User Reviews

The captain of a ship takes ill not long after hiring Noah Beery Sr, a man with a bad reputation- every ship he's been on for the last three years has sunk burned or disappeared. Of course Beery is behind the illness, which puts the pretty captain's daughter in peril. Another pre-code melodrama with a great deal of exposed female flesh and suggestions of things that nice people didn't do. This is just an okay film. The problem is that Beery is so clearly the bad guy you can't believe that anyone would be so stupid as to hire him. I mean Long John Silver was a bad guy but at least he could hide it, Beery can't and it sinks the movie. It also doesn't help that the film's plot ultimately makes no sense, there are just too many twists and turns that none of it comes off as anything other than contrived. Not really bad, but not really worth your time and effort.

Truly a smelly swamp of a movie, this presents corpulent Noah Beery as a villainous lothario, one dimensionally evil and certainly no example of a great screen lover. He makes a career as a first mate, arranging for ships to sink obviously so he can claim the cargo. Someone overhears and is promptly tossed overboard. His latest captain, Montagu Love, has a pretty daughter aboard (Miriam Seegar) whom Beery desires, brutally dumping the fiery Dorothy Burgess who's ridiculously in love with him, but she slips aboard the ship and plots revenge.

A hysterically bad performance by Beery is the highlight, so mustache twirling and cartoonish that he reminded me of England's master of the macabre, Tod Slaughter who disgraced many young innocent women and turned them into "brides of death". The set is the best aspect of this Z grade melodrama, and the delightfully bad dialog had me laughing at all the offensive bits. Fred Toones plays the stereotypical bumbling black cook, and his dialog gets nothing but groans. Made by a grade F studio that was never heard from again, it's an example of pre-code cinema at its most absurd, but once you start it, it's difficult to put down. It's only one wasted hour so I suffered through it, then promptly tossed it in the brig. No slow tortuous death too desirable for Beery's horrid character.

Noah Beery once again plays the heavy, this time a sailing officer who is also a ship wrecker. And he has his eye on the captain's pretty daughter Mary played by blonde Miriam Seegar. His course is complicated by his former girlfriend, the half-caste Concha, played to the hilt by Dorothy Burgess in what may be her ripping-est role ever. The darkly beautiful Miss Burgess is mesmerizing as she determines to hold on to her man or make him pay. George Walsh is rather wooden as the hero. Jimmy Aubrey gives a great impression as the lovable drunk. The characters reflect many degrees of morality. For some, it will be fatal. The great thing about these old films is that they sometimes give us a look at things as they once were. This story rings true enough and much of what you see in characters and scenery is probably much like it was.

For Dorothy Burgess fans (hopefully, I'm first in line here), Out of Singapore (1932) (available on a very good Alpha DVD) is an absolute must-see.

Although she makes a late entrance, Dorothy does a dance number that will knock your socks off. And Miriam Seegar is no slouch in the beauty department either.

Alas, Wallace Beery plays the villain with such patent wickedness, we wonder how the "good" boys, and most particularly Miss Seegar, could possibly be taken in by him.

I also thought that Jimmy Aubrey way overdid the "comic" relief, even though his actions do enable Fred "Snowflake" Toones to get his teeth into a first-class dramatic role as a particularly vicious cook.

Indeed the movie is overloaded with evil characters. We haven't even mentioned Montagu Love and Leon Wong (who escapes retribution, would you believe?), but the film is directed with such a sure hand by 1920's serial king, Charles Hutchison, that these quibbles only surface after "The End" is flashed on the screen