This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

All the reviewers who wished they could see this film again (some of whom saw it originally in 1942!), can now see it again if they are resident British and subscribe to Freeview tv on Channel 81 It is shown regularly on this wonderful channel which I constantly watch if you can put up with the adverts which finances it, as it saves paying for numerous dvds which I used to do before I discovered this tv station.For example, every Sunday @ 9.p.m. GMT they are repeating the wonderful mid 60s episodes of "The Human Jungle" starring Herbert Lom which I originally saw when it was transmitted (I am now 72).Some reviewers thought Thunder Rock was too stagey.Does it matter? I saw the classic R.C.Sherriff's "Journey's End" on Youtube the other day which of course is based on his play.What if Michael Redgrave is a bit declamatory at times, he was an accomplished stage actor first.In 1942 Britain was in a precarious position so of course the Government sought propaganda films to help morale & the war effort.See this film on the aforesaid channel, the tv station is bound to repeat it occasionally.

The sheer tedium of the pacing was enough to make me want to turn this WW II propaganda film off, but I was determined to see it through. The message, however, came stomping over my hopes for some redemption from a very solid cast with unquestioned talents. Sadly, they didn't stand a chance with this gray, grim material that was meant to convey a very plain and unadorned message: Oppression is bad, liberty is good. It is impossible to disagree, but this movie was so drawn out, so yawn-worthy, that it almost undercut the sentiment. Not one of the better products of the difficult war years from Britain's film industry. And, alas, Michael Wilding's central performance was such a sorry one-note of morose self-pity that it was extremely difficult even to want to empathize with him. Times were tough for the British during the Forties but at least they couldn't have been this boring.

Thunder Rock is the place where a jaded idealist played by Michael Redgrave has assigned himself in the true keepers of the lighthouse tradition. A curious place also he's put himself, miles away from the war he saw coming, on an island in the middle of Lake Michigan in the USA.There's a plaque on the wall of lighthouse which commemorates the sinking of a packet steamer Land of Lakes during a storm on the lake with all hands lost in 1849. To pass away the lonely hours at the lighthouse, Redgrave has recreated several of the deceased passengers as characters whom he converses with. Only the ship's captain Finlay Currie knows he's dead, the others just think they're stranded on his island waiting for a storm to clear.Redgrave's come to a personal crisis of sorts, the supervisors want him to take some overdue leave. The leave policy is there so people don't start making imaginary friends like because that's usually a ticket to the rubber room. And there's the real crisis of the oncoming World War which Redgrave tried to tell an uncaring public and its leaders about and now he's withdrawn into being the ultimate isolationist.On the night that the action of this play takes place, Redgrave's imaginary friends start giving some unexpected answers to questions and not something that his own mind creations would give out with. The ghosts if indeed that's what they were learn their fate and Redgrave learns his responsibility. And it's not on Thunder Rock.The play was put on by the Group Theater on Broadway in 1939 when the war was just beginning and it ran only 23 performances. The film added quite a bit to get it out of the living room of the lighthouse where all the action takes place on stage. Redgrave who made sensitive and principled characters a specialty in his career gives one of his best performances in Thunder Rock. James Mason is also in this film playing a real friend of Redgrave's who starts wondering about his sanity when Redgrave tells him about his imaginary group of dead friends off the Land of Lakes. The characters are deeply etched to make up for a rather static lack of plot.A British film set in Lake Michigan, who'd have believed it and also believed it was good.

Enjoyed this film from 1942 which I have never seen over the years and it captured my attention from the beginning to the very end. It concerns an anti-fascist journalist named David Charleston, (Michael Redgrave) who is a reporter for a newspaper in Canada and he has traveled in Europe and has discovered that Hitler is starting trouble in Germany and there is reason to believe that Japan is also starting problems in China. David has great insight and tries to tell the English people about the threat of Hitler's Germany and to prepare for war in the early 1930's. David writes many books trying to tell the world that they are in big trouble and then decides to retire to a lighthouse in Michigan on the Great Lakes. A good friend of David, named Streeter, (James Mason) visits David at the lighthouse and wants to find out why David never cashes his pay checks for months. Streeter gets upset with the way that David is acting and finds out that he is communicating with dead people that had a shipwreck ninety years ago in the great lakes and in his own mind they are alive and talking to him. These people were European immigrants who wanted to come to America and at the lighthouse there is a Commemorative Tablet speaking about this shipwrecked crew members. This is a very deep and wonderful film with a great story to tell.