Four Frightened People

Interesting Cecil B. DeMille film about four passengers fleeing a plague-infested ship and having to fight their way through the jungle. William Gargan is a pompous reporter who's the he-man of the group, pointing his gun at everything that moves and barking orders. Mary Boland is a talkative middle-aged socialite who provides most of the movie's humor and is pretty much the highlight. Herbert Marshall is a sarcastic chemist who discovers his masculinity through the ordeal. Claudette Colbert plays a mousy geography teacher with pinned-up hair and glasses. As the film progresses, she lets her hair down, loses the glasses, and wears less clothes. So naturally she becomes increasingly sexy and self-confident! The two men, of course, start to notice her more. Leo Carillo is an English-speaking native guide who is terrible at his job and gets the group lost!

As I said, it's an interesting film for DeMille, who is known as a director of epics. This is a smaller, more character-driven story. It's a nice little film, if a slight one. Corny at times but enjoyable enough. The cast is good and the direction solid. Colbert is lovely and makes the most of a silly part. Try not to take it too seriously and I'm sure you'll enjoy it more.

I am relating a great deal of this film's content because I know it is nearly impossible for potential viewers to find. So if you don't want to know specifics of the plot, please stop reading! I was lucky enough to enjoy it through a university preservation film festival.

First, the four main characters are introduced:

Mary Boland - interested in reducing the birth rate of the country; Herbert Marshall - an "unimportant" rubber chemist "too quiet and shy to shake the world's foot from his neck", Claudette Colbert - an insignificant Chicago geography teacher, and William Gargan - an egotistical journalist whose articles "New York" is just waiting for. (Those are some of the film's words, not mine).

In the first few minutes, you see Colbert dressed in a very prim fashion with her hair pulled tightly back and glasses always on. This was reason enough to pay admission! The three other main characters are trying to escape from their plague-infected ship. She has screamed, so they have to abduct her in order to slip away unnoticed.

Soon their little boat dies and they must rely on a native (Leo Carillo calling himself "white") to help them find a path back to civilization. This is where their 'fun' really begins. They must traverse through an ominous jungle. Colbert only notices the pretty orchid she wants to pick and when they bunk for the night, she is incredibly offended that they expect her to sleep with them (including the men). This is when a truly bit of funny dialogue occurs: Marshall says something like, Neither one of us thinks of you as a woman so stop turning everything into a sex problem and join the group! It was very amusing to hear a proper-sounding man blurt this out angrily. She insists on being alone until she hears a lion. Then she races over on all fours and is in between the men while they're attempting to sleep. Her hair is hanging down and the impression is that she is getting prettier. The two men roll over though and ignore her.

Soon they are lost in a maze of unnavigable branches. Colbert tries to reason which way is north. No one wants to listen to her, but they're ready to play with the extra set of cards she handily has in her purse. Under a makeshift roof, they play at night while Gargan barely saves Colbert from a snake. Feeling indebted to him, she dries his wet shoes over a fire but only succeeds in burning out the soles. He is infuriated, and now she is determined to go on alone. After all, her great great grandfather was John Paul Jones.

Now a real native tribe finds the lost wanderers and will not leave them in peace unless one of the women stays with them. They choose Boland because she's heavier than Colbert and they like that. Soon the two men who never liked each other start arguing, especially over the less inhibited Colbert who now attractively wears bathing suits made from leaves and bathes luxuriously under a waterfall. She starts making the decisions much to the men's chagrin. She becomes enamoured of the more sensitive Marshall, who we learn is a hen-pecked husband. Eventually, the group survives the death of their leader and Marhsall's being hit with an arrow. Back in civilization, we see Marshall and Colbert in their separate environments. For those who like to see their characters happily paired though, this film won't disappoint you.

If you like Colbert and Marshall, this film is one to search for. It is also fun to see Boland younger and playing an unmatronly character. This is a more subdued DeMille picture which presents a different aspect of him as a director. The film may be a little silly and unrealistic, but it was not a spectacle. I wish it was available for people to see more readily.

This film has long been maddeningly elusive on both home video and even television, where it would seem like a natural for AMC or TCM. It's directed by the legendary Cecil B. DeMille, features a solid cast in William Gargan, Herbert Marshall and Mary Boland, and best of all lets us see the most beautiful woman to grace the screen in the 1930s, Claudette Colbert, undergo an alluring transformation from prim, mousy schoolteacher to a self-assured jungle woman in a midriff baring leopardskin.

Not that DeMille gives us a picture of the jungle as a totally idyllic Paradise. The story, which focuses on four people who have escaped a plague outbreak on their ocean liner and who are trekking through hundreds of miles of jungle to reach civilization, shows them going through many travails from snakes to ugly insects to hostile natives etc. Along the way, DeMille mixes in comic relief, intense drama and character studies, philosophical and religious musings, and a generous amount of Claudette showing off her magnificent form. In short, he gives us exactly what he also served up in his spectacle pictures, without the spectacle itself. That absence of spectacle may account for why the picture ultimately failed and is forgotten today. Too bad, because it's quite fascinating to watch.

DeMille obviously enjoyed showcasing Colbert in revealing outfits, since he would do so two more times in the next year, first in "Cleopatra" and then in "Sign Of The Cross."

This bizarre, hideously ignored Cecil B. Demille comedy has a bit of everything! Sarcastic/ironic humor, adventurous action, sex, melodrama, romance and camp shift in and out of focus, giving way to each other throughout.

Without going into much plot detail, four passengers (Claudette Colbert, Herbert Marshall, Mary Boland and William Gargan) escape a plagued ship and come ashore only to find they must travel through miles and miles of jungle area in order to reach help. Gargan turns in a memorable performance as a determined journalist just dying to re-reach civilization to share the latest, greatest news story. Marshall and Boland are equally adept. However, this picture ultimately belongs to Demille's unique directional touches and the dynamic, versatile skill of Colbert. Fans of films fitting this description will likely find 'Four Frightened People' to be a delightful, forgotten treasure.

Utter balderdash with the DeMille touch, although it is missing a big set piece which in his later films was standard, has to do with people stranded on an island fending off man and beast. Somehow going through the rigors of the jungle makes Claudette more attractive rather than less, she even has an indistinct but very definite nude scene under a waterfall. Herbert Marshall is fine as usual but the real standout is Mary Boland doing her best fluttery nincompoop, the periods when she disappears from the film it really suffers because of it. A notorious flop in its day this is enjoyable if you are a fan of DeMille's excesses but he's definitely made better films.