Enemy Agents Meet Ellery Queen ** (1942, William Gargan, Margaret Lindsay, Charley Grapewin, Gale Sondergaard, Sig Ruman, Gilbert Roland) – Classic Movie Review 10,510

‘ELLERY PITS YANKEE BRAINS AGAINST NAZI CUNNING… to bring you thrills!’

Director James P Hogan’s 1942 Columbia Pictures wartime mystery thriller Enemy Agents Meet Ellery Queen is William Gargan’s third and final shot at the detective Ellery Queen, in which he helps Free Dutch agents to battle Nazi Germany’s Secret Service, operating out of Spy Leader Heinrich (Sig Ruman)’s lido health club in Manhattan, for a shipment of industrial diamonds.

Series regulars Margaret Lindsay as Nikki Porter, Charley Grapewin as Inspector Queen and James Burke as Police Sgt Thomas Velie also make welcome returns.

The well-respected star support cast (Gale Sondergaard, Sig Ruman, Gilbert Roland, Minor Watson, John Hamilton, James Seay, Ludwig Donath) does much to put a polish on this neat wartime mystery stuff with a then topical patriotic climax. Eric Taylor again writes the screenplay, based on the story by Ellery Queen, the alias of the writing duo of Manfred Lee and Frederic Dannay.

It proved the final entry in the Ellery Queen film series. TV took up the detective in 1971 with Ellery Queen: Don’t Look Behind You with Peter Lawford, and Jim Hutton starred in a 23-episode series in 1975–1976.

Also in the cast are Ernst Deutsch [Ernest Dorian], Maurice Cass, Felix Basch, and Dick Wessel.

Enemy Agents Meet Ellery Queen is also known as The Lido Mystery, and was originally titled Ellery Queen Across the Atlantic. It was produced in May 1942 and released on 30 July 1942 by Columbia Pictures.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,510

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com