Neil Doyle What really weakens what could have been a good narrative is the attempt to insert light hearted comic elements into the plot of PACIFIC RENDEZVOUS. Instead of playing it as straight drama, what could have emerged as a timely romantic drama about breaking the Japanese code during WWII becomes a trivial piece of fluff with an absurd spotlight on the silly character played by Jean Rogers.She's the girlfriend of our hero (Lee Bowman) and does him no favors when it comes to helping the war effort crack the code. For sheer stupidity (and to make her character seem "cute" at all times), she slips dozens of sleeping pills in his coffee so he can get some rest from a heavy schedule of solving the code and ignoring her.And throughout the movie she pouts, bounces around and shows jealousy of any other female who pursues Bowman, as for example female spy Mona Maris. Her acting is dreadful enough to bring the story down to the level of irritating fluff where it remains until the final reel.An interesting cast headed by Lee Bowman, Russell Hicks, Mona Maris, Carl Esmond, Hans Conreid, Curt Bois and several other good players is defeated by a silly script which reduces the whole thing to a B-budget MGM programmer which played the lower half of double features in the '40s.

Michael Morrison Looking at some of the other comments, I started to wonder if they and I had seen different movies.Or maybe they were just in a bad mood while watching.Regardless, I loved this movie. I found the performers -- mostly un- or little-known actors -- very good and likable. Even the bad guys displayed a certain charm.The dialog was often clever, and often downright funny.The story itself was perhaps not edge-of-the-seat exciting -- I mean, heck, of course the good guys were gonna win; after all, it was a wartime film -- but it kept a willing viewer watching.If you've not seen this, I recommend it. Just remember: Context, context, context. Remember when it was made, and what was going on in the world.And, as always, suspend your disbelief. Relax and enjoy.

sol1218 **SPOILERS** A bit, to put it mildly, over the top as well as heads of the audience watching the film "Pacific Rendezvous" is so overloaded with complicated sub-plots that it just lose it, in trying to simply explain itself, well before the movie is even over.Were shown right at the beginning of the movie that the Japaneses Navy, in the spring of 1942, has not only gone beyond the Hawaiian islands but within twenty miles outside off San Francisco in sinking US munition and transport ships. This has the Secretary of the Navy Edward Fielding have his intelligence department work overtime in the fact that someone is feeding the "Japs" the navy's secret code. This code tells what the rendezvous points are of every war and transport ship departing the states for the Pacific war-zone.It's then that out of nowhere pops up the smiling and comical William "Wild Bill" Gordon, Lee Bowman, who somehow gets himself in the US Navy as an officer no less. "Wild Bill" in order to prove his patriotism for his country is now itching for a chance to take on the "Japs" on the high seas in deadly naval combat engagements.It turns out that the bragging and not that all secretive "Wild Bill" in trying to impress the beautiful but scatterbrain Eline Carter, Jean Rogers, blew his cover as a code breaking expert. "Wild Bill" tells Eline, who wanted nothing to do with him at first, that he in fact is the person who, using a pseudonym, wrote what's considered to be the definitive work on code breaking. That book is now the bible in every nations intelligence department including the USA. This has Eline tell her Uncle John Carter (Russell Hicks), who assistant to the Navy Secretary, who "Wild Bill" really is! The guy who wrote the master code breaking book of all times. A shocked "Wild Bill" is soon sent to the safety of a cushy desk job at US Naval Intelligence in D.C not the Pacific war-zone that he's just dying to participate in.The movie has "Wild Bill" figurer out the Japaneses code, which was a piece of cake for him, in no time at all. Even after he almost overdosed, in Eline trying to get him to get some rest, on a bottle of sleeping pills that was slipped into his coffee.It turned out that the US Navy's biggest problem was to trick the "Japs" into thinking that their code wasn't broken. This would have the Japanese Navy attack ,and expose itself to the US navy's 16 inch guns, a phantom US troop convoy being shipped to the Pacific while the real convoy was some 300 miles in the other direction out of harms way! Of course with all these complications and mind games in the movie you have to have some comic relief and that's where Eline and "Wild Bill" come in with their screwball comedy routine.It's amazing that Eline, despite being the niece of the assistant to the Secretary of the Navy, wasn't put under lock and key for the duration of the war. The girl was nothing but trouble in her almost mindless way of doing more damage to her country then the entire Nazi, not "Jap",spy ring operating in D.C.The Nazi spy ring, helping their ally in WWII Japan, actually infiltrated the home of the head of Naval intelligence Cmdr. Brenman, Paul Cavanagh, with Nazi woman spy Olivia Kerlov, Mona Maris, becoming his secret lover. The commander not realizing until it was too late that Olivia is spying for the enemy gets himself blown away when he tried to catch Olivia in the act.****SPOILER FROM THIS POINT ON***Now with heat, as well as FBI, on her back Olivia is forced by her superiors to "out" fellow Nazi spy and foreign journalist Adre Leemouth, Carl Esmond, in order to throw them off the track. By now knowing that their, or the Japanese, code has been broken the Nazis kidnap both "Wild Bill" together with Eline, to make "Wild Bill" talk, in order to get the new US Navy rendezvous point to radio back to their Japanese allies. This leads the FBI and police straight to the Nazis hideout in that the rendezvous point that "Wild Bill" gave them was in fact the address to their secret hideout in Washington D.C!

Dick-42 Ludicrous violations of the most basic security regs are only the beginning. It's hard to see how they achieved such abysmal trash on such a low budget. I turned it off once, then got curious to see if it could get any worse. It did.