This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

Blistering performances.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

A prostitute (Dorothy Mackaill) accidentally kills a man. With help from her sailor boyfriend, she escapes to a Caribbean island with no extradition. He leaves her but promises to return for her later. Because there's no place safer to leave the woman you love than an island full of criminals. Anyway, she vows to stay chaste for him and not fool around with any of the men. Oh, brother. Here's where the movie gets really weird and leads to an ending that defies belief.Seamy Pre-Coder from William Wellman is certainly interesting, I'll give it that. Even though it's nowhere near as graphic as movies today, you still might feel the need to bathe after watching it. The performances are all good and the bleak script is solid. Possibly the coolest opening title shot of any early '30s movie I've seen. If you enjoy Pre-Code films you'll definitely want to check this one out.

Poor Dorothy Mackaill just can't catch a break. After falling into the prostitution racket, she accidentally kills the man who was partially responsible for her line of work in the first place (or so she thinks).Her sailor boyfriend smuggles her onto an island with a bunch of weirdos to avoid arrest. Things get a little complicated when (SPOLIERS!) the man she thought she killed shows up on the island. This is a decent pre code drama, however, it is very draggy in some parts, (featuring many scenes of the half drunken old criminals sitting around in wicker chairs) ,has the production values of a poverty row flick, and drifts off into fairly standard early 30s courtroom drama by the third act. But the last ten minutes or so provide a couple of moving, powerful scenes, and the depressing, but effective ending more than makes up for the rest of the movie being slow. It also helps that the two black actors, Noble Johnson and Nina Mae Mckinney, aren't total stereotypes, which is remarkable for a film of this age.So don't be fooled by the seemingly endless "sitting around on an island" scenes. Just wait til the end, it'll be worth it.

"Safe In Hell" is a very strange picture, a whimsical story fashioned out of whole cloth by a long-forgotten playwright with a fertile imagination. A round-heeled tart kills a john and flees with her boyfriend to a Caribbean island with no extradition law. There she rents a room at a hotel populated by several gargoyle-type fugitives who are horny as toads. Everyone is in heat in the heat, especially the local constable. The story gets stranger and stranger leading up to a completely unexpected Hollywood ending.The cast is good. Dorothy Mackaill is the 'tomato' in question and she is excellent. Donald Cook is OK as her boyfriend and Ralf Harolde is appropriately sleazy as an old flame. The plot is actually kind of flimsy but Director Wellman brings it off well, aided by some fine acting performances. Black actress Nina Mae McKinney has a plum role for a black actress in an era when there were precious few to be had.This is a Pre-Code curiosity which is somewhat tame by today's standards but still worth a watch, since it is a one-of-a-kind sort of tabloid story, surreal and sensational. It was on TCM the other morning and is not available, so wait for it to come on again.

This is an early talkie from William Wellman who went on to make some excellent movies like Battleground. It's an out-an-out and unashamed meller with not a lot of originality in the one about the hooker who lucks into a good man who's prepared to help her escape justice after she murders a 'trick'. Being a seaman he is obliged to leave her on an island in which she is the only white woman which makes her the lust object for the other white men, outlaws to a man, already holed up there. One of them, the gaoler-cum-executioner, is especially taken with her and steals the mail the seaman is writing to her, letting her think she is abandoned. The guy she 'murdered' in New Orleans turns up on the island leaving her free to return to New Orleans which doesn't sit well with the executioner, who 'lends' her a gun (which is against the law of the island), knowing she is almost sure to shoot the guy she already shot again. I could go on but I'm sure if I did you'd be ahead of me. For the time (1931) this was fair entertainment even with no durable actors.