Studio: Famous Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Sam Buchwald, Dan Gordon, Seymour Kneitel, Isidore Sparber
Short Synopsis
Clark Kent and Lois Lane are held under house arrest in Yokohama as prisoners of war. Every night, as the clock strikes eleven, Superman slips out through the barred window of Clark's room, sinks a warship or drops a bridge, and climbs back in, replacing the grille behind him. He takes care never to be seen, but one night Lois spots him leaping between rooftops and tells Clark's empty room that the saboteur must be Superman. Her guards overhear, and posters go up across the city: one more act of sabotage and the American girl reporter will be executed. Superman, not having seen them, wrecks another ship and is buried under a fall of steel girders; by the time he digs himself out and reads the warning, Lois is being marched before a firing squad. He shields her from the bullets, scatters the executioners and flies her out. Interviewed on a ship docking in America, Lois says that Clark is still a prisoner but Superman has promised to look after him. In Yokohama the sabotage continues.
Why It Matters
- It is the strangest premise in the series, Superman as a nightly saboteur behind enemy lines who must keep his identity secret from his own captors, and the clockwork structure, with the eleventh hour striking over each raid, gives it a tension the gangster films lack. The Japanese guards are drawn in wartime caricature.
- The film marks the point where the series became war propaganda outright, which the Fleischer entries had only hinted at. National Comics never renewed the copyright, so the film is freely available.
Notes and Trivia
- No voice cast is credited; the Famous Studios entries of late 1942 used Lee Royce and Barbara Willock in place of Bud Collyer and Joan Alexander.
- Dan Gordon's co-writer Bill Turner also wrote Japoteurs, the series' other Japanese-front film.
- See also: Superman: Japoteurs (1942), Superman: Showdown (1942), Superman: Jungle Drums (1943).
