Women in the Night (1948)

The war in Europe is over, the Japanese are about to surrender after the Nagasaki bombing, but a group of die-hard German Nazis are holding on in Shanghai, protecting an ingenious invention of mass destruction – a cosmic ray generator that is 1000 times more deadly than the A-bomb. Col. Von Meyer is about to pass the secret of the weapon to Col. Noyoma, as Japan is still at war, and will use it to revenge their recent losses. However, Field Marshal Von Runzel arrives with precise orders to the contrary: the Japanese shall not have the secret weapon, for an underground Nazi ring is to use it later in another attempt to destroy all the Allied Nations, and conquer the world in a third Worl War. Von Meyer decides to create a diversion, and to offer the Japanese scientist and officers some “evening entertainment” at the German Officers’ Club. Thaler, the female German Officer, is to bring in a number of women – arrested on trumped up charges at the Shanghai University – dress them up, and force them to service the lusty Japanese officers. First, he asks for volunteers, but only the French entertainer Yvette comes forward. The other five women (American, English, Austalian, Russian and Mexican) stubbornly refuse. Then he shouts at them: “I say, naturally you’ll all volunteer!” The 16-year-old Australian girl finds her mother as a hard-laborer at the club, they rejoice for a while, but knowing that her pure catholic girl will be ravished that night, Mrs. James kills her daughter instead. Her absence will not be missed much, as two other young women arrive, a Chinese and a Japanese. Soon, the Germans are about to betray the Japanese, but the American is in cahoots with an infiltrated German officer who’s really her husband (an OSS spy), the Chinese is trying to make the others believe that Maya is an infiltrated Japanese agent, while Lili herself is seeing a Chinese servant of the Germans in secret, and the women are justly suspicious of Yvette – who is getting fond of the bald-head Colonel Von Meyer… In the end, the American plot is uncovered, the Germans and the Japanese start killing each others, and the fugitive American and Chinese spies. A number of people die in heroic gun-fights. Maya is going to defuse the bombs left in the wine cellar by the escaping Americans, so that the Japanese will get the secret weapon in the end. However Yvette decides to change her loyalty to her country, thinking of what the English girl told her. The two women clash in a desperate fight all over the place, as the fuse is burning – with the future of humankind at stake.