Who'd believe that a film with this topic could be so sleep-inducing? An unexciting cast, weak story, snarky characters and lame direction mix together for one of the most disappointing "B" features from the usually interesting RKO. Sally Eilers, a second string B leading lady who worked throughout the 1930's is cast as a 24 (!) year old who takes her dead brothers' place in a spy ring where the mission is never really established other than bits and pieces given by possible double agents who are as cartoonish as Boris and Natasha and not as amusing or humorous. Allan Lane is the agent she pretends to be married to in a sequence obviously ripped off from the famous "Walls of Jericho" scene from "It Happened One Night". The screenplay moves in so many different directions taking Eilers and Lane through so many preposterous situations that it is pointless to try and keep up with the amateurish storytelling. This makes the film's 68 minutes seem like an eternity.

Prior to the outbreak of World War II (WWII) and continuing through too our entry in the war there was a series of cautionary tales involving Spys and their threat too this countries (U.S.A.) security. THEY MADE HER A SPY (1939) was RKOs' contribution to this trend.Irene Eaton/Margaret Brennan (Sally Eilers) has a Patriotic as well as personal reason to fight against Spys. Her Brother in the first reel gets blown up testing a new explosive, SABOTAGE! Offering her services to Army Intelligence she quickly infiltrates the ring gaining their confidence. Along the way she meets future romantic interest George Wolf/James Huntley (Allan Lane). Are the Spys defeated and the Republic made secure? You bet and in only sixty-nine (69) entertaining minutes.THEY MADE HER A SPY is not in the top ranks of these films. That would have to be a film like FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT (1940), Alfred Hitchcock directing. That movie we rate IMDb Eight********stars. This film though is worth watching as it is filled with competent second tier and character actors. The ending has a nice twist when the Master Spy is revealed.

You didn't have to be a rocket scientist to realize that the Allan Hale part is one of being a counter spy, just like the lead role of Sally Eilers.The film is basically a routine one where Eilers, following the tragic death of her military brother due to espionage, decides to join and fight spying by herself.There she meets up with all kinds of characters, one which is led by the terrible Dr. Krull, a wonderful Fritz Leiber here. Leiber's very demeanor is the embodiment of evil.The scene where Eilers and Hale pass themselves off as married people to prudish people is absolutely hilarious. You know that the film will end in the way that it does when the 2 return, now married, to the very same boarding house and say they're here on their honeymoon. The expression on the prudish couple is worth the price of admission.Naturally, the film served as a reminder that spies were everywhere, even within the government itself.

A decent script by, among other people, Michael Kanin, gets turned into an RKO B movie. Although the cast is nominally pretty good -- including Sally Eilers and Alan 'Rocky' Lane as the leads, old pro Teddy von Eltz as the good spymaster and Fritz Leiber Sr. as the rather cadaverous and evil Dr. Krull -- a name borrowed, if I recall correctly, for a bunch of subterranean baddies in the Silver Age Fantastic Four -- the whole thing is rather poorly performed. Saly Eilers is pretty stiff and declamatory and Alan Lane is little better in his scenes with her. Leiber is just fine; the only question in my mind is why he wasn't picked up as soon as he showed his face and given the third degree.Director Jack Hively is probably at fault for what I see as the film's shortcomings. This was his last year as a director, all in RKO Bs, although he went on to be the AD on several excellent movies of the late 1940s.