We've Never Been Licked Reviews

It's the Texas Aggies versus the Japanese in this rah-rah piece of wartime silliness. In the pre-war days Quine is a Texas A&M student whose friendliness toward Japanese students at the school makes him an outcast among the other students. Accused of stealing the secret formula for a poison gas antidote from a professor and turning it over to spymaster Frawley, Quine is expelled. He goes to Japan with his new friends, and when war is declared he begins making propaganda broadcasts on their behalf. He is not really a traitor, though. Having long plotted to ingratiate himself with the Japanese in order to spy for the US, he uses his position to learn the Japanese war plans. He manages to tip the Americans off to the impending invasion of the Solomons, and later talks his way onto a Japanese bomber on its way to bomb the American aircraft carrier where most of his old college buddies are now aviators. On the way, though, he overpowers the crew, and, taking over the controls, he leads his old chums back to the Japanese carrier flagship and dives in, kamikaze style, to his death. The American planes finish off the ship, ending the Japanese threat. A simplistic propaganda message was all audiences demanded of their wartime film fare, and this film certainly fit the bill, even tossing in such items as Aggie fight songs ("Spirit of Aggieland," "Aggie War Hymn," "I'd Rather Be a Texas Aggie"), football games, and a romance between Gwynne and Quine. Mitchum appears as one of Quine's fellow students in one of seventeen films he made that year. Quine, a former child actor, made his adult debut here, but soon abandoned acting for directing, helming such films as THE SOLID GOLD CADILLAC (1956); BELL, BOOK, AND CANDLE (1958); and MY SISTER EILEEN (1955). Although there is nothing inspiring here in any department, the film is more than adequate for the time.