Best Action Movies of 1943

Without lights and in a driving rain, a bus is lumbering along the muddy Assam Road en route from Chunking to the Indian border. Passengers include Albert Pasavy (Otto Kruger), a European of unknown nationality; a missionary, the Rev. Dr. Van Der Liden (Steven Geray);a French officer Major Raoul Brissac (Ernst Deutsch as Ernest Dorian), and Countess Olga Karagin (Tamara Geva), a White Russian. There is also Madame Woo (Soo Yong), an ancient Chinese lady on an important diplomatic mission to Indian, and her traveling companion, Ann Richards (Ellen Drew), an American Red Cross nurse. The trip is halted when Japanese planes bomb the road and hit a munitions truck and kill many Chinese soldiers. The Chinese commander puts the wounded soldiers on the bus and directs it to a nearby secret airport where the officer in charge is Captain Nick Stanton (Robert Preston), an American attached to the Chinese Air Force.

Daredevils of the West is a lightning-fast-paced Western cliffhanger serial released by Republic Pictures in 1943 starring Allan Lane and Kay Aldridge. The plot involves a gang of land-grabbers who try to prevent safe passage of the Foster Stage Company through frontier territory, however, the story of the serial is merely a framework for the setup of numerous elaborate stunt action sequences, cliff-hanging perils and fiery deathtraps which the hero and heroine must fight to survive. As was the case with other Republic serials released during wartime such as King of the Mounties and The Masked Marvel, a rapid, even frantic pace is evident throughout, which has made the serial a favorite among fans.

A movie serial in 12 chapters: The famous comic strip character is on a mission to protect a secret tunnel passage between China and India.

In this anti-Japanese WW II propaganda film, Japanese invaders attempt to raid Alaska and are totally obliterated. The trouble begins when a stranger visits a small town and tells them that the U.S. is going to be taken over by a powerful country. The story turns out to be true when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. The town then rises up and slaughters a Japanese raiding party.

Mike Douglas (Barry Sullivan), owner of a nitroglycerin concern hires his old friend "Buzz" Mitchell (Chester Morris), a race-driver of midget-auto cars who has been banned from racing, to go to work hauling nitro. "Buzz" makes a play for Connie Baker (Jean Parker), Mike's secretary and girlfriend, and also for Doris Lynch (Barbara Lynn), fiancée of Connie's younger brother, Jimmy ('Rand Brooks'), and gets Jimmy to replace him on a dangerous nitro haul and Jimmy, of course, has an accident and gets killed. But "Buzz" finds a way to redeem himself. The hard way.

Ship engineer Jim Taggert is rescued from a torpedoed tramp steamer by Joe Morgan, an American gangster that found New York too hot for him, and has become a fisherman operating from an out-of-the-way island off of the coast of South America. Morgan makes his headquarters at the Halfway House run by the parents of Maria Styx as a bar and dance resort catering to the planters and traders of the island. Taggert finds himself practically a prisoner along with a group of American girls acting as entertainers at the resort. Taggert shadows Morgan in his activities in a remote cove and finds that Morgan is supplying German U-boat commanders with torpedoes, but does not know that Morgan has rigged the torpedoes with clock devices that explode when at sea and sinks the U-boats.

British drama documentary from 1943, based on the true story of the 1940 rescue of the tanker MV San Demetrio by parts of her own crew after she had been set afire in the middle of the Atlantic by the German heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer and then had been abandoned. When one of the lifeboats drifted back to the burning tanker the day after, and found that she still hadn't exploded, they decided to board her and put out the fires. Eventually, they managed to start the engine again and decided to try to reach Britain against all odds.

A US Navy submarine, the USS Corsair, is operating in the North Atlantic, hunting German merchant raiders that are preying on Allied shipping. Its new executive officer, Lt. Ward Stewart (Power), has been transferred back into submarines after commanding his own PT boat. At the submarine base in New London, Connecticut, he asks his new captain, Lt. Cmdr. Dewey Connors (Andrews), for a weekend leave to settle his affairs before taking up his new assignment. On a train bound for Washington D.C., Stewart accidentally encounters New London school teacher Jean Hewlett (Baxter) and her students. Despite her initial resistance to his efforts, he charms her and they fall in love.

Ken McLaughlin (Roddy McDowall) is a precocious 10-year-old who lives with his family on a remote Wyoming ranch. When Ken returns home from school with failing grades, his father, Rob (Preston Foster), blames the boy's lack of personal responsibility. At the suggestion of his wife, Nell (Rita Johnson), Rob allows Ken to choose a single colt from the herd to raise as his own. Much to his father's dismay, Ken chooses a fiery mustang filly -- but the two soon become fast friends.