Isle of Fury

ISLE OF FURY (Warner Brothers, 1936), directed by Frank McDonald, is an obscure 60-minute feature most notable as one of the first starring roles of movie icon, Humphrey Bogart. Having made a promising start as the cold-blooded killer in THE PETRIFIED FOREST (1936), the studio kept Bogart busy in an assortment of major and minor film productions such as this. Though best appreciated playing gangsters or secondary to the studio's top actors of the day as Edward G. Robinson, Pat O'Brien and James Cagney, Bogart shows he can play the romantic hero as well. Supported by capable studio stock players as Margaret Lindsay and Donald Woods, with material based on the novel "The Narrow Corner" by W. Somerset Maugham, this edition was hardly original in concept considering that it was previously filmed three years earlier (1933) under Maugham's original book title with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Patricia Ellis and Ralph Bellamy. Regardless of which film version adapted by a renowned author is better, both screen adaptations remain forgotten by film scholars.

Forward: "There still remain far from the lanes of travel, myriads of unmarked islands, the refuge of lost men." Set on the island of Tankana, the story opens with a private wedding ceremony of Valentine "Val" Stevens (Humphrey Bogart) to Lucille Gordon (Margaret Lindsay) during a massive thunderstorm outside. After taking the wedding vows. Val is informed of a boat nearly covered by high waves of an offshore reef. He runs out to rescue passengers, Eric Blake (Donald Woods) and Captain Deever (Paul Graetz) and brings them to his cottage. As Blake regains consciousness, the first face he sees is Lucille, and replies to himself as beautiful. With Val in charge of a pearl diving expedition, he's quite busy getting his native divers to work. Val allows Blake to keep Lucille company in his absence. After being rescued by Blake from being trapped by an octopus while diving in the ocean below, Val and Eric not only become the best of friends but offers Eric a job position working as his partner. Eric turns down the offer for reasons of his own. Rumor starts to spread around the island regarding both Val and Eric's past secrets and the possibility that one of them is wanted for murder of a Richard Lord back in the states. Also in the cast are E. E. Clive (Doctor Hardy); Gordon Hart (Grandpa Anderson); Tetsu Komai (Kim Lee) and Miki Morita (Oh-Kay).

It is often felt that second features tell a whole lot more than those on a two-hour range. ISLE OF FURY is one of them. Though the characters are not fully developed (The Lucille character lived on the island all her life and had made a promise to her now deceased mother to marry Val is not fully explained). Regardless of unanswered questions, ISLE OF FURY has enough material with interesting diving scenes to hold interest.

Available on DVD format, ISLE OF FURY gets some cable television exposure on Turner Classic Movies for those interested in watching Humphrey Bogart early in his Warner Brothers career, and a very rare instance where Bogey sports a mustache. (**)

Isle of Fury (1936)

** (out of 4)

A rather bland love triangle set in the South Seas as Val (Humphrey Bogart) and Lucille (Margaret Lindsay) are married during a rough storm and minutes later there's a boat crash and Eric (Donald Woods) washes ashore. Soon all three become friends but Lucille begins to have extra feelings Eric as she starts to realize that she'll never fulfill her dreams on this island. This here is a remake of the 1932 film THE NARROW CORNER, a film I haven't seen so I can't compare the two. With that out of the way, this film here makes for some slight entertainment but in the end pretty much everyone can skip it unless you're fans of the cast. The biggest problem is, once again, the screenplay which was clearly not given too much attention, which I guess can be understood since this was meant to be the second film on a double bill. The screenplay never really knows what it wants to do because one moment we're on an adventure and then the next we're tied up in a love triangle that never really seems to work either because more attention is spent on Bogart and Woods instead of Woods and Lindsay. The film is certainly confused in what it wants to do but like many "B" movies it's at least smart enough to throw everything in and just hope something sticks. This film throws in a real crazy sequence where Bogart dives down to get some pearls and is attacked by a large octopus and soon enough Woods is underwater fighting it as well. I'm not sure what it is but no matter what movie you're watching it's always a plus when a killer octopus shows up. As far as the performances go I wasn't too thrilled with Lindsay who seemed to be sleepwalking throughout the film but I did enjoy Bogart and Woods. I thought these two actors really kept the film moving as they had a nice chemistry together and you have to love Bogie's mustache. The ending is pretty weak but the film only runs 62-minutes and makes for a decent time killer, although only fans of the stars should really seek it out.

This is a remake of "The Narrow Corner" and I have seen several variations on the film (such as "Tiger Shark" and "Danger Lights"). So, from the onset I found the material very familiar and very predictable. In fact, beginning at the very first scenes featuring the wedding and the shipwreck, I already knew exactly what would be happening later in the movie! The only unusual thing about this B-movie was seeing Humphrey Bogart as the poor husband--and with a very cheesy fake mustache. Why he was given such an uninteresting and thankless role is simply because he was not yet a star. By 1936, he'd been in quite a few films but almost exclusively in bit parts and walk-ons. Though he'd been in Hollywood for about five years, he really hadn't yet made a name for himself.

As I said before, the film starts with a wedding on a tiny island in the Pacific. When a boat crashes in the reef, in comes a more handsome and interesting man (Donald Woods) and the new wife is captivated. However, the husband is a sap and he doesn't realize how serious this is and befriends Woods--to his regret.

Overall, this is a very simple B-movie with little (other than the novelty of seeing Bogart in a crappy film) to positively distinguish it. And, on the negative side, there is a silly rubber octopus that just needs to be seen to believed. Not horrible but certainly not very good either.

Isle of Fury which starred Humphrey Bogart, Margaret Lindsay and Donald Woods is a remake of a previous Warner Brothers feature, The Narrow Corner based on a novel by the same name by W. Somerset Maugham. The original film came out in 1933 and starred Ralph Bellamy, Patricia Ellis, and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in the roles played by Bogart, Lindsay and Woods respectively.

Knowing how things operated at Warner Brothers and also having seen both the original and remake they did of The Dawn Patrol, I'm willing to wager half the next month's rent that whole chunks of the film, all the action sequences are just carried over from the original film. That's just how Jack Warner did things over at his studio.

I'm also willing to bet knowing the original source is Somerset Maugham who also wrote that racy epic Rain baed in the South Seas that the original since it was before the Code was a great deal spicier. The new version is 9 minutes longer and probably the spice has been removed.

Warner Brothers never got anywhere near the South Seas, probably the film was shot in Catalina. The plot concerns Bogart and Lindsay who are being married as the film opens when news of a foundering sailing ship off their island and hung up on a reef brings a call for rescue. Only two get rescued, the captain Paul Graetz, and a mysterious passenger Donald Woods.

Bogart and Woods hit it off and become friends and Lindsay and Woods hit it off even better. Both Bogart and Woods however have something in their respective pasts.

The part that Bogey plays is something he might have done later on with bigger budgets. This film was done on the cheap, the special effects are crude by today's standards. Today of course the movie going public would demand location shooting in some place like Fiji or Samoa.

It's B picture from Bryan Foy's B picture unit at Warner Brothers so take it for what it's worth.

...this is your film. I'm giving it four stars just based on the fact that the three leads - Humphrey Bogart, Margaret Lindsay, and Donald Woods managed to carry this thing as well as they did. The film opens on a wedding between Val Stevens (Humphrey Bogart) and Lucille Gordon (Margaret Lindsay), with Lucille having all the enthusiasm of someone who is using her life savings as a down payment on buying a house that she just doesn't like. The way WB has Bogart made up will make you realize why she feels that way if you don't just laugh out loud - bad perm AND bad mustache with bad perm. Donald Woods is the mysterious handsome stranger that shipwrecks on Val and Lucille's tropical island and almost interrupts the ceremony. When Woods' character regains consciousness after being rescued, he instantly begins giving reluctant bride Lucille bedroom eyes. If you think you know where this thing is headed from the beginning you'd probably be right, so I'm going to stop right there and let you watch and find out what happens. Just don't nod off and miss the hilarious scene of Bogart wrestling with a fake octopus that looks like it is right out of Ed Wood's Bride of the Monster.

I've seen Bogart in some odd films given his later film persona - the rather experimental "Midnight" and the early talkie "Bad Sister" - but this is the only truly bad film in which I've seen him, and by bad I mean dull and predictable.