Fly by Night (1942) Reviews

The innovative direction of Robert Siodmak lifts the inexpensive imitation-Hitchcock Fly By Night well above the ordinary. Richard Carlson plays young intern Jeff Burton, who impulsively offers a lift to an odd-looking gentlemen (Miles Mander). It soons turns out that Jeff's passenger is an inventor has just escaped from a shady sanitarium, where he has been held prisoner by Nazi spies. When the stranger turns up dead, poor Jeff is held on suspicion of murder. Escaping, he forces innocent bystander Pat Lindsay (Nancy Kelly) to pose as his wife and drive him around in search of the genuine killers. Eventually, of course, Pat falls in love with Jeff and accepts his protestations of innocence, but not before both have fallen into the clutches of those pesky Nazis. The film's ironic payoff is a honey, beautifully enacted by spy-flick veterans Albert Basserman and Martin Kosleck. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi