Douglas Woolsey was responsible for the special effects and this film shows a marked improvement in the quality of the miniature work over Sailors Three made two years earlier.
Like We Dive At Dawn this movie is also available in a rough version on the Internet Archive site, link below. Better (clearer) copies can be found on commercial DVDs.
https://archive.org/details/In_Which_We_Serve.
Fun fact: In Which We Served caused a major row in the US when United Artists attempted to distribute it due to the swearing. The Production Code Administration (PCA), the censorship board with near-total control over the industry from 1934 to the late 50s, had famously fought hard to prohibit the line "Frankly my dear I don't give a damn" from Gone With the Wind, capitulating only because it was the most well known line from one of the most popular novels ever written.
ReplyDeleteWhen United Artists tried to distribute IWWS stateside, Joseph Breen, the head of the PCA, was shocked to see that they used such extreme vulgarity as "hell", "damn", and "bastard". He prohibited the screening of the film unless Twin Cities Films agreed to reshoot every scene with bad words or excise the footage. The former option would've been too expensive and the latter would've made it incomprehensible.
When American GIs heard about Breen's decision they were furious and wrote numerous letters mocking the PCA, for instance, one asking Breen "What do YOU call the bastards?" But Breen stayed defiant, writing that "the motion picture screen would do a very definite disservice to the growing boys and girls of America if we were to accustom them to harsh vulgarities."
Eventually, Breen was forced to acquiesce and allow the use of “hell” and “damn”—but “bastard” had to be cut out. Still, IWWS ended up making history by becoming what is likely the first movie shown in the US to swear more than once.