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Are you the optometrist?

Steven Hellerstedt | 10/17/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Veteran scene stealers J. Carroll Naish and John Carradine star in WATERFRONT, a movie about Nazi spies in America released a year before World War II ended.

Naish plays a San Franciscan optometrist who's an undercover Gestapo spy and Carradine an agent come to deliver a coded message. Unfortunately for all save the plot developers, Naish's little black code book was stolen just yesterday and the message cannot be read without it. The book must be recovered, of course, and what with Carradine and Naish being Nazis, innocents must pay in blood if they dare to stand in their way.

WATERFRONT is a very low budget thriller, and I wouldn't be surprised if 90% of its budget was applied to Naish and Carradine's salaries and half of the rest to pay for the prodigious amount of fog used in most of the outdoor scenes.

For all its humble beginnings, WATERFRONT is quite good. Naish and Carradine got reputations for stealing scenes because they would good actors, and their scenes together constitute the movie's high points. Director Steve Sekely was a Hungarian refuge and an accomplished pro behind the camera. There's nothing clumsy or amateurish about this one.

Of all action movies, war-time propaganda films seem to have the shortest shelf life. After the foreign menace is removed the movie's message becomes irrelevant. Not many of us are much worried about unassuming optometrist's plying their surreptitious trade in a major port city anymore. Still, this one has some life in it, if for no other reason than its inclusion of Naish and Carradine."