O Porto do Inferno

Hell Harbor (1930)

** (out of 4)

Anita (Lupe Velez) dreams of reaching Havana and being "free" but her sadistic father (Gibson Gowland) trades her to a pawn seller (Jean Hersholt) but her one chance of escape comes from an American trader (John Holland) who shows up on the island. This pre-code has a reputation of being fairly dirty but I think most of the elements are rather weak or at least not as strong as some previous films. Sure, most of what we see here would be a major no no within a couple years but there are still much better and much dirtier pre-codes out there. In a lot of ways the story reminded me somewhat of D.W. Griffith's BROKEN BLOSSOMS because both films deal with a sweet girl being abused both mentally and physically by their father. King was a follower of Griffith so I do wonder if certain scenes in that 1919 classic were in his mind while filming this. The biggest problem I had with the film was the direction, which was quite weak from the start and things never really picked up until the very end. The current DVD offers the film up in an "uncut" 84-minute version and a shorter, wider released 63-minute version. I elected to watch the shorter version because several reviews I read said it was the better one and it isn't missing any of the "pre-code" stuff. From what I've read, the studio realized they had a pretty weak film so they took out a lot of the dialogue and released it with everything else in tact. I briefly jumped through the longer version and the majority of the uncut footage is just dialogue scenes that really add up to nothing. The pacing in the shorter version is pretty bad and it's even worse in the longer one because it never seems obvious what the director or screenwriter were trying to do. Velez dances around constantly trying to sell her innocence while the men look dirty and act like slime. Nothing ever really happens because the characters just talk, talk and talk some more and quite often these scenes just go no where as if they were just made up on the spot and the actors didn't know when to quit talking. Velez is pretty good in her role but the screenplay doesn't do her character much justice. The same is true with Holland who pretty much just stands around waiting to rescue the girl. Fans of GREED will enjoy seeing Hersholt and Gowland working together again and Universal horror fans will see a young Rondo Hatton in his first film. HELL HARBOR is a pretty weak movie all around and there's certainly not enough to make it worth sitting through unless you're a fan of one of the stars and must see everything they've done.

Early talkie boasts of the degenerate barfly Gibson Gowland (from "GREED") and the lovely Lupe Velez (the Mexican Spitfire)as his daughter. Luminous location photography and distinctive sound recording overshadow the stodgy dialogue. The acting is good but overstated. Lupe is beautiful but overdoes the cuteness, like a 30's version of Sandra Bullock.

"Tonight, near you, that song makes me think of love. The moon warms me in its light. Still the stars twinkle just for me."

What starts off as a rather creaky old film, not helped by the state of its preservation or by its moving along at a rather ponderous pace, turned into halfway decent film, mainly because of the charms of Lupe Velez. And there's great casting all around, with Jean Hersholt and Gibson Gowland appearing as a couple of island rakes, six years after playing enemies in Erich von Stroheim's silent classic Greed. It's one of those pre-Code films that played upon the enticement of an "exotic" locale, in this case, an island in the Caribbean, but instead of glamorizing it, we feel the grit and sleaze of the place. Dance halls are filled with dangerous men who will do anything for money. One such man (Gowland) regularly beats his daughter (Velez) and wants to sell her into a marriage with a lecherous trader (Hersholt). The young woman recoils at the thought, and dreams of going to Havana. Enter a handsome sailor (John Holland) and, well, you get the idea. Not unexpectedly, there is a "white savior" aspect to the story.

Velez was just 22 in this film, her second talkie, and she has lots of charming moments. She sings while dreaming of Havana and dances playfully on the beach, but she also stands up to her father as he tries to whip her, threatening to kill him with a knife if he keeps it up. She shows quite a range between moments of dismay over her fate to standing proudly at the bow of the little boat and sneaking aboard the trader's vessel. There is also a truly sublime moment when she's dreaming something rapturous and is woken up - she's wonderful and is captured beautifully. In the version of the film that is 83 minutes long, it appeared at roughly the 51:40 point. Overall, it's not a great film, but it was entertaining anytime she was on the screen, and that was enough to make me happy I saw this.

I want to thank the reviewer who called it sleazy and fascinating. That's exactly what I want to hear and what I call a great review! Spare me the psychoanalysis people and tell me the brass tacks like he did, ok?

So I therefore watched it based on the word 'sleazy', and what do ya know? Heck, this movie is one of sleaziest ever, so hot, not a dull moment from beginning to end.

Simply one of the greatest ever made!!

If you want to view Henry King's "Hell Harbor" simply as a form of entertainment, then you'll probably enjoy it. Otherwise, it seems kind of flat, with Lupe Vélez playing a woman whose father wants to marry her off, but she hopes to flee to Havana with a sailor from the US.

I guess the fact remains that most movies out of Hollywood don't have the most complex plots. One thing about this one is that it got released before the Hays Code, and there's a scene or two that couldn't have gotten filmed a few years later.

It's somewhat entertaining, if nothing special. Vélez's co-star Jean Hersholt was the paternal half-uncle (by marriage) of Leslie Nielsen.