In the waters off South America, the tramp steam freighter S.S. Banos is torpedoed at sea, as an act of sabotage by communist agents, and murder the survivors with the cooperation of the ship's radioman, Clegg (Paul Brinegar), who escapes with his life and a promise of $5,000. The Soviets have mocked up their own ship as the SS Baños, but theirs contains an atomic device with the goal of sailing the Baños to the locks of the Panama Canal where they will detonate their ship on an atomic suicide mission.
To avoid suspicion the new crew of the mocked up Baños takes the contingent of passengers scheduled to sail on the original Baños. One last minute addition is American expatriate Sam Wilton (Leif Erickson) who has overstayed his welcome as a plantation overseer by making love to the plantation owner's wife. As a result, Sam and his lover's husband are both wounded in a gunfight. Sam needs to escape to the United States without his passport that is still at the plantation.
At the Los Rios Hotel in the port city of San Brejo that is also Sam's watering hole, Sam asks his friend Manuel the owner to get him a passport in a false name to escape the vengeance of the plantation owner and the sympathetic local authorities. As Sam waits and drinks, he observes the passengers of the SS Baños in the hotel; an older American couple Fred (Howard Wendell) and Kate (Isabel Randolph) Dilts, American Everett Crofton, the mysterious Mr. Kroll (John Mylong), and two Germans, Dr. Yeager (Rudolph Anders) and his daughter Elsa (Virginia Grey).
The new Captain of the Baños, "Captain Scarface" (Barton MacLane) sends Clegg to meet Kroll at the Los Rios Hotel for his just reward. When the passengers are taken to the Baños, Kroll, Clegg and Sam remain behind at the hotel. In the interest of economy and security, Kroll attempts to murder Clegg, but Clegg kills Kroll first. Escaping with the money, Clegg shoots at Manuel and Sam, who responds by shooting Clegg. Never wasting an opportunity, Sam splits the $5,000 with Manuel, and modifies the late Mr. Kroll's passport with his own photograph, and takes Kroll's boarding pass to the Baños.
Boarding the ship as Kroll, Sam delays meeting Captain Scarface in order to interview Elsa to find out the lay of the land. He pieces together that Dr. Yeager is a German atomic scientist allowed to escape from the Soviet Union in order to work the atomic device in exchange for the safety of his daughter, and Kroll was a Soviet agent assigned to bring in the Yeagers and kill Clegg.
Also on the ship is a venomous fer-de-lance snake concealed in a cargo of bananas.
The Dilts, are curious because they notice that the crew of the Banos is entirely different from their first voyage, and that the porthole in their cabin has changed its physical location.
Sam puts a machete at Tregnor's throat, and demands to be taken to Yeager. As Tregnor laboriously removes cargo to gain access to the secret room, he explains that the original Banos was torpedoed and sunk, but the news was never broadcast because Clegg had been the ship's radioman and was paid not to signal. When Tregnor turns and attacks Sam, Sam kills him with a blow from the machete. After freeing Elsa, Sam awakens Crofton and they knock out the radioman, allowing Crofton to signal an American Navy destroyer, which takes over the Banos and arrests the remaining crewmen. Having saved the Panama Canal from certain destruction, Sam, the Yeagers and Crofton go ashore to visit Panama City.
A 1953 American Black & White action romance thriller film directed by Paul Guilfoyle, produced by Hal Roach Jr., written by Charles Lang, cinematography by Norbert Brodine, starring Barton MacLane, Virginia Grey, Leif Erickson, Peter Coe, Rudolph Anders, Howard Wendell, Isabel Randolph, Paul Brinegar, Don Dillaway, Martin Garralaga, and John Mylong.
Barton MacLane and Virginia Grey co-starred five years earlier in the dinosaur movie, "Unknown Island" (1948).
In Spanish, the crewman's name is perro, or dog, and the boat, "Los Baños," means "the bathrooms."
Economic collapse in the first half of thirties brought many Americans to disbelieve in capitalism. Speeches of communistic ideology were tantalizing, promising a beautiful life. In the year 1939, 66,000 people were members of USA’s communist party. The Soviets, whose propaganda machine always berated Nazis, began praising them after signing a friendship deal in Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. China had a second civil war, which eventually ended by victory of communists in 1949. Red danger was everywhere.
A good Red Scare thriller from the 1950s skillfully directed by long-time television director Paul Guilfoyle, (“Tess of the Storm Country” (1960), and tautly written by Charles Lang. This espionage tale received little recognition and attracted hardly any box office when released, but built an audience on television over the years. It’s a nice little thriller, that's fun watchin, because it’s well presented and acted