Moviecut—I Escaped from the Gestapo

I Escaped from the Gestapo_720p(480P)

source: I Escaped from the Gestapo

I Escaped from the Gestapo

Dean Jagger stars in this wartime cheapie from Monogram as a forger of some reputation. The Gestapo which has set up some American headquarters at an amusement park arranges for Jagger's escape and they even cover up his escape by putting another body on railroad tracks with his ID. So without the authorities looking for him, Nazi agents John Carradine and Sidney Blackmer set up a print shop where Jagger can counterfeit currency of all kinds for many countries. This is part of a Gestapo diversity program, they do all kinds of dirty work from this headquarters. But Carradine and Blackmer are mostly into sabotage. Of course Jagger realizes he's a patriotic American at some point and starts sabotaging the saboteurs. I think you know where this is heading. It is amazing some of the wild stuff that was put into WW2 era films of that era. Especially from the poverty row studios like Monogram. Claptrap typical of the times.

A movie that would be confined to the dustbin of low-budget history if it were not infamous as the film Frances Farmer was making when she had her breakdown and was arrested in Hollywood, soon to be institutionalized for most of the rest of the decade. The notoriously cheap King Brothers of Monogram Studios must have wanted to use every scrap of film they had shot, for they use a very brief shot of Farmer, evidently taken on the only day of filming she completed on this project, in a montage sequence. The sight of Farmer, staring at the camera with a puzzled and perhaps frightened look on her face as she pulls a shawl over her head, is unforgettable and about the only thing worth remembering about this film.