Review by wuxmup

"Panama Flo" is a hardboiled soap opera of a kind they don't make anymore but that was popular back in the twenties and thirties. It's the sort of story that pulp magazines used to publish month after month, with a resourceful but temporarily helpless blonde (in this case the nearly forgotten but topnotch Helen Twelvetrees)trapped in a jungle at the mercy of a tough guy (the really rough tough Charles Bickford) who's almost, but not quite, a dangerous sociopath. This picture is melodramatic fun all the way through, with some snappy dialog ("A Mickey Finn--and make it stick!"), a sleazy saloon, a big biplane, good acting and camera work, and a twisty ending.

Fans of Harlow and Gable in "Red Dust" won't be disappointed in "Panama Flo." Turner Classic Movies deserves credit for bringing it back.