Devil's Playground

"The Devil's Playground" (1937) is the definition of potboiler. It's a romance/drama/adventure/sailor/submarine/two-timing/buddy movie starring Richard Dix, Delores Del Rio, Chester Morris, and many others, from Lionel Hampton to Ward Bond. Pierre Watkin (listed in the credits as Watkins) plays the submarine captain, and it's a riot seeing Si Jenks playing the telephone installation man in his old-timer mining hat and beard and pipe that he wore in countless Westerns and other films. This is basically a re-make of 1928's "Submarine", a film that was re-made again in 1931 as "Fifty Fathoms Deep", both of which starred Jack Holt. The devil in this version is probably Del Rio as she proudly and ferociously devours men, even marrying Dix, then carrying on with his pal Morris when Dix is away, then...well, I'll leave it at that. The submarine scenes are intense and extremely well-played. The first twenty minutes or so move slowly and don't really get anywhere, or so it seems. A quicker editing, or cutting(s) would have helped immensely. Once the action really begins where Dix, the navy's best deep sea diver, is needed to rescue stranded submarine personnel, including his buddy, Morris, then the show moves like greased lightning. The end nearly seems tacked on. Generally a-jumble, this is edited poorly. Del Rio is super as a bad girl! Morris steals all acting honors. Dix seems very laid back, even bored. I've got him in a few '37 movies, and he's the same in all of them. Don't quite understand (?).

It was a fun movie, but believe it or not, at 74 minutes was 10 minutes too long! Del Rio was worth the watch, if only the writing had been more integrated and less diffuse...

Jack Dorgan (Richard Dix), the roughest-toughest diver in the navy, dreams of settling down and buying his own house. He eventually marries dance hall girl Carmen (Dolores Del Rio), but when Jack goes off on an assignment, Carmen stars an affair with Jack's best friend Robert Mason (Chester Morris), who is unaware that Carmen is married. However, when Mason is trapped in a submarine, Jack is the only person that can save him...

Based on a silent Frank Capra film, Devil's Playground, despite the eye-catching title, is a poorly written melodrama. Richard Dix and Chester Morris are solid as the leads, while Dolores Del Rio is a bit over-the-top. The script, frankly, is awful. The submarine rescue only takes fifteen minutes, with the rest of the film take up with dull romantic shenanigans. This one's a dud.

Devil's Playground is the story of two navy pals and the woman who makes a monkey out of both of them.

Dolore Del Rio is said woman and she meets and marries Richard Dix known as the best deep sea diver in the US Navy. She works as a dime a dance dancer in a dance hall.

But just as they're about to do the honeymoon thing Dix gets called away for sea duty. Del Rio goes back to the dance hall rather than sit at home. As fate would have it she runs into Chester Morris who duty has brought to town and he's a man ever ready to help scratch an itch. And Del Rio has been left with an itch that needs some desperate scratching.

I think you can figure the rest of this out. The film is dominated by Del Rio's portrayal of the sly little minx who gets both Dix and Morris's hormones a raging. There are also some nice deep sea rescue sequences performed.

Still it's Del Rio whom you will remember.

Bluff Richard Dix is the best diver in the Navy's submarine service. Womanizing Chester Morris is his best buddy. Dix is assigned to teaching recruits how to dive, and while he's in San Diego he quickly acquires a house, and a wife: taxi-dancer Dolores Del Rio. Before they can celebrate their marriage, Dix is called back to active duty. Del Rio goes back to taxi-dancing, where she meets Morris. Then Dix comes home.

The movie is neatly divided into three parts: Dix settling into his home and being played for a sucker by Del Rio; Morris and Del Rio; and the final third, in which the submarine Morris goes to the bottom, and the only man who can save the crew is the angry Dix. It's an attempt to combine the two-buddies-and-a-golddigger plot with the submarine rescue story which Columbia had been doing at least since Frank Capra directed SUBMARINE nine years earlier. While the three leads are, as you might expect, terrific, the seam connecting the two types of story shows. Del Rio was a terrific actress, but the role as written is completely unsympathetic, and director Erle Kenton was not the man to bring out the subtleties that might have made this more than a programmer.

Jack Dorgan is an expert Navy diver. Robert Mason is a submariner. The best friends love carousing while on shore leave. After Mason goes on an extended tour, Dorgan marries dance-hall girl Carmen. She comes between the best friends until an underwater incident forces them back together.

I like Richard Dix playing the loveable lug. He's fun. I want to be his friend. The guys do need to be more different. Mason is a bigger brain than Dorgan but they look a bit too similar. The love triangle would work better with all three people being present. There are some good and some less than good in this story. As for the submarine, the set is too roomy. It's too big to have the claustrophobic tension. The miniature work looks amateurish and the incident is rather contrived. All in all, this is a functional B-movie with some good and I like Dorgan.