These days, Victoria and Vancouver Island are well known as a premier location for filming everything from feature films to television series and every thing in between. Vancouver Island’s role in the film industry is oft touted as recent phenomenon, due to its oft publicized growth over the last few years. However an Islander article about the Cedar Grove Tearoom that to used to operate at Goldstream in the 1930’s and 40’s proves that Victoria’s involvement in the movie industry goes back further than many people think.
While most of the article is fairly unexceptional, the author mentions that in 1942, the Goldstream area was selected as the primary filming location for the movie “Commandos Strike at Dawn”, starring Hollywood star Paul Muni. During the shooting, the Tearoom hosted the cast and crew, as well as a group of about a hundred Canadian soldiers who played the Commandos in the movie. The main locations where the film was shot included Saanich Inlet which stood in as a Norwegian fjord, and the Victoria International Airport, which was nothing more than a simple airstrip at the time. Predictably, while the movie was being filmed, it generated a fair amount of excitement in sleepy Saanichton; the cast, crew, and even local teenagers had rowdy evening parties together throughout the duration of the filming.
As a Victoria local it is quite easy to recognize familiar aspects of the Victoria region in the scenes of the movie. When watching the trailer, the sensationally melodramatic military action scenes in the movie seem to be slightly less glamorous given the familiarity of the fields and fir trees in the background.
You can watch the trailer from the movie here
From The Islander 
In “Filmfax #129” (Winter 2012) Ann “Curse of the Cat People” Carter revealed her part as a child actor in this movie.
The thing she recalls best (other than the fact that a little girl shouldn’t correct an Oscar-winning actor like star Paul “Scarface” Muni on his line-reading…) is looking out of her window at the Empress Hotel and seeing the private boats docked in the Inner Harbor waiting to evacuate them if the Japanese attacked.
She also said that the scene with the British commandos disguised as Nazi soldiers filmed at Mill Bay had to be re-shot because when they sent the rushes down to Columbia Pictures down in Hollywood it was discovered that they were wearing their German helmets backwards… my girlfriend, however, says that is actually physically impossible with the way those things are designed, so probably someone must have been pulling the kid’s leg there.