"The Fighting Seabees" is another war picture and as a description of an important new branch of the Navy it is not as good as it should be. The interesting story of the formation of the Navy's construction battalion has been subordinated to the long threadbare entertainment formula which stresses plenty of battle scenes.

In the early days of the war the Navy used civilian workers to construct its bases in newly won territory. Since the men could not, by international agreement, be armed, the Seabees, a corps of picked construction engineers and laborers, was formed. This is the background for the plot of the picture.

The workers of a construction company, headed by John Payne, sustain heavy losses of men while building a Navy strip on a Pacific island which is attacked twice by the Japanese. An ambush designed to trap the Japanese fails of success because of the blundering of Payne, who leads his men--armed only with rifles and riding bulldozers and steam rollers--into the teeth of the landing force. Later he redeems himself by saving the island from a second attack. The whole affair makes the necessity of having an armed construction corps apparent to Washington, and the Seabees (tarantara) are organized.

The photographic technique is not so good--many of the scenes having been taken before backdrop screens on which the background shots are not well focussed--nor are the actors too well cast, although Susan Hayward turns in a creditable performance as the feminine lead. And the faces of those Chinese extras who play the Japanese are getting more familiar as each war picture is turned out.