Escape in the Fog

Escape in the Fog

1945. USA. Directed by Budd Boetticher (credited as Oscar Jr.). Screenplay by Aubrey Wisberg. With Nina Foch, Otto Kruger, William Wright. Boetticher’s wartime spy thriller pleasurably mixes Freudian pop psychology, supernaturalism, and tradecraft. A battle-scarred Navy nurse, awakening from a nightmare in which a man is about to be murdered on the Golden Gate Bridge, finds the mysterious stranger standing at the foot of her bed. Very quickly they become enmeshed in a nasty bit of international espionage involving fifth columnists, double agents, and an extremely well-placed MacGuffin. Escape in the Fog was the last of Boetticher’s five B-movies for Columbia Pictures. According to Boetticher, the film was made in only 10 days on a minimal budget, and is enlivened by an intelligent performance by Nina Foch (the star of Joseph Lewis’s My Name Is Julia Ross) and the delightfully sinister character actors Otto Kruger and Ivan Triesault. 65 min.