back in Berlin Marlow not only feels that Decker let the Fatherland and his Fhurer down but that he can do a far much better job of spying on the United States.The police in the film are almost as incompetent as the Nazi spy's are as they mistakenly arrest Freda's boyfriend Jerry Donovan, Terry Frost, for the murder of her boss Kramer! This made no sense at all since he was Kramer's best friend and there was nothing stolen, except Kramer's secret confession, from his office. We later see what a total jerk Marlow is when Olga now not caring what happens to her relatives back in Germany tells her daughter Freda that he's is working for the Nazi gestapo and is spying on America, which the arrogant and not so bright Marlow himself told her! Both her and Freda decide to go to the police and have Jerry, who's being framed for Kramer's murder, released with this new and explosive piece of evidence. Marlow getting weirder and more obnoxious by the minute then tries to kidnap both Freda and Olga and take them back home with him to Nazi Germany? In a German U-boat? In the wild shootout that follows with the police who were alerted about Marlow's bizarre behavior, by a number of tenants in Olga's rooming house, he ends up getting cold-cocked by Butch, Billy Nealson, one of the tenants and falls down a staircase and on his head, no damage there. It's then that police come on the scene and grab and arrest him with Butch breaking his right fist that he smashed into Marlow's jaw.One of the lesser efforts by Hollywood in showing the American public how dangerous the Nazis were but as usual making them so ineffective that those watching the movie back then wondered to themselves how they got as far as they did in almost winning WWII, against more then three quarters of the world's population and nine tenths of it's economic power base, in the first place?

Dr. Carl Decker runs an optometrist shop on the San Francisco waterfront, but he also doubles as a Nazi spy for the Bay area. Decker is robbed of his code book, which also contains the names of all the enemy agents in the area. Decker and Marlow, another spy who just arrived in San Francisco to have his orders decoded by Decker, go off in search of the present owner of the book, who is also one of the Nazi spies operating on the west coast. Marlow, however, has a nasty streak to him, blackmailing the owner of a boarding house owner, Mrs. Hausner with impending threats to her family still living in Germany, and not being shy about using his gun when the situation arises. Marlow eventually shoots another Nazi collaborator Kramer, who is running out and Marlow believes will rat on him and Decker, and the crime is pinned on Jerry Donovan, the fiancé of Mrs. Hauser's daughter, Freda. Eventually Marlow has to prevent the Maxwell murder from coming back to him, while avoiding capture at the same time. Pretty good war time espionage flick with good performances from Carradine and Naish. The rest of the cast is standard for a PRC production. The climax of the film is really a drawback, lacking much excitement and seemingly rushed. Rating, 7.