A reporter on a fishing vacation stumbles into a town where all the local fish have mysteriously died and the population is either too afraid to talk or is downright hostile. After some digging, the reporter discovers that a secretive group of men has bought a local lodge and apparently turned it into some kind of mysterious scientific laboratory. The reporter and the sister of the local doctor set out to discover exactly what is going on up there. Matt Corbin, a vacationing magazine writer, takes a fishing trip to Minnesota, and stumbles across a lake in which all the fish have mysteriously died. The locals are tight-lipped about it, but Corbin learns that a group of former-Nazis-turned-Communists have purchased a lodge on an island in the middle of the fish-killing lake, and have built some kind of laboratory. Never one to pass up a chance to sell a story to a magazine, Matt decides to investigate. His only ally is Janet Keller, the sister of the local doctor who has been caught up in whatever those nefarious Commie-Nazis are up to. What they are up to, with Soviet financing, is the development of diseases to use in bacteriological warfare against the United States, starting right there in Minnesota. A photo-journalist on vacation arrives at a small town in Mid America to relax and do a little fishing. First, he finds that all the fish have died. Next he finds the residents all paranoid and secretive, especially the owner of the local lodge. When he accidentally trespasses on lodge property, he is attacked by guard dogs, and threatened by armed guards.<br/><br/>None of the local townsfolk will talk to him except the doctor's sister (read love interest) and the crusty old storekeeper. Little by little he comes to realize that the entire town is on a mission to develop germ and bacteria weapons which they intend to use to cripple America. I know - the plot is preposterous. But you ain't heard nothing yet. In the original story, all the bad guys were Nazi's and they even had Adolf Hitler hidden away at the lodge, but this movie was released in 1951 at the height of the McCarthy hearings and the Commie scare. So - all the bad guys became Communists.<br/><br/>Only in the movies. I hope that noted set designer William Cameron Menzies who occasionally did direct such classics as Things To Come, had Howard Hughes's check already clearing the bank before embarking on The Whip Hand. Such a film could only have come out of the paranoid years of the beginning of the Cold War. If Joe McCarthy could say there were 205 or 81 or 57 card carrying Communists in the State Department, than why couldn't the Red Menace takeover a town in the Land of a Thousand Lakes, Minnesota.<br/><br/>Magazine feature writer Elliott Reid gone to Minnesota for a fishing vacation goes to the town of Winnoga and finds all the fish in the lake are dead and most of the town gone. New people have arrived in the area and are very protective about their privacy. Of course Reid's reporter's instincts are aroused and pretty soon he's like Kevin McCarthy trying to get of the area before the Pod People get him.<br/><br/>Just like in Shack Out On 101 where the Communists have set up shop in a hash house near the atomic testing site, the Commies have set up in Minnesota. Reid's only friends are elderly Frank Darien and Carla Ballenda, the sister of one of the scientists working in a laboratory on an island in the middle of the lake.<br/><br/>From the fevered mind of Howard Hughes came this warning to the American movie-going public that not only do we have to worry about the Reds conducting germ warfare on Americans, but they're also polluting our streams. I'm sure the Sierra Club was grateful for this film.<br/><br/>Raymond Burr is one of the Communist thugs along with his sister Lurene Tuttle. Burr and Tuttle being the professionals they are play it completely straight. <br/><br/>All I can say is, WOW.
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295 weeks ago