Born in Birmingham, England, Herbert Mason came from a theatrical family--his aunt was the great Shakespearean actress Ellen Terry --and began his career as an actor at age 16. In the 1920s he became an actor's manager and then a stage manager, putting on many of the biggest shows in the London theater of the time. With the advent of sound in motion pictures he gravitated toward films, working for Gaumont British in various production capacities, including assistant director. He made his directorial debut in 1936 with The First Offence (1936), a somewhat gritty crime drama with John Mills , and directed several films with George Arliss before Arliss retired. He turned out the musical Take My Tip (1937) with Jack Hulbert , who was called "England's Fred Astaire " and lived up to that title with his dance routines in this film. Mason changed his pace from perky musicals to dark drama with A Window in London (1940), about a man who believes he has witnessed a murder from a passing train, but went back to lighter fare with such films as the Arthur Askey comedy Back-Room Boy (1942). He made his last film as director in 1945 and from that point on concentrated on producing. He died in London in 1960.
A lowly BBC employee pulls a prank at the studio and finds himself transferred to an isolated island where he is to set up a weather station at a lighthouse. As if in a fantasy, a ship carrying a bevy of beautiful models is shipwrecked off the coast and the models wind up on the island. However, when the models begin disappearing, the "back-room boy" investigates and finds a sinister scheme involving spies and Nazi battleships.