AllMovie

The plot of the Pine-Thomas adventure quickie Submarine Alert is more than a little beholden to Hitchcock's The 39 Steps. Richard Arlen plays FBI radio engineer Lee Deerhold, who turns bitter and vindictive when he is abruptly fired. Actually, his termination was engineered by his FBI superiors, so that Deerhold will be susceptible to a job offer from a gang of Nazi saboteurs. When Deerhold finally gets wise to what's going on, he finds himself being hotly pursued by practically everyone else in the picture. The better-than-average cast includes Wendy Barrie as undercover agent Ann Patterson, Nils Asther as a mysterious doctor, and Abner Biberman, Marc Lawrence and Dwight Frye as various villains.