Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

bkoganbing I Was An American Spy is a remarkable film for two reasons. First it's one of the few non-westerns that director Lesley Selander did in his career. Secondly I'm surprised that this story did not rate A picture treatment with a bigger name actress other than Ann Dvorak. Dvorak was on the downward slope of her career at this point.That being said Dvorak gives a wonderful performance as the saloon entertainer Claire Phillips who married a GI stationed in the Phillipines the day after Pearl Harbor. When her husband Douglas Kennedy is killed in action she not only survives among the Japanese, but builds an extensive spy network and helps prisoners with food and gives valuable intelligence for sabotage working closely with American and Filipino guerrillas. Her main contact is Gene Evans heading up all the guerrilla activity in the islands, a role similar to what John Wayne does in Back To Bataan. Remarkably when she was caught she was kept several months in prison and was found nearly starved to death according to the Wikipedia article on Claire Phillips. They kept her alive in the hopes she'd crack and give the Japanese information. The woman had the right stuff for sure, she never did. I doubt though her rescue was in real life quite as action filled as it is in this film.Notice should also be taken of Richard Loo once again playing a Japanese soldier, in this case a colonel she makes a monkey out of. Loo had a career of playing cruel Japanese soldiers during World War II. Loo is given a bit more depth in this film than normally.A nice B film that rated A picture treatment of a real American hero.

lord woodburry This movie deserved more reviews than it received. I recall seeing it many years ago on the BIG SHOW, the 3PM movie shown on NBC in the 1960s. Mrs. Claire 'High Pockets' Phillips (Ann Dvorak) was left stranded by the American defeat in the Philippians. The Island fell to the Japanese. American civilians are being interned.Mrs Philippe manages to persuade Japanese authorities to leave her at liberty under flimsy Spanish identification papers. Behind their backs she is helping Filipino guerrillas and American soldiers in hiding. Can the rouse last until the Americans return? The acting by Ann Dvorak was superbly complimented by Richard Loo's performance as the enemy Colonel Masamato.I was surprised that this film did not receive a revival when the movie THE GREAT RAID came out in 2005.One commentator expressed doubt in Mrs Phillipe's exploits including following her husband's unit through the jungle. Americans of that generation unlike US people of later times had incalculable courage.

blanche-2 Ann Dvorak is real-life spy Claire Phillips in "I Was an American Spy," a 1951 film also starring Gene Evans (known to baby boomers as the father in My Friend Flicka on TV) and with a prologue and an appearance at the end of the film by General Mark Clark.Though the movie takes the usual dramatic license, it does tell the true story of Claire Phillips, a woman living in Manila with her daughter when the war broke out. After she becomes a widow, Phillips helps the Americans by changing her identity and starting a gentlemen's club in Manila, which becomes popular with the Japanese soldiers. From her club, she provides information, food, boots, and medicine to the soldiers and prisoners of war (although if prisoners of war were mentioned in the film, I missed it). Her code name is "High Pockets" because she would put notes in her brassiere.If Claire Phillips did a third of what Ann Dvorak portrays in this film -- and I think actually she did much more -- one can see why she was given the Medal of Freedom. I do think the beginning, with her following her husband's battalion around is probably a little fanciful. I mean, walking around in the jungle by yourself - is anyone that foolhardy.Ann Dvorak is wonderful as Claire. She portrays the woman's bravery, finesse, sophistication, coolness, pluck, and her fear and suffering. An underrated actress who usually played supporting roles and retired from the screen after marrying her third husband in 1952, Dvorak shows that Warner Brothers should have given her better movies.I thought this was a very good, compelling story of a courageous woman who served our country.

Robert W. Anderson This is a good movie about a real life character. It has to be viewed in the context of the time. It was shortly after the war and the wounds left by the Japanese treatment of prisoners of war were still deeply felt. Some of the acting is a little over the top by today's standards. But, watch it, and try to imagine going through what these people (the allied POW's) went through. I enjoyed it. And I appreciate their sacrifice.