Undescribable Perfection

Expected more

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

"When the princess of the island sings the song of the sarong, you know that she has found true love". That is basically the essence of what island elder George Cleveland tells the unwanted visitors to this South Sea Island populated by mostly Caucasian native girls and another one of those stories where you feel "Uh oh, there goes the neighborhood". William Gargan is an adventurer hired to go to this mysterious island to put his claim on a bunch of extremely valuable pearls, and he takes his life in his hands in going after it much to the anger of the natives. This combination of comedy, action, dance and music is so silly in its presentation that it totally falls on its face, lacking even a camp element because it is truly idiotic."We're proudest of our temple of tears" island princess Nancy Kelly ("The Bad Seed") tells Gargan whom she falls in love with much to the anger of George Dolenz who is betrothed to her even though out of his jealousy he tells Kelly that she too is an outsider. George Cleveland's "wise old man" tells Gargan that "You can never beat the island, because the island always wins." Like the visitors to "Brigadoon", there's a mystical feeling about Cleveland's advice, but unlike the poignant village elder in "Brigadoon", his advice is totally unprofound. Fuzzy Knight, free from all those "B" westerns, gets to use a Roscoe Ates style stutter to add laughs to his sidekick, while Eddie Quillan, the ageless youth, gets the attention of an elderly island woman who picks him up like a baby and starts singing "Rock-a-Bye Baby" to him.At one point, Knight and Quillan do a Tarzan style rope fly over a pit of alligators and one of them declares upon seeing one of the natives, "I've seen better heads on totem poles". At just over an hour, this is a throwback to the types of musicals that were being done in the early 1930's, giving the two sidekicks even a brief opportunity to break into "Singin' in the Rain". An opening sequence with Larry Keating as himself hosting a radio show and interviewing Gargan about his occupation is pointless and includes audience laughter over things that just aren't funny. The dance numbers themselves aren't bad, but they certainly are ridiculously bad with supposed Polynesian women looking whiter than the unwelcome visitors. In trying to be poetic, the screenplay ends up sounding more pathetic.

As I often say for this kind of rare material from the forties, this is rather good stuff, entertaining enough to keep you awake, preventing you from switching the TV set button off. Jungle, treasure search, wild natives, beautiful gals, enchanting songs from the islands, nothing really new here, except maybe lots of charm and nostalgia for this lost cinema. So useless to spend your lifetime to purchase it, unless you are a very dedicated gem searcher, a true moviemaniac...I received this DVD without asking for it. It was there, among a batch of other items. I guess this was the kind of stuff which was shown to the GI's from Europe and the Pacific, back in 1945. Enternainment for the troops. Nothing more. But if you get it, Watch this feature, just for the fun. Don't throw it in the garbage can, as I would do with the new TRANSFORMERS crap. Another time, another waste.