Chasseurs de sensations

Because it was Charles Vidor's first credited feature, and because it was a pre-Code flick, I was hoping to see something astonishing. I didn't, but I found it a fine pre-Code.

Marion Burns is on her first steps in what she imagines to be a career in the performing arts -- all she has been in before is college shows. She has gotten a job as a singer in Juanita Hansen's troupe, on their way to Panama, where she quickly makes friends with her room mate, cynical old hand Arline Judge, and begins a budding romance with upright Preston Foster, whose mine is somewhere around there. She soon discovers that the troupe is not called on just to entertain on stage; they're there to get the customers to buy drinks, and Hansen is an old buzzard. Gradually things go downhill...

Although Burns is the central character, it's Arline Judge who has the standout role: pugnacious, profane, liable to marry anything with tattoos, and waiting for her first husband to show up again, she's a three-ring circus on her own. It's a lively movie and a lot of fun.

Older movies often center on manners. What some call melodrama, in this case, is 1930's survival. There is no Russian Bolshevik to save the day, which leaves people catting around looking for their place in the world. Women would join a low rent musical troupe to try for success or a husband. There are some comments on relative status aboard the ship on which the movie starts. The men are scrounging for work & wives.

I enjoy the movies & plays in which manners & human behavior are important. This is missed in modern super-hero epics that are contests of super-powers. If you wish an old-fashioned contest of manners, then you should enjoy this film. It might remind you of 'A Farewell to Arms' (1932) with Gary Cooper.

Sensation Hunters is a pre-code melodrama set in the tropics of the Panama Canal Zone. The action mostly centers around Trixie's Bull Pit a kind of upscale dive owned by Juanita Hansen who is Texas Guinan like character for the low brows.

Two women are going to work there, good time girl Arline Judge and newcomer Marian Nixon. The girls are kind of on the menu there as well and millionaire aviator Kenneth McKenna. He might be the answer to Nixon's prayers, but it doesn't work out that way.

Preston Foster who I usually enjoy is completely wasted in a role that only calls for him to be a shoulder that Nixon cries on. The whole story despite its trash setting is an old fashioned Victorian melodrama not likely to be revived

Nor should it.

This is a very old movie, I think from just after films started having sound in them. Some of the acting could be better but they were probably silent movie actors just moving into having to do talking roles, or just new to doing films in general. The story is fine and the performances too. Not super engaging or a great film but better than a lot of older movies, especially ones this old.

A gaggle of seasoned showgirls board a luxury liner bound for jobs in Panama and the "newbie" among them falls for one of the passengers but it's a rocky road to love for a good girl stranded in the tropics...

SENSATION HUNTERS isn't as cheap as later Monogram features but the only "sensation" I saw was in the film's provocative poster -unless, of course, you're wild about clichés. The eclectic cast was the selling point for me and I wasn't disappointed; sassy Arline Judge (the lady in red on the poster) as a wise-cracking, thrice-married cabaret entertainer ("a sailor's delight") was the nominal star but she played second fiddle to the heroine (the boring Marion Burns) and was no less of a firecracker off-screen, having been married eight times. Cocaine addiction ruined the career of silent screen serial queen Juanita Hansen and according to "Hollywood Babylon", she later got religion and went on cross-country bible-thumping tours denouncing drugs. She must have gotten over that because here she is in this as a blowzy "Texas Guinan"- type and, like fellow Mack Sennett bathing beauty Marie Prevost, she'd packed on a few pounds by the time talkies took over. There's even a couple of cheesy song & dance routines as Preston Foster, Kenneth MacKenna, and Walter Brennan (as a stuttering waiter) look on agog. Directed by Charles Vidor who'd later become a house director for Columbia, the little studio that could.