Middling B movie, directed by James Whale, about a group of people whose plane crashes on an island. Living on the island is a mysterious American with an ebullient man servant. He smokes a pipe and acts like a jerk, so of course he's the hero of the piece. He's played by that great bore John Boles, whose most famous role was in James Whales' Frankenstein. In the time between that film and this, Boles appears to have transmogrified into Laird Cregar. Starts off feeling like it's going to be a breezy comedy but, after the plane crashes, it turns into an uninvolving drama with a dash of social commentary. Aside from Boles, the cast is a talented lot and the director is, of course, capable of better things. But somehow this is just another run of the mill programmer with little to recommend about it. If you can't make a movie with Gene Lockhart, Bruce Cabot, Madge Evans, and Marion Martin work, I just don't know what to say. Worth a look for Whale completists and anyone who likes their movies to have a serial-style action scene every ten or fifteen minutes, complete with rousing score.
Review of Sinners in Paradise
