Um Pedaço de Inferno

It's almost mandatory that when you film in Hawaii you film in color. But that would have put Herbert J. Yates and Republic Pictures on the horns of a dilemma. They were making a noir film set in Honolulu which is most often done in black and white anyway. And Yates was trying mightily to keep his studio afloat with the advent of television which overtaking Republic's bread and butter, B westerns.

Evelyn Keyes and Wendell Corey star in this film where Evelyn hears that the husband she thought lost on the Arizona in December of 1941 is on trial for murder in Honolulu. She goes to Hawaii to investigate. Corey the long lost husband is now a syndicate big shot and has confessed to killing a former partner. A third partner Philip Ahn is looking to take advantage of the situation and inherit all of Corey's assets.

No sooner does Keyes arrive in Hawaii than she's hip deep in the case when she tries to visit Corey's current girlfriend Nancy Gates. She spots Ahn near the home where he has just recently murdered Gates. That puts both Corey on a personal hunt and the Honolulu PD on a hunt for Ahn.

I have to say that while Ahn has played villains before, he was never quite as brutal as he is in this film. His opposite number Keye Luke plays Honolulu's chief of police and he's a wise and compassionate soul and really in the end comes through for Keyes. Corey also does the decent thing in the end.

A couple of other interesting roles are Jesse White as a hapless drunken gunsill and his slattern of a wife Marie Windsor who next to Gloria Grahame played the most tramps of the Fifties.

Some story plot holes that you could have driven the Arizona through when it was afloat unfortunately mar Hell's Half Acre. But the characterizations are just fine. I only wish that color had been used because having been to Hawaii black and white doesn't do it justice.

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.

I am not surprised by this Republic Pictures film noir, this studios was famous for mixing up some genres, western musicals, modern western, so why not exotic adventure crime noir movie? This one is not uninteresting because of its charm and atmosphere, and this story of the wife seeking her husband trace, supposed killed in action at Pearl harbor, this scheme is rather unusual in a film noir. This is a cute little crime flick from this studios specialized in serials and westerns. Wendell Corey seems to get bored, not convinced by his character, maybe the studio executive Herbert Yates should have chosen Forrest Tucker or Rod Cameron, the "home" studio stars, instead of Corey. And I was expecting the bland but not that bad Vera Ralston, Yates's wife, as the female role.

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 flat-footed, full-of-holes feature is nonetheless fascinating because of its Honolulu locale and exotic characters. Marie Windsor as Jesse White's wife and Philip Ahn's mistress? Film noir nirvana! And the Production Code vision of a hellish den of iniquity? A crisply clean framework of lumber and whitewash enclosing gambling parlors and taxi-dancehalls!