Isle of Fury

They must have filmed half of the script and just called it a wrap. Poor writing and acting abound, and the mustache is worse than the octopus! Skip this one unless you really love Bogart.

This quickie from Warners packs a lot in its short one-hour running time. Just about everything is thrown in, love, betrayal, greed, jealousy, danger, monsters, etc. etc. I could go on and on! And then there's Bogart with a mustache of all things. He doesn't look too comfortable in it and his performance is a bit wooden and even amateurish but who cares. Margaret Lindsey manages to look positively child-like despite that husky voice of hers. If you get the chance look for her in "Please Don't Eat the Daisies" in a worthy cameo as a prima dona. In my humble opinion she was a most underrated actor. E.E. Clive is reliable as the wise doctor. Donald Woods is probably the weakest link here but again, who cares. There's so much going on the performances are almost irrelevant. There's even underwater photography and a cheesy octopus. This is great escapist fun and well worth seeing.

This is a remake of "The Narrow Corner" and I have seen several variations on the film (such as "Tiger Shark" and "Danger Lights"). So, from the onset I found the material very familiar and very predictable. In fact, beginning at the very first scenes featuring the wedding and the shipwreck, I already knew exactly what would be happening later in the movie! The only unusual thing about this B-movie was seeing Humphrey Bogart as the poor husband--and with a very cheesy fake mustache. Why he was given such an uninteresting and thankless role is simply because he was not yet a star. By 1936, he'd been in quite a few films but almost exclusively in bit parts and walk-ons. Though he'd been in Hollywood for about five years, he really hadn't yet made a name for himself.

As I said before, the film starts with a wedding on a tiny island in the Pacific. When a boat crashes in the reef, in comes a more handsome and interesting man (Donald Woods) and the new wife is captivated. However, the husband is a sap and he doesn't realize how serious this is and befriends Woods--to his regret.

Overall, this is a very simple B-movie with little (other than the novelty of seeing Bogart in a crappy film) to positively distinguish it. And, on the negative side, there is a silly rubber octopus that just needs to be seen to believed. Not horrible but certainly not very good either.

This laughable 60-minute stinker offers pre-star Humphrey Bogart as a South Seas pearl merchant married to Margaret Lindsay. There might have been a decent story here, but it's been hacked to pieces. During the wedding there's a shipwreck, and washed ashore are a sneaky captain (Paul Graetz) and strange passenger (Donald Woods). Hilarious scene with the louvred door... The storm howls outside, but the slatted door keeps out all the wind, rain, and noise! Anyway, Woods and Lindsay seem to hit it off right away while Bogart is blithely unaware. Storyline includes striking pearl divers because of the "devil fish" and thieving natives. E.E. Clive is droll as the preacher, and Gordon Hart plays the weird grandfather. Bogart battles an ugly moustache and possibly the worst-looking octopus in film history. The acting is terrible across the board, with Gratez and Hart coming off worst. Lindsay and Woods are boring, and Bogart is just plain miscast. The plot twist at the end does little to save this one.

...this is your film. I'm giving it four stars just based on the fact that the three leads - Humphrey Bogart, Margaret Lindsay, and Donald Woods managed to carry this thing as well as they did. The film opens on a wedding between Val Stevens (Humphrey Bogart) and Lucille Gordon (Margaret Lindsay), with Lucille having all the enthusiasm of someone who is using her life savings as a down payment on buying a house that she just doesn't like. The way WB has Bogart made up will make you realize why she feels that way if you don't just laugh out loud - bad perm AND bad mustache with bad perm. Donald Woods is the mysterious handsome stranger that shipwrecks on Val and Lucille's tropical island and almost interrupts the ceremony. When Woods' character regains consciousness after being rescued, he instantly begins giving reluctant bride Lucille bedroom eyes. If you think you know where this thing is headed from the beginning you'd probably be right, so I'm going to stop right there and let you watch and find out what happens. Just don't nod off and miss the hilarious scene of Bogart wrestling with a fake octopus that looks like it is right out of Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster.

I've seen Bogart in some odd films given his later film persona - the rather experimental "Midnight" and the early talkie "Bad Sister" - but this is the only truly bad film in which I've seen him, and by bad I mean dull and predictable.