Granted star-billing after his breakthru as boxing phenom KID GALAHAD/’37 behind Edward G. Robinson & Bette Davis, handsome, likable, tall (6'2" at Warners!, home of the scrimpy leading men), Wayne Morris's road to stardom screeched to a halt after this ill-considered rush job. A by-the-book Navy recruitment pic, co-stars Pat O’Brien & George Brent had become used to these B+ pics by now. This one, even with top tech & producers involved, drops to programmer level. Heck, even the stock footage and model ships phone it in. Submarine mates Morris & O’Brien, old pals who loved-and-lost Doris Weston (who she?) to fellow Navy man Regis Toomey, in for the wedding when an accident at sea scuttles any plans. Instead, new Commander Brent has them going out (or rather down) on a new assignment. O’Brien, whose position as Chief will land in Morris’s lap, runs roughshod on his crew while working ‘round the clock on a new underwater rescue tank. Good thing too since this experimental submersible will be needed during the War Games finale out at sea. Hard to fathom Frank Wead, Hollywood’s go-to Navy pen-man, behind this disjointed story. He mixes in all the right ingredients, then forgets to light the oven.* Frank McHugh helps out with comic relief (he’s almost funny, too), but this peacetime film is merely pre-war exercise with little at stake.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: *Frank ‘Spig’ Wead, an injured vet who specialized in military mores (usually hard-bitten commanders forced to send young recruits into harms way) well played by John Wayne in John Ford’s uneven/underrated THE WINGS OF EAGLES/’57. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/06/wings-of-eagles-1957.html
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