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****SPOILERS**** 1940's love goddess Rita Hayworth's long awaited return to the silver screen is as hot as a pistol as dancer & singer Chris Emery in "An Affair in Trinidad" where she goes undercover as a secret agent for the free world. While doing her super sexy dance number at the Cari-B night club Chris is told by Trinidad police inspector Smythe, Torin Thatcher, that her husband Neil was found dead of a self inflicted gunshot wound floating in Trinidad Bay. Not at first knowings what to think Chris is later told that Neil was in fact murdered and the person behind his murder was Max Fabian, Alexander Scourby,a good friend of Chris as well as international gun runner.Needing Chris to get the goods on Fabian and put him behind bars Chris reluctantly goes along with Thatcher's plan to trap Fabian in a honey pot affair but it's Neil's brother, just in from the states, Steve Emory, Glenn Ford, who ends up messing things up for both her & Inspector Thatcher. Steve realizes right from the start that his brother Neil was murdered and feels that his wife Chris together with her "lover" Max Fabian had something to do with it. Keeping secret that she's really working undercover to expose Fabian to the police Chris is smacked around, as well as smacks back, by an outraged Steve who's in danger of exposing what she's really involved in:Saving Trinidad as well as the free world from a Communist takeover! ***SPOILERS**** It turns out that Fabian is free lancing as a spy and saboteur for an unnamed but obviously communist, just pick one of many, government in stealing the most up to date propulsion secrets, gotten from the Nazis, of the US Air Force. With Fabian later finding out what Chris is up to he plans to have her knocked off by his goons but with Steve, who by now found out the truth to all this, jumping in to save her things go downhill for him. All of Fabian's plans backfire with himself getting iced, by mistake, by one of his goons that ends up not only saving both Chris & Steve but the entire free world from being nuked with the information he was to provide to, well just lets just stop beating around the bush and name it, the USSR! Even though she's been away from making motion pictures for some four year Rita Hayworth never looked more sexy & beautiful here and is the only reason for watching the movie. P.S It was later that Rita's mind not body began to deteriorate due to the then undiscovered ravages of Alzheimer's Disease and the poor woman was unable to remember her lines or work that tragically turned her life into a vegetated state and passed away in 1986 at the age of 68.

In the British colony of Trinidad, American Neil Emery is found dead in an apparent suicide. His nightclub performer wife Chris (Rita Hayworth) is informed by Anderson from the American consulate and policeman Inspector Smythe. Neil's brother Steve (Glenn Ford) arrives expecting to see Neil. The police discovers Neil was actually murdered and suspects Neil's rich powerful friend Max Fabian. They recruit Chris to investigate the mysterious Fabian but she can't tell Steve.Rita Hayworth returns to Hollywood after about four years married to a prince. This is trying to return to the glory of Gilda reuniting with Glenn Ford and recycling the plot of Notorious. She is a bit older and not quite the same powerful bombshell in her heyday. Everything feels like a mere shadow of former glory. With a lot more imagination, that could have been used to the movie's advantage. This one is pass its prime before it started. This may not be a classic but it is reminiscent of past greatness.

Producer & Director Vincent Sherman's lackluster "Affair in Trinidad," with Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford, looks like a loose rip-off of Alfred Hitchcock's "Notorious" with just enough changed so it is too obvious. Aside from the maps that are shown at the outset, this Columbus Pictures release appears to have been confined to the studio's back lot. I don't think that anybody set foot in the British possession during the production of this polished looking potboiler. Rita Hayworth plays quite a dame. She is a singer and a dancer who entrances everybody she meets until she runs into Glenn Ford. The Oscar Saul & James Gunn screenplay based on a story by Virginia Van Upp and Bernie Giler amounts to half-baked Cold War intrigue.The action opens during the evening as a member of the American Consulate, Anderson (Howard Wendell of "The Big Heat"), meets Inspector Smythe (Torin Thatcher of "Darby's Rangers") at the dock. As it turns out, an American citizen, an artist named Neal Emery, has apparently committed suicide. Furthermore, the dead man had the brother. Indeed, former World War II aviator Steve Emery (Glenn Ford of "Gilda") was on his way to visit his brother and Chris Emery (Rita Hayworth)in the island paradise. Chris works at The Caribe, a night club where she sings and dances. She is renowned for her seductive dance number called 'A chick a chick boom chick boom.' This is probably the most imaginative aspect about this predictable intrigue. Steve arrives as the inquest is being held, but he cannot believe that the British authorities have ruled his brother's demise as suicide. Meantime, the authorities know that Neal had dealings with a wealthy island businessman, Max Fabian (Alexander Scourby of "The Glory Brigade"), who is quite the suspicious character. Inspector Smythe refuses to let Chris leave the island because they know not only that Neal was not murdered, but also that his murder may have had something to do with Fabian. Fabian is a slick, well-dressed, and literately spoken gentleman. Smythe convinces Chris to work with them and try to find out what Fabian is cooking up. Eventually, we learn Fabian and his peculiar house guests are building rockets, like the Nazi V-2 rocket, to attack America. At one point in "Affair in Trinidad" do we learn anything about the Soviet's participation in this conspiracy. Interestingly enough, the scheme that these terrorists have dreamed up and compared with Pearl Harbor foreshadowed the Cuban Missile Crisis of the early 1960s. Meantime, after all that he has seen and heard, Steve has nothing but contempt for Chris. Chris cannot let him in on her scheme to find out what mischief that Fabian is up to until Steve breaks into his house and shoots him by accident. The authorities arrive not long afterward, but Steve has already swapped lead with Fabian and killed him. Now that her former husband's death has been cleared up to everybody's satisfaction, Chris leaves the island with Steve on a cruise-liner bound for Chicago. Evidently, it appears that Steve will get to marry his dead brother's wife.The cast is first-class. Hayworth is sexy as ever, while Ford seems to make a fool of himself in his desperate efforts to discover the truth behind his late brother's death. Little about his routine thriller may strike you as being memorable.

I've been in a few seedy nightclubs around the world and I have yet to find one where Rita Hayworth was saucily dancing in her bare feet. The rest of this mystery I've already forgotten and is just there as a vehicle for Rita's dance numbers (her singing was dubbed). The film was 'produced' by the Beckworth Corporation which was actually a front set up by Hayworth to reduce her tax bill. I'm not sure why they chose Trinidad as the locale, they didn't film one scene there and there weren't any Trini accents, music, or culture to be found in the movie. At the time T&T was simply a place in the Caribbean known for having a few US Naval bases and the subject of the song "Rum and Coca-Cola." This affair didn't end soon enough for me.