User Reviews

The set up for this 'Invincible' Picture is fairly passable, but it all turns to mush in the execution. A million dollar robbery in 1926 results in the capture of three crooks who then serve a ten year prison sentence. Upon release they're about to be deported, thereby providing the only link the story has to the title; the deportation center is located on the famed Ellis Island. A rival gang, a phony Treasury Agent, a couple of immigration inspectors and the pretty niece of one of the original bank robbers all come together for a hodge podge series of events that end in a sting of an unlikely kind.

There's one original concept in the middle of all this, as the million dollar bundle lies buried under a headstone with a name concocted from the initials of the three bank robbers. Two of them never even figure in the rest of the story, a slight detail that's never really explained. What's totally annoying to the point of distraction is the presence of Kip Andrews (Johnny Arthur), the immigration agent sidekick of Gary Curtis (Donald Cook). He spends half the film in a wedding tux attempting to get back in good stead with his girlfriend. It seemed to me that the entire story could have proceeded along nicely without him, and generally for the better.

It probably didn't help that the DVD print I viewed had a soundtrack that was difficult to follow at times. I couldn't make out what some of the characters were saying from time to time, but the main idea came across for the most part. However there's not much in the story that's very believable, and you'll probably shake your head when it's all over.

It opens in 1926 when three bank robbers, Theodore Kedrich (George Rosenor), Jan Imarski (Jack Lowe) and Petra Lonelli (Harry Semels), stage a daring daylight bank robbery and get away with a million dollars in cash. They are soon apprehended and sent to prison for ten years but the money is not recovered. Flash forward to 1936 when all three men have been released from prison and are about to be deported back to where they came from via the Deportation department at Ellis Island which, as one of the guards remarks, is now doing more deporting than importing. An idea whose time has come around again.

They arrive by the ferry boat and already on hand to bid them adieu, and possibly learn where they stashed the missing money, is gang leader Dude (Jack La Rue) and his three henchies, Nails (Maurice Black), Moxie (Monte Vandergrift)and Bugs (Jerry Mandy), and also Kendrich's niece Betty Parker (Peggy Shannon)there to bid old Uncle Ted a fond goodbye. Also on Ellis Island is a crook called Solo(Bradley Page), who has an upper hand as he has stolen the credentials of a Treasury Agent named Peter James (Bryant Washburn)and has access to the prisoners, and has cut a deal with Kendrichs to get him off of Ellis Island.

Guard Gary Curtis (Donald Cook) and Betty have a 1930's cute meeting, but just as Solo is about to get Uncle Ted off the island, Dude and his guys show up and knock Solo out and take Kendrichs with them. Most of the plot so far has dealt with the problems of Guard Kip Andrews (Johnny Arthur, playing his usual unfunny fey character)trying to convince his girlfriend Adele (Joyce Compton) that the girl she saw him with the previous night is really a cousin---Evangaline from Peoria)---of Gary's and he had only met her as Gary couldn't. Adele isn't buying this, so 50% of the film is taken up with Kip's efforts to get Gary to provide an alibi for him.

Since Gary is in charge of the Deportees, he takes the afternoon off to go catch Dude and Kendrichs, and Kip follows along doing his whining, irritating bit about he needs Gary to go talk to Adele for him. Reality has long gone out the window the minute any character played by Johnny Arthur is supposed to be involved with any person of the opposite sex. Donald Cook still hasn't said or done anything funny up to this point, and doesn't do anything funny past this point either Actually, the only thing smacking of comedy in the whole film is the bumbling henchman played by Maurice Black and,in this film, it is a relative-speaking masterpiece of a performance. The key words are "relative speaking."

In the early part of the 20th Century, New York's Ellis Island was the entrance to America, but 30 years later was the exodus, mostly of undesirables. That is the circumstance for an immigrant sent to prison for 10 years for a bank robbery, and now racketeers literally swarm the island with the intention of finding out where the missing loot is, since the moola was never recovered. When Bradley Page shows up as a federal agent, you can tell something is rotten in the Hudson.

The film starts off O. K., nothing to write to the American Film Institute about, but ultimately goes into the most outrageously outlandish conclusion which includes a trek into an old cemetery and a stand-off with the crooks, keeping them at bay with a swarm of bees, while waiting for the feds to show up. It has to be seen to be believed.

It's a shame that this poverty row crime drama had to resort to comical Antics and utilized Ellis Island as its title because that fools the audience into thinking that it is something much more profound, certainly nowhere close to the 1984 mini series that actually dealt with the success of Ellis Island immigrants in a fictionalized story that at least showed their struggles. This film shows none of that, so the title is misleading. Donald Cook is an Ellis Island INS guard, and Peggy Shannon the love interest, a relative of the alleged bank robber (George Rosener) being deported. The fey Johnny Arthur is another INS guard, unbelievable as he flirts with Shannon. While this may sting your funny bone, you may have a neck ache from shaking it, and get dizzy from rolling your eyes. Just your average programmer that is pretty forgettable after a single viewing.