L'inferno verde

Sensibilities have changed in 90 years that it's difficult to get into the swim with "White Woman", a well-shot and acted Paramount feature rooted in Colonialism but saved by the usual tour de force performance by Charles Laughton. It's hard to imagine another actor in his role.

Opening reel seems to be a familiar tale of prejudice and ostracism: star Carole Lombard looking fabulous and even singing (direct sound) a couple of torch songs as a cafe singer down on her luck in some Far East British colony (likely set in Straits Settlements). Her husband committed suicide, and folks look down on her working in a cafe frequented by locals.

But soon she's married Laughton, self-proclaimed King of the RIver, who from humble beginnings has bought up most of the island. With a unique walrus moustache, he's a very odd fellow, full of sarcasm and even some self-deprecatory humor as he lords it over all and sundry. A couple fo studs understandably lust after Lombard, with the sjurprise of Charles Bickford, young and overconfident, even taking a shower and having an unlikely beefcake role.

When Laughton literally spits in the faces of a couple of higher-rank natives, things look glum for the white folks, as a rebellion begins. Chuck has a couple of impressive machine guns with plenty of ammo for just such an occasion, but he's thwarted byt the white guys he keeps under his thumb working for him, leading to a truly memorable climax, in which violence is tastefully delivered off-screen.

They don't make them like this anymore. A lurid jungle picture with a fallen woman (the gorgeous LOMBARD)forced to sing in an interracial cafe after her husband commits suicide. No one in the African jungle British community wants anything to do with her. The British are there tearing up the jungle for the rubber plants and building huge rubber plantations. Rumor is her husband killed himself over her cheating ways. She's miserable and salvation comes along in the guise of Charles Laughton playing Horace Prin, the "King Of The River" - he's the richest rubber plantation owner in the jungle and he likes what he sees in Lombard. They marry, she's now rich but she's nothing more than one thing he owns and she begins to realize that he is obsessively jealous and insane and cruel. Laughton is amazing. A brilliant actor (from Witness For The Prosecution, Advise & Consent, Mutiny On The Bounty) who is capable of hamming it up for the sake of ham (Island Of Lost Souls, un-released Caligula)this is the hammiest performance I've ever seen but it is also so entertaining. He has a field day destroying any worker who dares to look at his new bride. What a hoot!!!

...from Paramount Pictures and director Stuart Walker. Carole Lombard stars as Judith Denning, a nightclub singer with a sordid past stuck in a Third World country where the white governors don't want her around. She reluctantly agrees to marry Horace Prin (Charles Laughton), a rich but repellent owner of a Malaysian rubber plantation. Known as the "King of the River" , Prin runs things with an iron fist and a maniacal twinkle in his eye. It doesn't take long for Judith to regret her decision, what with the horrid weather and seething natives. She's also being chased by a pair of her husband's employees: handsome Army deserter David (Kent Taylor) and swaggering new overseer Ballister (Charles Bickford).

This plays like a mash-up of A Lady to Love and Island of Lost Souls. The filmmakers re-used the sets from the latter film, and Laughton gets to ham it up in a delightful way, with an exaggerated accent, peculiar manners, and silly haircut and mustache. Lombard looks terrific, but she doesn't have much to do other than excite the guys in the cast while looking sad. Bickford doesn't show up until later in the movie, but he's worth it with his macho, no BS characterization clashing wonderfully with Laughton's sadistic weirdo. Like most exotic locale movies of the era, this one is more than a little racist, and the bungled depiction of the natives adds to the movie's bizarre "charm".

After the suicide of her husband, down on her luck "Denning" (Carole Lombard) finds herself reduced to singing in a remote club where she espies a chance to escape the drudgery by marrying the "King of the River" - "Prin" (Charles Laughton). He's an outwardly charming fellow, but when she gets to his converted boat many days into the Malay jungle, she discovers he's a bit of a sadistic brute who rules his lucrative rubber planation ruthlessly. Her arrival sets the cat amongst the pigeons and sows a bit of dissent amongst his team causing temperatures to rise and tempers to flare - and that's before the arrival of the plain-speaking "Ballister" (Charles Bickford) who decides that this reign of terror must be stopped. How, though? "Prim" is well prepared and the natives are either terrified or armed only with spears against his guns. I'm an huge fan of Laughton but his role here seems a little too faux-cockney, vaudevillian and reminiscent of his performance from "The Private Lives of Henry VIII" also made in 1933 - especially when he is chewing to camera! Lombard is also out of sorts, a bit - her character has a stiltedness that even the romantic tryst scenario can't really enliven. It had potential, the story is good and the cast were all there - but Stuart Walker can't quite get this adventure firing on all cylinders.

Carole Lombard is singing Cole Porter-style songs in a native bar. She's an outcast because she went off with a man and her husband killed himself. In comes "King of the River" Charles Laughton. He marries her and takes her upriver, where all the White men have something in their background that would get them jailed -- at best.

The movie looks like a badly aged mash-up of other, better remembered stories from the era: RAIN, of course, and RED RIVER with Charles Bickford as the he-man, and SANDERS OF THE RIVER. Although Lombard is the protagonist for the most of the movie, and Bickford looks like he's going to take it over when he enters for the third act, it's Laughton, playing one of his grotesques who dominates the film, from his entrance until the very end, when he is the only White standing, shouting defiance. Just like in other movies of the era, he's so good at playing a fascinating villain who despises everyone else... until he throws it all away in an act of mad bravado, to impress Lombard.