The Seventh Survivor
During the Second World War, a German spy goes on the run, carrying important news about a U-Boat campaign. The ship he is traveling aboard is hit by a torpedo. The spy winds up on a lifeboat with other survivors, one of whom is a counterintelligence agent who reveals the German spy's true identity.
- Year: 1942
- Country:
- Genre: War, Drama
- Studio: British National Films
- Keyword:
- Director: Leslie S. Hiscott
- Cast: Austin Trevor, Linden Travers, John Stuart, Martita Hunt, Frank Pettingell, Jane Carr
Passengers from a torpedoed ship are forced to take refuge in a lighthouse with the captain of the U-boat that sank them. It transpires, quickly, that the Captain is there to rendezvous with a Nazi agent who was travelling on the recently sunken ship, but there is also a pursuing British agent in the mix - add to which the two keepers on the rock already, and we have all the ingredients for this espionage escapade. To be honest, it's got way too much verbiage, and aside from some typically tart contributions from Martita Hunt is a distant, and poor, cousin of Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" (1944) without the jeopardy of someone becoming shark fodder. The story itself is fine, but really poorly executed: handcuffs, locked doors and pistols are no match for the agents of either side and by the end I almost felt dizzy with all the machinations that took place in a building the size of my bathroom. It is not a terrible film, resources were scarce in 1944 - but it serves as neither morale boosting nor propagandist - and I struggled a bit to find it's purpose.