Hell's Half Acre

It's almost mandatory that when you film in Hawaii you film in color. But that would have put Herbert J. Yates and Republic Pictures on the horns of a dilemma. They were making a noir film set in Honolulu which is most often done in black and white anyway. And Yates was trying mightily to keep his studio afloat with the advent of television which overtaking Republic's bread and butter, B westerns.

Evelyn Keyes and Wendell Corey star in this film where Evelyn hears that the husband she thought lost on the Arizona in December of 1941 is on trial for murder in Honolulu. She goes to Hawaii to investigate. Corey the long lost husband is now a syndicate big shot and has confessed to killing a former partner. A third partner Philip Ahn is looking to take advantage of the situation and inherit all of Corey's assets.

No sooner does Keyes arrive in Hawaii than she's hip deep in the case when she tries to visit Corey's current girlfriend Nancy Gates. She spots Ahn near the home where he has just recently murdered Gates. That puts both Corey on a personal hunt and the Honolulu PD on a hunt for Ahn.

I have to say that while Ahn has played villains before, he was never quite as brutal as he is in this film. His opposite number Keye Luke plays Honolulu's chief of police and he's a wise and compassionate soul and really in the end comes through for Keyes. Corey also does the decent thing in the end.

A couple of other interesting roles are Jesse White as a hapless drunken gunsill and his slattern of a wife Marie Windsor who next to Gloria Grahame played the most tramps of the Fifties.

Some story plot holes that you could have driven the Arizona through when it was afloat unfortunately mar Hell's Half Acre. But the characterizations are just fine. I only wish that color had been used because having been to Hawaii black and white doesn't do it justice.

This flat-footed, full-of-holes feature is nonetheless fascinating because of its Honolulu locale and exotic characters. Marie Windsor as Jesse White's wife and Philip Ahn's mistress? Film noir nirvana! And the Production Code vision of a hellish den of iniquity? A crisply clean framework of lumber and whitewash enclosing gambling parlors and taxi-dancehalls!

This little gem of a film noir B movie is about a woman trying to track down her long lost husband in Hawaii after the War (WWII) where he was supposed to have died. In the process she finds herself in the middle of an underworld power struggle. Beautifully filmed in Hawaii with Ms. Keyes really working those facial expressions, as she tended to do. The film is tight, cynical and at times redeeming. Just a good little film.

The story is interesting. After a honeymoon of three days Wendell Corey has to break up to serve in the war and happens to Pearl Harbour, where he is almost killed but not quite, but he survives with his face damaged for life. He gets stuck on Hawaii and tries to make a life of his own there in a casbah-like nest of murky activitieds, where he gets mixed up with local rackets but also makes some local career as a singing poet. His wife back home has received news that he is reported missiing, supposed dead, in which assumed fact she lives on for years, until she hears a song of his and recognizes his words on a modern record. She goes to Hawaii to search for him while he gets deeper involved with murders and rackets and refuses to acknowledge her or his life before the war. Of course there are further complications.

Wendell Corey was never a favourite actor of mine, he was almost a disappointment to me in every film I saw him in for hisstiffness and lack of expression, but this film is saved by the story. The other actors are rather mediocre as well, but fortunately there is Elsa Lanchester as a helpful taxi driver, who actually contributes in saving the film. The local touch is also excellent, with sweet ukuleles singing and swinging all over the place and everywhere you go, and the environment is lovely and enchanting, of course. Only Wendell Corey is not, and he is only saved by the sad story of his fate.

An offbeat drama with a dream-like guitar score and a strong female contingent, including hard-bitten floozy Marie Windsor. Shot in glacial black & white on location in Honolulu by cameraman John L. ('Psycho') Russell.

The script by Steve Fisher looks as if it began life set on the mean streets of New York; which would account for the unexpected presence of Elsa Lanchester as a taxi-driving Earth mother who takes Evelyn Keyes under her wing in the search for Ms Keyes' amnesiac husband Wendell Corey.