Film Review
When 20th Century Fox's series of
Mr
Moto films came to a sudden end in 1939, Peter Lorre spent the
next few years slumming it in a number of B-movies which mostly failed
to make the use of his unique talents as an actor. Towards the
lower end of the film noir quality spectrum is
Island of Doomed Men, a
cliché-sodden and pretty unimaginative entry in the
prison-escape line which would be hard to stomach were it not for
Lorre's chilling central presence as a quietly sadistic slave
master. By this stage in his career, Lorre had taken understated
villainy to a fine art and here he is at his most menacing, an
emotionless fiend who kills domesticated animals in a fit of pique and
gets a kick out of whipping anyone who disobeys him, although, on the
plus side, he does like piano music and his dress sense is
impeccable. "Don't make me do anything else, Lorraine", he
pleas, in that flat whispering voice of his when he has just shot dead
a cute little monkey, "Please, don't..." It's as if he can't help
being psychotically nasty and just wishes he could be nice. Poor
Peter.
And poor Robert Wilcox, straitjacketed in a one-dimensional hero role
trying hard not to be bored by the whole proceedings. Apart from
a liberal dose of sadomasochistic fun in which whips and chains play a
large part, there's not much going for his character and it's left to
Rochelle Hudson to drive the stuttering plot along as Peter Lorre's
implausibly sensual and sensitive wife. Hudson's striking beauty
is the perfect counterpoint to Lorre's horror, and it is no surprise
that the film's best scenes are those featuring these two charismatic
performers. If Lorre is aware of and mildly disgusted by his own
vile nature, Hudson is positively repulsed by it and there's a
wonderful perversity to their prisoner-and-captive relationship.
They appear to enjoy being hurt by one another.
Director Charles Barton does what he can with the half-baked
screenplay, although Benjamin Cline deserves more credit for his
suitably moody photography which lends great menace and tension to the
piece, even when it all falls apart in the final act. On close
examination, the plot makes no sense whatsoever, and on paper at least
the characters are the crudest and silliest of archetypes. Peter
Lorre's relentlessly sinister presence confers on the film a longevity
it probably wouldn't otherwise deserve, but, flawed as it is,
Island of Doomed Men is still worth
noting for its spirited attempts to give the emerging genre of the
American film noir thriller a grittier edge than its European
counterpart, a whip-lashing, monkey murdering, back stabbing excursion
into a new kind of B-movie nastiness.
© James Travers 2015
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Special undercover agent Mark Sheldon is assigned to expose an illicit
slave operation on a remote island in the Pacific run by a man named
Stephen Danel. Framed for murder, Sheldon ends up being condemned
to a sentence involving hard labour, but he receives parole and is sent
to work on Danel's island, from which no man returns. Having
satisfied himself that Danel is indeed treating his workers as slaves,
Sheldon attempts to organise an uprising with the help of Danel's
disillusioned wife Lorraine. He hasn't reckoned with Daniel's
ruthlessness and his capacity for staying in control, even when he is
surrounded by enemies...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.