Lure of the Islands

Robert Lowery and Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams land on a tropical island. They are spies, with orders to find out if anything warlike is going on. They find that Ivan Lebedeff is in charge, with Warren Hymer as his assistant. They're Germans, so apparently no one has heard of the Treaty of Versailles. They also find Margie Hart and Gale Storm, two half-caste girls who want to get off the island and into. Park Avenue penthouses.

Jean Yarbrough directs this for yucks, but there aren't any to be had. Miss Hart dances the hula like a burly-cue queen and talks like one feeding lines to the comic. That's not surprising, because that's precisely she was. Producer Lindsley Parsons, acclaimed as Monogram's class producer, had read police accounts of her being pulled off stage and into paddy wagons and I guess he thought there was some publicity to be had. After this, her sole movie, she went to acting school and did a few stage shows. Her third marriage was to Los Angeles City Council President John Ferraro. She died in 2000 at the age of 85.

A couple of bozos get in trouble with Nazis on a south sea island. Margie Hart

(an exotic dancer of the day) is ultra campy -- dig those lips and the deadpan delivery! Lots of fun burlesque-style dialogue. Kind of a '40's "Gilligan's Island," but with sexual tension. Gale Storm, adorable... "Hawaiian" music and dancing.

Even for a World War II propaganda film Monogram Studios hit rock bottom with this film about two agents trying to stop a Japanese takeover of an island where the Vichy French government still has control.

Although both Waikiki Wedding from Paramount and Song Of The Islands, films set in the Pacific islands never got beyond the studio lot, both films today create an illusion. That's the difference between major studios and these Poverty Row outfits like Monogram.

And getting into the film itself, our intrepid agents are Robert Lowery and Guinn Williams. You know it's got to be bad when FBI agent Lowery gets as a partner the only sailor in Uncle Sam's Navy who can't swim. He's not much good at anything else. Oh well, the other side has Warren Hymer so it's a pair of Rhodes Scholars up against each other.

A couple of Polynesian girls Margie Hart and Gale Storm have some musical Hawaiian flavored numbers. But Hart is one of the worst actresses going. Good thing she married well into society.

This one's a real Thanksgiving feast, compliments of Monogram Pictures.

Margie Hart was Margaret Hart Ferraro, a former burlesque dancer that, according to wire stories, was called "the poor man's Garbo"; went on to become a savvy real estate investor, political wife and society matron, who died Jan 26, 2000 in Los Angeles; age was estimated at 84 years. Not bad!

"Lure of the Islands" is supposedly set on some Pacific island. As far as the natives go, most look like they are actually Polynesians...quite unusual for the time when this was made. However, the two female leads look about as Polynesian as a can of Spaghetti-o's! Why? Well, perhaps some of it lazy casting but I think most is that these two women fall for the American heroes (Robert Lowery and Big Boy Williams) and race mixing was something that might not have worked well back in 1942 with some audiences. If this is the reason for the dopey casting, then that's pretty sad....though casting white folks in Asian roles in general was pretty common back in the day. Try to look past this when you see the film and understand it's just a sign of the times in which it was made.

Wally (Lowery) and Jinx (Williams) are sent to investigate a Pacific island because it's suspected there might be Japanese collaborators there. The pair are supposed to be FBI agents, though this doesn't make a lot of sense, as the FBI is used for domestic police work...not things like this. Instead, they should have been described as OSS (a precursor of the CIA) or US Navy operatives. Sloppy writing? Yep.

Once on the island, the first two native women they meet are Tana and Maui (Margie Hart and Gale Storm). They explain that they look and sound the way they do because their father was an American.....but this doesn't explain how they SOUND like they just graduated from charm school!! No local accent whatsoever make this a silly convention.

As for the collaborators, some of the local authorities are Japanese agents....and it's up to the guys to get evidence to that effect as well as get off the island alive. This might be tough, as Jinx is played by Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams, a guy who specialized in playing strong idiots. And, in a first for me, I noticed the film had TWO strong guy idiots....Williams and Warren Hymer ('Albert')...and Hymer, inexplicably, plays some sort of semi-Japanesey/Germany sort of villain!!!

So is it any good? Well, the musical numbers were pretty silly--especially watching Maui (Storm) singing a number that sounded like it should be sung in a nightclub...in the middle of the jungle on this island!! There are a few native dancers and they actually were pretty good and appeared authentic. Why not just stick with these native dancers?? Who knows. The dialog is at times terrible, the acting is just passable (or worse) and the story...well...as you can tell from what I've said above, it's pretty lame. Overall, a very silly film that is watchable...but bad.