JohnHowardReid Tim McCoy (Tim Dale), Billie Seward (Barbara), Joseph Crehan (Robinson), Ward Bond (Bob), Kane Richmond (Jack), Frank Layton (Matthews), Guy Usher (Benton), Francis McDonald (Jackson), Alphonse Ethier (W.T. Dale).Director: CHARLES C. COLEMAN. Screennplay: Harold Shumate. Photography: John S. Stumar. Film editor: John Rawlins. Western Electric Sound System. Copyright 24 March 1934 by Columbia Pictures Corp. No recorded New York opening. Australian release through Greater A.F.: 7 November 1934. 6 reels. SYNOPSIS: "Dedicated to that fighting legion without which a nation cannot exist-those unsung heoes of the storm: the telephone men!"COMMENT: High-speed car chases, a fight on a cable car, plus the dynamiting of a swollen river, all add up to plenty of fast-moving excitement for Tim McCoy fans. The support cast is solid too. I could list them one by one, but will content myself by listing Ward Bond, Joseph Crehan, and the most enticing Billie Seward.Technical credits are likewise admirably professional.

Leofwine_draca FREEDOM RADIO is another British propaganda movie of the Second World War, but at least it remembers to be entertaining. This time around the setting is Nazi Germany, where a number of good-hearted people become disillusioned by the rise of the Nazi party and their heavy handed ways, so they set up pirate radio broadcasts in order to combat the endless propaganda of the Nazi state. It's a little odd to see familiar British character actors like Raymond Huntley and Bernard Miles playing Germans without a hint of an accent, but the story feels fresher and more original than most and the characters are sympathetic. Things build to an appropriately moving climax.

Igenlode Wordsmith The title isn't promising, and certainly I could find nothing but disparagement for "Freedom Radio" when I looked it up before today's broadcast: 'tedious propaganda drama' (programme guide), 'outdated and unintentionally funny... accents totally unsuited to middle-European characters' (Radio Times). Maltin, meanwhile, doesn't even bother to give it a mention.So I was very pleasantly surprised to find it an intelligent drama about Germans in the 1930s who gradually come to realise that their country is becoming more and more totalitarian, and are pushed into an attempt at redressing the balance with the only weapon they can think of: the conviction that if only, somehow, they can get the truth out there, things will change. For our part we know, of course, that it didn't work; even they know they won't be able to get away with it indefinitely (although having an ally on the inside can prove invaluable...) But in a world where friends and neighbours are swept up by national loyalty and propaganda or become informers for their own personal profit, in a Nazi Germany that is not yet at war -- even a gesture at resistance can give hope.As a propaganda piece this is quite extraordinarily restrained: the entire cast are played (hence the 'accents' jibe -- might the reviewer have found comic Teutonic vowels less disturbing, perhaps?) as people 'like us', as ordinary Englishmen and women of the period, from the young workman to the nosy neighbour and the Society doctor. The young artist Otto, whose SS work gradually takes over his life, has the vocabulary of a thoughtless young public-school-boy; the Gestapo officer Rabenau who tracks the heroes down is an upright and keen-eyed Intelligence commander who could have stepped out of Fighter Command HQ, not a Prussian caricature. When you consider that the film was made in the darkest days of the Second World War, the decision not merely to show 'good Germans', but to show 'bad Germans' -- Nazi loyalists -- as human (and to eschew the use of heavy foreign accents to represent foreigners speaking in their own language) is impressive.If this film had been made in Hollywood, it would doubtless have featured a young Allied agent or second-generation American (like Karl von Austreim in Mary Pickford's "The Little American" of 1917 -- another film unfortunately written off as 'propaganda') to inspire the locals to acts of heroism. But there is no such facile audience-identification figure: we are forced to place ourselves in the position of pre-war Germans, those same Germans against whom the British cinema in 1941 might have been expected to whip up mindless hate. Instead, they're sympathetic characters. Some of them become ardent Nazi supporters; that doesn't make them less human. It only produces ultimately agonising conflict...Clive Brook, as ever, is superb as the thinking man's thinking man; Diana Wynyard brings conviction to the role of his wife, the actress whose talent brings favour from the Fuehrer himself. Raymond Huntley makes Rabenau a formidable yet admirable opponent who is never likely to be fooled for long, while the younger couple -- Derek Farr and Joyce Howard -- provide easy appeal to the eye as the young workman and his sweetheart.The production values betray a wartime budget: the obvious impossibility of shooting on location in Continental Europe, the stock footage of Nazi parades, and the restricted sets and shortage of extras -- for example, we only ever see Irena's stage triumphs from behind the curtain, and the Gestapo never seem to be able to muster more than half a dozen members at once. There is also a telltale moment when the supposed passage of the Budapest express is marked by the unmistakable shriek of an English locomotive whistle! The script, on the other hand, benefits from a similar parsimony. Little is stated outright if the information can instead be implied: especially in the opening sequences. We know the chilling truth behind the 'rest home' for an inconveniently hysterical witness -- the characters don't. Exposition is neatly avoided, and by and large the film displays an admirable subtlety and restraint. The exception, naturally, is in the rival radio broadcasts -- state propaganda on the one side, claims of debunking on the other -- and there were moments at the end when I felt that the content of the impassioned speeches was too obviously aimed at wartime audiences rather than the 1930s populace it supposedly addressed. But under the circumstances, and given the inevitable ending, the attempt at some kind of upbeat content is understandable.Frankly, the only reason I bothered to sit down to watch this in the first place was the presence of the names of Anthony Asquith and Clive Brook, both old friends from the silent era.... and I wasn't hoping for much. But I've seen some inferior films recently, and this, surprisingly, wasn't one of them: in fact, it reminded me rather of Leslie Howard's "Pimpernel Smith". Too 'British' for American viewers, perhaps: too 'outdated' for the modern generation. Personally, I found its depiction of a society of creeping totalitarianism both unsettling, and more than a little thought-provoking, even today.

bob the moo Dr Karl Roder is a German doctor who enjoys his practice and comfortable life in Germany in the late 1930's. However as the months pass he notices the Gestapo rising to power in the country, with many of his professional friends being 'disappeared' for the slightest of reasons. Eventually his student meeting of doctors is broken up as part of the new rules on gatherings. His first experience of the new regime firsthand is when he sees a minister decrying the ruling power only to be removed from the pulpit and later be reported dead in a twisted and deceitful report. Frustrated by what he sees happening, Roder turns to a radio building friend for help and soon he has made the first broadcast of Freedom Radio – but the Gestapo are soon trying to find him and shut him down.When screened on television this film still bares the certificate from the BBFC that rates it as suitable for 'adult' audiences meaning that this is actually part of the film. At the time I'm not sure why they felt this was appropriate for that rating but they did, certainly watching it didn't really give me any idea as to what was so bad about the content here. The film is set within Germany and shows some elements of the community (albeit Germans with good clean English accents as opposed to the Gestapo who have a forced accent!) that were willing to stand up and decry the actions of the Government. Maybe this is why it was rated A for adults, because it is easier to see a whole country as the enemy during a war rather than accept that the people are essentially just people. Anyway, aside from this bombshell (!) there is nothing really to the film that justifies seeing it and explains why it is so rarely seen these days.The plot goes down the roads of a standard type of thriller but it lacks any real thrills and the story is told without much in the way of excitement. The use of footage of Hitler himself makes the film slightly more interesting but the main narrative is lacking a real bite to keep me interesting. Looking abck now we all know the atrocities that were carried out in the name of Germany so the vague hinting about disappearing scientists etc is hardly shocking or informative, but maybe at the time it had audiences on the edge of their seat with revelations about concentration camps, but my god the realities of the places is much worse that what this film can depict. The cast are pretty solid but none of them really make any impression. Brook doesn't prove himself as leading man material in a performance that is fairly stilted and stiff. The support cast are pretty good with some emotional performances but I can't remember any of their names.Overall an interesting film in terms of the 'different' (at the time) things it does in regards mentioning camps, showing a German resistance and showing Hitler but in terms of narrative it is pretty dull, lacking a real tension. The shock effect is also gone as we are much more aware of the true horror than we were in 1941, this leaves very little for the modern viewer – hence it being pretty unknown nowadays.