Sensation Hunters

Because it was Charles Vidor's first credited feature, and because it was a pre-Code flick, I was hoping to see something astonishing. I didn't, but I found it a fine pre-Code.

Marion Burns is on her first steps in what she imagines to be a career in the performing arts -- all she has been in before is college shows. She has gotten a job as a singer in Juanita Hansen's troupe, on their way to Panama, where she quickly makes friends with her room mate, cynical old hand Arline Judge, and begins a budding romance with upright Preston Foster, whose mine is somewhere around there. She soon discovers that the troupe is not called on just to entertain on stage; they're there to get the customers to buy drinks, and Hansen is an old buzzard. Gradually things go downhill...

Although Burns is the central character, it's Arline Judge who has the standout role: pugnacious, profane, liable to marry anything with tattoos, and waiting for her first husband to show up again, she's a three-ring circus on her own. It's a lively movie and a lot of fun.

This is a very old movie, I think from just after films started having sound in them. Some of the acting could be better but they were probably silent movie actors just moving into having to do talking roles, or just new to doing films in general. The story is fine and the performances too. Not super engaging or a great film but better than a lot of older movies, especially ones this old.

A showgirl finds herself romantically torn between a daring pilot and a mining engineer. It's hardly surprising that Arline Judge never really made a name for herself if her weak performance here is anything to go by, and she isn't helped by the inconsequential quality of the material here. Former Mack Sennett bathing beauty Juanita Henson, presumably in the period between her cocaine and morphine addictions, stands out as the brassy, bullying leader of a dance troupe, and a youngish Walter Brennan appears in a couple of scenes as a gormless waiter. Sadly, these two provide the only scenes worth watching.

Sensation Hunters is a pre-code melodrama set in the tropics of the Panama Canal Zone. The action mostly centers around Trixie's Bull Pit a kind of upscale dive owned by Juanita Hansen who is Texas Guinan like character for the low brows.

Two women are going to work there, good time girl Arline Judge and newcomer Marian Nixon. The girls are kind of on the menu there as well and millionaire aviator Kenneth McKenna. He might be the answer to Nixon's prayers, but it doesn't work out that way.

Preston Foster who I usually enjoy is completely wasted in a role that only calls for him to be a shoulder that Nixon cries on. The whole story despite its trash setting is an old fashioned Victorian melodrama not likely to be revived

Nor should it.

(There are some Spoilers) Early exploitation movie about a naive country girl trying to find fame and fortune in the world of show business and ending up down and out not in Beverly Hills but in Panama City.

On a cruise in the Pacific young and pretty Dale Jordan, Marion Burns, joins this group of singers and dancers who embarked on her ship, in Port Los Angeles, that are headed for Panama to do a show at Panama City's swinging "Bull Ring Cafe". Striking up a friendship with singer/dancer Jerry Royal, Arline Judge, the two girls together with their fellow singers and dancers are such a sensation that the show that they do goes on for twelve weeks. Dale starts getting tired of doing her act night after night and has two rich American suitors who want her hand in marriage; businessman Tom Baylor, Preston Foster, and playboy jet-setter Jimmy Crosby, Kenneth MacKenna. Making it very difficult for her to choose which one of the two she'll want to marry.

Things on the podium of the "Bull Ring" are also starting to go sour with the head of the singing and dancing troupe Trixie Snell, Juanita Hansen, hitting the bottle every night and causing the girls to miss their steps and notes on the stage due to Trixie's constance drunken badgering and bickering. With Jimmy winning her over Dale is ready to fly, with him in the cockpit, back to New York Ciy to start a new life in the rich and glamorous world that he lives in but something goes very wrong to change Jimmy's plans.

It turns out that Jimmy is already married to Elizabeth and that she won't give him a divorce even though they've been estranged for years. Not knowing what to do Jimmy fill's her up his gas tank and stomach with gasoline and alcohol and takes a ride on his plane to think things over. Losing control due to his being heavily intoxicated Jimmy takes a nose dive and crashes on the runway in a spectacular Kamikaze-like smash-up killing himself.

Dale now alone and needing money to get back to the states goes, together with Jerry, to get her job back with the Trixie girls but in a wild argument with Trixie Jerry punches her out and the two Cabaret singers are now left out in the cold. Left to having to do song and dance acts at the sleazy Burger Bar entertaining drunken sailors and mariners.

Things don't go too well at Burgers Bar with the girls being grabbed and fondled by the drunken clientèle and the manager and owner of the bar, Mr. Burger, is not too helpful allowing all this groping to go on in order to keep his bar full of paying, but drunken, customers.

One of the persons at the Burger Bar Indian Joe, Charles Stevens, is approached one evening by the local police for questioning in a number of knifing. It's then that all hell breaks loose with Jerry ending up in the hospital with a bullet in her chest. Needing money to pay Jerry's hospital bills Dale takes all the money she saved up, $150.00, to get back to the USA and pays for Jerry's hospital stay in Panama City.

The film "Sansation Hunters" does indeed have a happy ending with Tom Baylor coming to Dale's rescue, after receiving a letter from Jerry about her's and Dale's plight,and are soon married. As for Jerry her long lost boyfriend and sailor Olaf Anderssen, Jack Pennick, who one evening years ago in a Shang-Hai bar got so drunk that he missed his boat and was left stranded in the Chinese port city not knowing a word of Chinese. Well Olaf's now back in Panama City to start where he left off with his Jerry but this time not as a sailor! He not only learned to speak Chinese but worked himself up the ladder to become an Admiral in the Chinese Navy!

P.S the actor Charles Stevens playing to part of Indian Joe is not only a real American Indian but the grandson of non-other then the legendary Apache Indian Chieftain-Warrior Geronimo!How About That!