The Devil's Daughter

The half-sister of a woman who has inherited the banana plantation she manages resorts to voodoo in an attempt to drive her off the island. A cheap all-black remake of the equally low-budget 1936 horror movie Ouanga. Considering it was presumably intended for a black audience, it's something of a surprise that the comic relief, who believes his soul has been put in a piglet, is such a jive-talking stereotype. The acting is beyond awful, and the direction hamfisted, but it's horribly watchable.

I'm very curious about the early cinema featuring actors of color. This one doesn't have much to say. It's about a phony voodoo ritual in Jamaica. There's a plot by a woman to prevent her sister from taking property left to her when her father died. Nothing much happens and the plot is about as dull as can be. There are some stereotypes around, the silly, crap shooting black man who speaks in that dialect we find so offensive today. I guess if there is a positive about this film is that, given a chance, black directors and black actors of this time were as capable of making a clinker as a masterpiece. Obviously, as a period curiosity, this is worth a look, but if you put aside that perspective, it's not really much. The events that occur are so uninteresting and so harmless that most of the punch disappears. I bet some of these people were fine actors, but this doesn't let them show their stuff.

This rather unique film begins with a young woman by the name of "Sylvia Walton" (Ida James) returning to Jamaica after being gone for most of her adult life to take possession of a banana plantation bequeathed to her from her father. However, rather than being warmly greeted upon her return, she soon learns that her half-sister "Isabelle Walton" (Nina Mae McKinney) has left the estate and gone off into the jungle to live. Naturally, this fills her with a great deal of sadness, but what she doesn't know is that both her overseer "Philip Ramsey" (Jack Carter) and Isabelle are conspiring against her in order to gain possession of the plantation for themselves. Now, as I stated earlier, this film was rather unique in that it consisted of an all-black cast and was basically targeted for black audiences. Obviously, considering that there were so few roles available for black actors during this time, it stands to reason that some of them would take whatever opportunities they could get. What disturbs me, however, was the flagrant use of racial stereotypes depicted in this movie which demeaned both the actors involved and the target audience combined. And if that wasn't bad enough, the low-budget nature of this film made everything seem even more cheap and tawdry. That being said, I don't consider this to be a good movie by any means and I have rated it accordingly. Below average.

The film was apparently made in Jamaica with some beautiful musical sequences with singing and dancing that complement the simple story. There had to be a good budget to film that and pay top money to the world famous star. It drags in parts, though, with boring unnecessary speeches that over explain the plot, EXCEPT the few exquisite scenes with Nina Mae McKinney: there should have been more closeups of her, her screen presence is hypnotic! You only watch her, even when the other actors are talking you are drawn to her face to see her reactions! A beautiful love theme was under-recorded and is barely audible at times. I suspect some additional minutes of footage were edited out or lost.

A young woman from Harlem inherits a Jamaican plantation, but has to contend with her half-sister for the rights. Unfortunately, the half-sister is involved in voodoo and is not afraid to use it for her own ends.

Nina Mae McKinney appears as the "star" of this production. While notable in her own day (as an actress, dancer and musician), McKinney has since faded into obscurity. Having now been dead over forty years, one would be hard-pressed to meet anyone who was knowledgeable of her work. I, for one, am not familiar with it beyond this picture.

"Devil's Daughter" should be noted for its all-black cast, though sadly the movie isn't particularly good. Without the printed summary on the case, I would likely have been lost. The cock fights drew my attention more than the human actors. Another reviewer compared this film to "White Zombie", favoring "Zombie". I agree -- as far as films about voodoo go, "White Zombie" is hard to top. This one does not come close.

One should certainly consider watching this film if they find it in their collection (I acquired it as part of a box set), but beyond that there's little reason to seek it out. I found the film bland and not able to stand the test of time. Which is too bad, but the sad truth.