While reporting about a disarmament
conference, journalist Graham Stevens has a mysterious accident, right
after hinting that he was after something really big. However,
nobody seems to care too much about the accident, nobody but his
best friend, the cartoonist Brian Gaunt (Charles Farrell) and his sister,
society reporter Mary (Margaret Vyner). Their only clue though is a word, SASKA,
which Brian uses in one of his caricatures to smoke the villains, whoever
they are, out of their hole.
The very next day, Brian is invited by the minister of Grovnia, Peters
(Fritz Kortner) - which is rather surprising, since Peters seems to be the
only one at the conference trying to make peace, and thus has a splendid
reputation and everything. But of course, behind his mask, Peters try to
start a war between great Britain and Europe, because in the last war, he
had to see his daughter die a violent death. This war however Peters wants
to watch from the sidelines, and see the rest of Europe destroying Great
Britain ... and to spark the war, Peters has made up an ingenious plan: To
fly five remote controlled planes over London and bombard strategic
points, while nobody would expect an attack and everybody's still
pre-oocupied with the disarmament conference.
To cut a long story short, Peters almost succeeds, it's only in the
very last moment that Brian has figured it all out and can intervene - and
he can even prove that Peters was the brains behind the operation - but
when the authorities catch up with Peters they have to realize he has
already taken poison to escape the humiliation of defeat and arrest ...
Maybe, this film would have been much better with a higher budget that
would have allowed more impressive air attacks, and maybe the script
should have gone more for the story's satirical possibilities - but that
aside, Midnight Menace is an intelligent little thriller with
sci-fi elements that should make an entertaining 70 minutes.
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