at Internet Archive
Embarrassingly inept propaganda film that seems to have been hidden away from the public for almost 60 years, since it's release back in 1942, until the miracle of the DVD disc brought it back to be seen by a new, and stunned, generation of movie goers. It's the hight of WWII and the British want to start trouble for the Germans in occupied Norway by getting the Norwegian people to rise up against them. Sending a number of British agents into the country to try to rescue Norwegian General, and national hero, Heden lead to all of them getting captured and shot by the German Army.Desperate the British send a trio of secret agents lead by Capt. Robert Owens together with radio and all around handyman Sgt. Harry Hall and Norwegian patriot Let. Eric Falken to finally get Gen. Hayden out of the country and have him used on the BBC to rally his fellow countrymen to revolt against the hated Germans.Dropped into Norway by plane everything goes wrong for Owen's men almost as soon as they land. Eric's fiancée Inga spots him and, unknowing to Eric, being a German sympathizer reports him and his fellow agents to the local Gestapo. The feared and effective Gestapo act like a bunch of buffoons as their knocked out and disarmed by Eric & Co. after they first disarmed and arrested them. Helped by undercover Norwegian Agent, the towns blind beggar, Spandling, Owens has the three Gestapo officers tied up. The British agents put on the Germans uniforms that are, miraculously, perfect fits for Owens Falken & Hall even though the three are different in hight weight pants and suite size. The Germans trying to untie themselves and not at all feeling threatened by a blind man, Sandling, sitting guard over them have the shock of their lives when Sandling becomes the worlds first suicide bomber! Sandling blows himself the Germans and the entire building up in a massive explosion with a top secret Brtish super hand grenade that Owens gave him. The rest of the movie is all too predictable with the Germans making complete fools of themselves trying to capture the three British agents and screwing up at every opportunity.Owens and his men get to the prison camp where Gen. Haden is being held and have no trouble, being dressed in German Gestapo uniforms, in getting him out but need to get the general help for a broken arm he suffered during his rescue. Hiding in the cold Norwegian woods Owens sends Eric, who can speak Norwegian, into town to get help but he's again betrayed by Inga to the Gestapo. We later learn why Inga is so mad at her former lover Eric. Eric checked on her fathers sturdy and sea-bearing sailboat and held Eric responsible for her fathers death when he drowned in the dinky and water-logged dinghy that Eric left him when he tried to do the same thing, escape to freedom in England. The Germans again capture Owens, as Sgt. Hall gets away with Gen. Heden, and unlike with poor Eric whom they tortured almost to death the Germans try kindness with him by offering him a smoke. All this in order to get Eric to open up and tell them not only where Gen Heden is but what else is being planned by his superiors back in London in regards to the planned allied invasion of Norway.The ending of the movie makes you think that your watching a war movie about the D-Day invasion of France, with an armada of ships planes and thousands of allied troops storming the beaches, instead of a film about three commandos trying to get just one man out of Norway under the cover of darkness."They Raid by Night" is worth watching only because it has actor Lyle Talbot as it's top star playing the head of the British rescue team Capt. Robert Owens. Fame would smile on Talbot ten years later when he met and became involved with legendary "Bad Movie" director Edward Wood Jr. and was cast in four of his cinematic classics; "The Adventures of the Tucson Kid" and "Glen and Glenda" in 1953 "Jail Bait" in 1954 and what many consider to be Wood's greatest masterpiece his "Citizen Kane" the superb immortal and unforgettable "Plan Nine from Outer Space".
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