L'île des péchés oubliés

Gale Sondergaard is the mistress of -- well, let's say it's a gambling house. It's a gambling house filled with girls. Sondergaard looks great and is fun in the role. Some of her employees are pretty and also act well. Veda Ann Borg, for one, is always good for some fun. Some of the girls are pretty. A few of the bit players, as was the case in the lesser studios, look like basset hounds with long hair.

John Carradine is kind of wasted in the role of the hero. He's fine but this was not his forte. Sidney Toler, so upstanding as Charlie Chan, is not nice here at all.

Edgar G. Ulmer does a fine job with this low-budget affair. I had never heard of it, and I thought I'd seen all his movies.

It's most fun when it stays within the genre, ruled over by Marlene Dietrich, of the good woman with a bad reputation working in a place with a terrible reputation. When it turns to adventure, it gets a little tiresome. But it's not a bad movie.

And Ulmer may have been the director who best, and most frequently, used classical and operatic music in his movies. Sure, some did when they were doing biopics of composers. But even here, we have an excellent score.

This is really only fair, but it does have its moments, and it works all right as light entertainment. The story has plenty of adventure and intrigue, though it has a few too many leaps of logic as it tries to pack an awful lot into a relatively brief running time. Gale Sondergaard, John Carradine, and Sidney Toler give the cast some good leads, and they help keep things going despite some stretches of weak dialogue.

The main part of the story has Carradine, as a diver, and his partner/rival (Frank Fenton) matched in a deadly battle of wits with Toler and his accomplices. Sondergaard plays the owner of a disreputable haven for seafarers, who is close to Carradine's character. The story features a couple of interesting turns, and the approaching monsoon adds some extra drama.

Sondergaard gets a lot of screen time in the earlier scenes, but her character gradually fades into the background, and becomes a spectator for most of the last part. It's unfortunate, since she is easily the most accomplished performer in the cast. Carradine and Toler both give entertaining light performances, exaggerating their characters somewhat. The relationship between the two divers, with its conflicting rivalries and loyalties, could have been made a much more significant part of the movie. Fenton's screen presence isn't strong enough for him to be much of a complement to Carradine, and as a result some of their exchanges are not as sharp as they could have been.

The action sequences and the sense of danger are usually effective enough. Overall, it's a fairly solid B-feature, and would probably be worth seeing for most of those who like the genre.

How to sum up this movie simply? John Carradine and Frank Fenton fight over Gale Sondergaard and over gold that Sidney (Charlie Chan) Toler and Rick Vallin have hidden. Its all set in the tropics and has murder, comedy, musical numbers, explosions, deep sea diving, fist fights, romance, and somewhere in there is the kitchen sink. I think about the only things not in this movie are aliens and tumbleweeds. Its a wild movie, so please don't ask for a clearer explanation since it would take too long.

But the real question is how is it really? Its good, but not great. There's too much going on and at times it's a little too slow, which is kind of odd considering all that happens in the films 80 minutes. This is a classic "watch at 2 am movie" with lots of bad commercials and public service announcements interrupting it.

The cast is good across the board. Carradine seems to be enjoying having the lead in an adventure film. Sidney Toler, forever etched in my mind as Charlie Chan is wonderfully evil as Carruthers, and a joy to see him on the other side of the law.

This movie also has a shoot out used in It Came From Hollywood where two guys shot at each other, back and forth dying as they did so until the guns were empty. I thought it had been altered to seem awkward and badly done. Nope. The gunfight is here, exactly as it was seen in "...Hollywood".

As I said, its good not great. What it needs is commercials to help break up the slow bits.

Had I known who the romantic leads are in this film I would have made it a point to see it years ago. How often do you get the opportunity to see Gale Sondergaard and John Carradine play characters better suited to Humprhey Bogart and Lauren Bacall? ISLE OF FORGOTTEN SINS is a thoroughly enjoyable South Seas adventure with Carradine and Sondergaard, cast completely against type, doing terrific work for low budget miracle worker Edgar G. Ulmer. Add Frank Fenton as Carradine's battling buddy, Sidney Toler as their jovial adversary, Rik Vallin as Toler's classical piano-playing second mate and Veda Ann Borg as a treacherous native girl, clever use of a puppet (!) for the deep sea diving scenes and a climactic monsoon -- what more do you need?

NOTE: The running time of this film is usually listed as 82 minutes. The video print I watched (from VCI Video) ran 76 minutes, and did not appear to be missing anything major.

Isle of forgotten sins but called monsoon in roku... the 1943 one. They kind of snuck this one past the censors. It's pretty obvious (but not spoken) what marge's girls do for a living. So taboo at the time. Gale sondergaard was the perfect vamp in so many classics...she was great in wyler's "the letter". In the south seas ( the back lot), the women run a "gambling house" wink, wink..that the officials are trying to shut down. And of course there are two men fighting over marge. In the worst staged fight ever filmed. Then a dead body! And sunken treasure! So much going on. Toler is krogan, who shows an odd smile now and then, for no reason...? John carradine popped up in some pretty huge films, but not usually the lead, never any oscars. Funny.. there's subtitles, but the sound is so rough, it skips and misses a lot. At about twenty five minutes in, the (roku version) captions show "fu** over his gold", but the actor actually says "fork over his gold"! It's okay. One demerit for picture and sound quality. One for frequent use of backdrops and stock footage. Story written and dircted by edgar ulmer. His big hit was black cat, back in 1934. He later resigned rather than make a musical with shirley temple, if the imdb trivia can be believed. He worked for years at producers releasing corp, the lowest of the low budgets. But it's still a wacky, fun adventure.