User reviews

Here's one of those totally obscure but jaw-dropping precodes that pop up at 2 am every month or so on TCM. This one fits squarely in the Tropical Tramps sub-genre, a cousin to the Carole Lombard flick "White Woman", but with an even rawer atmosphere.

RKO's cutie-pie sob-sister Helen Twelvetrees is surprisingly cast as a cabaret dancer in a sleazy Panama saloon. The old crone who runs the joint (Maude Eburne, in a wonderfully grotesque characterization) announces that she can no longer pay her dancers or supply them with promised tickets back home. But she invites them to hang around the club anyway and make money off the customers any way they please. Our heroine reluctantly helps relieve a two-fisted, hard-drinking oil man (Charles Bickford) of his wad of cash by slipping him a mickey, but he gets wise. Rather than do time in the nightmarish local hoosegow, she agrees to be Bickford's "housekeeper" in his shack in the croc-infested Venezuela jungle. Eventually, an aviator ex-boyfriend (Robert G Armstrong) shows up, and the testosterone flies like spit in a bullpen. The finale is quite a curve ball.

There's great slangy patter, lots of innuendo, and some very seedy sets. The principals play it full-throttle, and though it's definitely not great art, it shows what realities Hollywood could vigorously grapple with before the Code. Apparently, contemporary critics mocked the picture for its unbelievable shifts of character, but I'd say that this very unpredictability helps give it a modern edginess. Don't miss it when it turns up again. Remade by the studio as "Panama Lady" with (wait for it...) Lucille Ball in the title role (and she's surprisingly good).

"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.

I found the movie depressing and hard to take. It's a little difficult to describe why I don't like the movie without providing spoilers. I will just say it involves a sad situation and a woman being miss treated. I don't like those kinds of movies. I prefer movies that make me happy and are cheerful. If I want to see cruelty or unfairness, I can just turn on the evening news.

I think the actors did a good job, and the film was photographed nicely and well written. I just didn't like the subject matter. I was looking for something more lighthearted. The woman in the movie seems to go from one bad situation to the next. It could be viewed as a lesson, that certain types of men should be avoided.

Just when I thought I've seen it all, and wasted everything already, here comes this one... Again I want to thank the reviewer who stated more than one time how sleazy this movie is because that's exactly what I want to hear when I try to pick the next pre code film to watch. I don't mind his ignorance about film for saying that it's not a good film, I got what I wanted. Please reviewers, don't analyse or try to intellectualize entertainment (yes that's all it is). All we need to know if it's sexy, sleazy and fun or not!!

Now, this film is so filthy and shocking, it will give a joy ride in a rollercoaster like you wouldn't believe, sleaze and glamour in the best cinematic experience that can only be found in the early 30s of Hollywood!

This film is so raw, sexy, dirty and HOT, that I put Twelvetrees and this film alongside Harlow in Red Headed Woman, Stanwyck in Babyface, Loy in The Barbarian, Hopkins in Temple Drake, MacCkaill in Safe in Hell, Young in Born to be Bad... as : ONE OF THE BEST MOVIES EVER MADE.

deal for implied sex coincidence is ridiculous sleaze is implied

"Panama Flo" is a film clearly rooted in the Pre-Code Era--a film filled with lots of sleazy subtext and characters who are ALL rotten! When the film was remade seven years later as "Panama Lady", it was scrubbed clean of all its sexual tension...and was, as a result, an incredibly dull film!

When the story begins, Flo (Helen Twelvetrees) is working at a sleazy dive of a bar. She's dead broke and her only chance of getting away from this dump is her boyfriend, Babe (Robert Armstrong)...a guy who's promised to marry her as soon as he returns from his trip to South America. The problem is that after two weeks, Babe still hasn't returned and weeks turn into months.

Into the hellish dive comes Dan (Charles Bickford)--an oil man with a huge wad of cash practically burning a hole in his pocket. The 'lady' who runs the dump convinces Flo to help rob the guy and he's not as dumb as he looks...but he's on to the scam too late...and another woman working in the bar runs off with the money.

Now here's where the sleazy Pre-Code stuff comes into it. He could easily have Flo tossed into prison but instead gets her to agree to be his 'housekeeper' down in the South American jungle. It's very clear that this is a job with plenty of fringe benefits...though Flo does her best to keep the lecherous Dan at bay. Into this sexual tension arrives Babe...and considering how huge South America is, this is ridiculous! Flo thinks Babe is there to rescue her...but he is, at heart, a complete pig. So what happens next? See the film.

Is this a very good film? Nah. The plot is pretty dumb and the whole coincidence angle is just too dumb to be real. The very end, by the way, is even dumber!! But, in a salacious way it IS worth seeing because it is so exciting and scummy!