They Raid by Night (1942) Poster

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4/10
Warlike action in Norway with ridiculous budget and secondary actors
ma-cortes18 November 2009
The picture is set during German invasion of Norway, the historical events are the following : The invasion began on April 9, 1940. The German Navy and Airforce led the operation . The Hitler plan relied on surprise to avoid interception by the British and to prevent Norwegian forces from mobilizing. The sudden appearance of naval task forces took Norwegian defenders by surprise and allowed airfields around Oslo , Tondheim and Stevenager to be captured by the German intact. German forces at Trondheim advanced and linked up with forces in Oslo. Norwegian forces in central and southern began to surrender. In northern Norway British and French troops fighting against Germans in Narvik. But the Allied decided to pull out of Norway , evacuating forces from Narvik. Norway's royal family and government fled to Britain. Then the British staff assigns a dangerous mission to Canadian officer Owen (Lyle Talbot) to Norway to prepare for a ride to be executed by Allied and especially by the British Royal Navy. His aim also includes freeing a General who is being prisoned by the Nazis at a concentration camp. He's accompanied by Lieutenant Eric(George Neise) and sergeant Harry ( Charles Rogers). In Norway contact a waif-blind man. But Inga (Jane Duprez ) a Norwegian gorgeous girl to whom Eric was once betrothed is now a collaborationist of Nazis and she betrays them.

This is average and low-budgeted movie full of stock-shots of explosions and documentary footage from ships and cruisers. The director is genuinely skillful in the hectically edited cutting room and smartness from pressure exerted by the minimum budget, using even photographs as backgrounds.The movie is starred by B-series actors as Lyle Talbot who terminated his career working for Edward Wood Jr in 'Plan 9 from outer space' and 'Glen and Glenda' ; Charles Rogers , a secondary actor and director of films for Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. And Jane Duprez who had a successful beginning with 'Four feathers' and 'Thief of Bagdag' but finished doing smallest pictures, here she plays a collaborationist or ¨Quisling¨ who was a Norwegian prime minister whose collaboration with the Nazis meant his name became a term meaning traitor.The film is regularly directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet. Spencer Gordon along with George B Seitz were the fathers of the American serial. Bennet' first was a stunt-men in the Seitz's serials. Later on, he struck out on the serial world and went on making serial until 1956, the last year of serial production by American Company. Bennet co-directed exciting serials as ¨Zorro, Superman, Captain Video, Bat man and Robin, Brick Bradford¨ and several others. Bennet's reputation for getting surprising reactions from his actors at the appropriate time was partly explained by his habit of creeping up behind his players and firing blanks. His Westerns with Tim McCoy, Will Bill Elliott, Buck Jones and Ken Maynard are all imaginative, fast- movement and with rattling scenes. Right at the end of his career he directed Sci-Fi as ¨submarine Seahawk¨ and ¨Atomic Submarine¨and again Westerns as ¨The bounty killer'and ¨Requiem for a gunfighter¨.
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3/10
Cardboard characters played by cardboard actors
Asgardian10 May 2004
I should have seen this ambush coming, from the very first office/room whose walls were constructed out of curtains. This movie, amongst others, was required pre-school for mega-talents to come, eg Edward D Wood Jr. Actors walking past painted backdrops, actors arriving through one curtain, and leaving by another, characters finding it difficult to get in & out of cars, none of this is an element of making fine films. It is however, common place for a movie made on a budget shorter than a shoe-string. A movie only for those who collect quantity, rather than quality.
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4/10
I promised that you all will be executed this morning, And I Keep My Word!
sol121829 January 2006
Warning: Spoilers
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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5/10
Watchable, but without greatness
jalilidalili22 February 2007
Warning: Spoilers
What can I say. I started watching the movie with no expectations at all and were slightly disappointed at some parts, but actually amazed at some other parts.

One of the biggest let downs was the post-production. Apart from taking a lot of photage used for either documentaries, news reals or who knows what else, the sound effects were really bad. You'll hear a second long sound of a propeller looping for a very long time, simply because they didn't have any other more realistic sound effect to make it sound like they're on the airport.

Too many things happen to easily and that makes the film unrealistic. Don't get me wrong, it's not that the commandos would have an easy job (on the contrary, that part is good), but some other parts... Well, they just happen to stumble on everything at once, so the whole thing can happen within a time-frame of a single day (if not less). Judging by instructions given to one of the rescue party, the entire interrogation and escape and travel tot he meeting point lasted no more then three hours... Those were the downsides. Not to mention the clearly visible painted scenes in the background and people walking around the same rock every time they entered the forest.

Still some other parts were really fresh and thrilling.

Spoiler ahead!!! I really liked the way how commando captain Bob got out of the interrogation. The German officer offered him a smoke, which he naturally accepted. Upon being put to the lie detector, he answered to all given meeting locations with NO, but before the interrogator would ask for the right place, the captain burned himself with a cigarette, so the lie detector would show the answer given at that time a lie. For me, this was one of the highlights of the film and a very original idea. The lie detector has been done in many movies (although I think this is the oldest one I've seen using a lie detector), but there was always a person lying and trying to pass it off as the truth. This time it was the truth, but it was passed off as a lie, which in my opinion was just brilliant.

Another part I really loved was the character of Inge. Her fiancé Erik was one of the people in the rescue party and they met. She betrayed them. There was no remorse, but for the first time I've heard somebody explaining how it was like for the people left behind! She explained they found out she helped Eric escape, she blamed Eric for the death of her father and her own imprisonment. Her character was the one that really turned the tables. This wasn't another "We're heroes, fighting for freedom, without the slightest speck of dirt upon us" movie, but there were also some realistic portraits of real people handling war time situations.

Also the fact that Eric cracks under torture quite fast is a commendable scene. Most of the people fighting weren't great heroes, who could stand for inhumane tortures, but were ordinary men with a breaking point - and when that point was reached, they broke.

End of spoilers! So the characters, although not developed enough, are still much deeper then in most war movies (even compared to most successful and big hit war movies), unfortunately all the other elements showed it was just a second rate production with very limited budget.

It would be interesting to see a remake, after all, how many movies have you seen covering the Allied offensive against Norway (one of the pre-operations that made D-Day possible)?
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3/10
The epitome of silly propaganda.
mark.waltz6 November 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Unlike 1943's "Edge of Darkness", a Warner Brothers war movie about how the residents of a Norwegian fishing village fought back against the Nazi's, "They Raid By Night" is the story of the Commandos, a small group of American and British military personnel, who posed as Nazis to get a Norwegian General out of a German prison camp. They present the Nazis as pretty dumb here, not recognizing the American or cockney dialects of the men in their own uniforms. While there are some interesting twists (particularly the use of a grenade as part of a suicide bombing), the film is overall pretty silly, even with its nice use of stock footage apparently of the Norwegian coastline. Of the cast, only leading hero Lyle Talbot and June Duprez (in a rather unnecessary role) have any name recognition. The Nazis are appropriately snarly, but altogether, the film feels rather rushed together and is ultimately unsatisfying.
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3/10
Stiff and lacking excitement
planktonrules29 December 2010
Warning: Spoilers
This film stars a man well acquainted with B-movies, Lyle Talbot. He is cast as the head of a commando team that is to infiltrate Nazi-controlled Norway in order to rescue a beloved Norwegian general—a man who could then lead the Free Norwegian troops in the fight against the Axis. By the 1940s, Talbot was no longer the action hero type but he was the paunchy B-movie type—and was frequently seen in various low-budget films. At times you can see the low budget, such as the German soldiers with not even a trace of a German accent (or accents like Bela Lugosi's), winter scenes where the actors are obviously walking past a film screen with the snow scene projected behind them, too many uses of stock footage and some very stiff acting (note: this is only an asset if you are making a porno movie). In fact, nothing about this action film is particularly action-packed, as the Nazis are mostly morons and the good guys PERFECTLY toss grenades and manage to make every bullet count—so there isn't really much suspense or sense of realism. It's clearly a cut-rate WWII propaganda film…very cut-rate. As a result, it's not especially watchable—especially when there are so many better films like it already. This is clearly NOT another "Heroes of Tellemark"! Dumb and unconvincing—and my score of 3 is perhaps a bit charitable!
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2/10
Norwegian Wood
wes-connors20 April 2008
Lyle Talbot (as Robert "Bob" Owen) fights Nazis in Norway, during World War II. Helping him out are native son George N. Neise (as Erik Falken) and British wisecracker Charley Rogers (as Harry Hall). Mr. Neise's old acquaintance June Duprez (as Inga Beckering) adds femininity and intrigue to the cast. Once engaged to Neise, Ms. Duprez has hooked up with properly accented Victor Varconi (as Otto von Ritter). Mr. Varconi gets the line, "My men have vays of making you talk." Spencer Gordon Bennet's "They Raid by Night", subtitled "A Story of the Commandos", features a very catchy theme song, and is good for a few unexpectedly good laughs.

** They Raid by Night (6/19/42) Spencer Gordon Bennet ~ Lyle Talbot, June Duprez, Victor Varconi, George N. Neise
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4/10
They Foul Up At All Hours Of The Day
boblipton7 June 2020
Lyle Talbot leads a commando mission to occupied Norway to get a Norwegian general out of a POW camp. Opposing him is Victor Varconi as the local German Kommandant.

This PRC production has all the hallmarks of people trying to save money, including using drawn postcards as setting shots. The commando group is the most incompetent bunch of such I have ever seen. They are spotted within a couple of minutes, rescued by a blind man, and eventually leave him to stand guard with a gun over their prisoners.

The director is Spencer Gordon Bennett, who spent a good deal of the sound era directing serials. I am not expert on those, but of his features, I have yet to see one worth watching. Despite this, he continued to direct into the 1960s. I suppose he was cheap.
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7/10
It's not so bad.
truerock7420 April 2005
Yes, the production values are lacking. Yes, there are abundant plot holes -- however, for a Poverty Row war movie from the 1940s, the movie is actually not half bad. While there are numerous shots of stock footage and people walking in to poorly painted curtains doubling for the winter-bound grandeur that is Norway, the acting is better than one would expect in a movie of the genre. The writing seems to be a half-tick better than the average fare of the time and genre. The fellow playing the Nazi commander isn't the normal "one note" evil Nazi so often seen both then and later in such movies. The fellow playing the chief commando on the raid is fairly effective, if not entirely believable in the part.

All in all, I recommend it for those who are World War II buffs and have 70 minutes to kill.
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5/10
Watchable PRC War Film
verbusen4 November 2020
This film is based on the British Commando raids on Norwegian ports (Operation Archery, Operation Anklet) that took place in December 1941. It uses footage from that operations newsreels. This is PRC made so you will see some really fake looking backgrounds from blown up photos but in the year 2020 you may be amused at this. Surprisingly, I watched most of this film only skipping the idiotic middle padding. It has a pretty cool turn of events that reminded me of a scene in The Guns of Navarone. Lyle Talbot fans will like this one and the story is not played childishly so I give it a 5, it's perhaps higher when rated against the rest of the PRC catalog.
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6/10
good flick
drystyx16 July 2011
This is a war movie which is about occupied area.

The surface plot of three Allied men on a mission in the occupied area to rescue a general is a smokescreen for the real story.

The real story comes with the clever writing, writing so clever that even today many people don't notice it, but very evident to those with writing experience.

The real story is the people of the occupied area, and what they go through. The chief characters on the surface go through the usual cat and mouse game of espionage.

Meanwhile, the civilian characters, notably three of them, a blind man, a beautiful woman, and a toady, show what life is like for them, and what their aspirations are. The entire film is really about them, but it is so cleverly written that it isn't seen by many people.

It is well thought out and entertaining as well. It flows much better than about any movie you find today. Thumbs up.
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3/10
Possibly a Scandinavian DeGaulle
bkoganbing29 June 2014
Warning: Spoilers
They Raid By Night is a wartime propaganda film on the cheap side from PRC Pictures. It follows the Hollywood's first rule about casting American actors in the lead, make them Canadian.

Lyle Talbot plays a Canadian leading a British commando raid into Norway to rescue a Norwegian army general who presumably will lead a Norwegian liberation army, possibly become a Scandinavian DeGaulle. As we know that never happened.

They sneak in and get to the camp to rescue Paul Baratoff playing the general. Along the way they are betrayed twice. One of the members of Talbot's team is George Neisse who is Norwegian who left a girl behind played by June Duprez. She's made herself quite comfortable with the new rulers and twice she betrays them. That's something that someone there should have figured out.

Victor Varconi plays the German colonel who just can't seem to get good help among his troops from the Fatherland.

All and all They Raid By Night strained credulity in 1942. I doubt we'll see a remake demanded.
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5/10
The Film Is Not A Masterpiece
film_poster_fan6 December 2022
Granted "They Raid By Night" is not one of the best films of 1942, but it certainly is not the worst. Lyle Talbot and Charley Rogers turn in good performances unlike the rest of the cast. Talbot who had been in many "A" pictures for Warner Brothers/First National in the 1930s was now appearing in "B" pictures in the 1940s through no fault of his own. He was one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild and the studios frowned on that and punished him, making it difficult for him to find work with the majors. One reviewer states the "film stars a man well acquainted with B-movies, Lyle Talbot" as though it was due to his lack of talent, which is not the case. The reviewer goes on to write that the film " not especially watchable-especially when there are so many better films like it already. This is clearly NOT another "Heroes of Tellemark"! Dumb and unconvincing." Unfortunately, he incorrectly spelled the title of the film he is citing. It is "Telemark" and Rotten Tomatoes gave the "Heroes of Telemark" a 67% rating and an average rating of 6.10/10, which is makes it fairly average.
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6/10
Worth Watching
tedserv2 November 2015
Warning: Spoilers
A couple of twists make it worth watching; The Quisling surprisingly - unpredictably - Gives his life for Norway, and not, so typical of Hollywood, when the situation is forced on him.

and- As mentioned by truerock74 , the Nazi isn't predictable. He totally disses the fiancé after she turns on her former- It doesn't conform the 'evil to the core' Nazi's of most films.

There's also good humor with what makes humor good: timing.

True, sets are almost funny in their crudeness, there's scenes that totally shoulda been re-shot, I can't imagine what some of the accents are supposed to be, and everyone good gets shot in the arm.

But it's likable as your grandfather's mutt.
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6/10
Pretty ambitious for PRC, but ...
morrisonhimself13 February 2022
With lots of potential, "They Raid by Night" was awfully static, with everything either obviously on a sound stage or stock footage.

A fairly talented cast was hampered by low production values, including that static set.

Lyle Talbot's last scene looked as if he were reading cue cards off stage so even the would-be inspiring lines were flat and so not inspiring they were boring.

Victor Varconi made a properly evil Nazi, except for his non-German accent. Even he couldn't do much to improve this.

Probably this is a movie for film students and Hollywood historians, but don't expect much entertainment.
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