La casbah di Honolulu

The story is interesting. After a honeymoon of three days Wendell Corey has to break up to serve in the war and happens to Pearl Harbour, where he is almost killed but not quite, but he survives with his face damaged for life. He gets stuck on Hawaii and tries to make a life of his own there in a casbah-like nest of murky activitieds, where he gets mixed up with local rackets but also makes some local career as a singing poet. His wife back home has received news that he is reported missiing, supposed dead, in which assumed fact she lives on for years, until she hears a song of his and recognizes his words on a modern record. She goes to Hawaii to search for him while he gets deeper involved with murders and rackets and refuses to acknowledge her or his life before the war. Of course there are further complications.

Wendell Corey was never a favourite actor of mine, he was almost a disappointment to me in every film I saw him in for hisstiffness and lack of expression, but this film is saved by the story. The other actors are rather mediocre as well, but fortunately there is Elsa Lanchester as a helpful taxi driver, who actually contributes in saving the film. The local touch is also excellent, with sweet ukuleles singing and swinging all over the place and everywhere you go, and the environment is lovely and enchanting, of course. Only Wendell Corey is not, and he is only saved by the sad story of his fate.

An offbeat drama with a dream-like guitar score and a strong female contingent, including hard-bitten floozy Marie Windsor. Shot in glacial black & white on location in Honolulu by cameraman John L. ('Psycho') Russell.

The script by Steve Fisher looks as if it began life set on the mean streets of New York; which would account for the unexpected presence of Elsa Lanchester as a taxi-driving Earth mother who takes Evelyn Keyes under her wing in the search for Ms Keyes' amnesiac husband Wendell Corey.

This little gem of a film noir B movie is about a woman trying to track down her long lost husband in Hawaii after the War (WWII) where he was supposed to have died. In the process she finds herself in the middle of an underworld power struggle. Beautifully filmed in Hawaii with Ms. Keyes really working those facial expressions, as she tended to do. The film is tight, cynical and at times redeeming. Just a good little film.

As I recall this little slice of b&w exotica got quite a bit of buzz back then. No doubt, that was because of the naughty innuendo and unusual locale. 1954 was before Hawaii became a state or showed up on weekly TV, so the backgrounds and people were still foreign to American living rooms. Anyway, the plot's anything but tight, running two or three threads at the same time. There's no need to recap what others have already done in detail.

What carries the film are the Hawaiian 'mise-en-scene', colorful characters, and good acting. Honolulu's Half Acre amounts to a hellish maze of rickety stairs, balconies, and walkways, all used to good effect by director Auer. Couple that with a noir character like Chester (Corey), a bosomy slut like Rose (Windsor, of course), and a slimy yucko like Ippy (Strong), along with other shady types, and who cares about plot logic. As a result, the visuals and characters rivet even when the narrative doesn't. Still, what's with Tubby (White) who gets bloodlessly shot in the shoulder and seconds later pulls a Tarzan escape with perfect coordination. Even cowboy matinees are more realistic than that, and who knew matinees better than Republic. All in all, it looks like a feature length appeal was aimed at, including something of a 'name' cast and a spicy story. Still, I'd like to know how the results actually performed dollar-wise. Nonetheless, the movie's not without points of interest, along with an ending that is not predictable, plus a Hawaii that sure doesn't show up on tourist brochures.

Hell's Half Acre (habitués just call it `the Acre') is a rabbit warren of tenements and dens of iniquity in post-war Honolulu – a South-Seas casbah. It's also the title of John H. Auer's movie which has the distinction – between the lapse of the Charlie Chan cycle and the arrival of TV dramas like Hawaii 5-0 and Magnum P.I. – of being the only film noir set in the (then) Hawaiian Territory. A little clumsy and four-square (with little of visual interest), it boasts an offbeat story line and a dandy cast.

Stateside, widowed young mother Evelyn Keyes hears a recording by a songwriter from the Islands who, she's told, has been imprisoned for killing a crime lord. Certain phrases in the song remind her of her husband, presumed lost on the Arizona during the bombing of Pearl Harbor. She breaks off her engagement and flies to Honolulu; her guide to the local culture is cabdriver Elsa Lanchester, a `character.' Police Chief Keye Luke arranges for Keyes to see the mystery man (Wendell Corey), but when the prisoner learns that his current girlfriend (Nancy Gates) has been murdered, he escapes custody. Keyes penetrates deeper into the Acre to find him, while his underworld associates, their greed and curiosity piqued, try to find her....

All too briefly, Hell's Half Acre features Marie Windsor, as the wife of fish-and-poi slinger Jesse White (she's two-timing him with sinister Philip Ahn). The crummy rooms Windsor and White occupy in the Acre are one of three main locales, the others being Corey's Waikiki beach house and The Polynesian Paradise, the nightclub he owns (technical advisor to the film was Don The Beachcomber). There's an elevated quotient of violence, particularly violence to women, and the somewhat murky story isn't sweetened up (though touristy material sometimes intrudes). Auer never got a crack at first-rate material to direct (maybe he never showed he could do it), but Hell's Half Acre holds its own against his better-known The City That Never Sleeps. Like so many of the better noirs, its surprises emerge from out of the past.