Waterfront

Waterfront (1944), directed by Steve Sekely, is one of those B-movies that was so ubiquitous in America until the end of World War II. A production of PRC Studios, Waterfront is entertaining for its pacing as well as its unusual plot, about a pair of Nazi agents (John Carradine and J. Carrol Naish) trying to recover a missing book containing the names of every German agent operating in America. One wonders, watching it in the hands of a modestly talented director such as Sekely, what a filmmaker such as Fritz Lang might have done with this storyline. It has come down to us in a scratched, grainy, and somewhat worn but watchable print, nicely transferred as far as its condition will allow; the most serious flaws are the occasional missing frames and slight gaps in the soundtrack. The audio is consistent, however, and allowing for the budget price, this is a better than decent release. The six programmed chapters break the plot down well enough, and the disc opens to a simple single-layer menu automatically on start-up.