L'île des damnés

Island of Doomed Men (1940)

*** (out of 4)

Nice little "B" picture from Columbia has a secret agent (Robert Wilcox) convicted of a crime he didn't commit but it's all good because he gets sent to an island, which he was about to investigate. On the island he and other men are forced into hard labor by the wicked owner (Peter Lorre) but soon the agent and the owner's wife (Rochelle Hudson) have their own plans for escape. If you're a fan of "B" movies or Lorre then you're going to find a whole lot to enjoy in this fast paced thriller that is pretty much fun from start to finish. What works best here is of course the performance of Lorre who you just can't help but love to hate. He brings so much evilness to his character that there really isn't an actor in history who could do it better. That mono voice, the wicked eyes and the coolness of the evil has never been topped and it's a lot of fun to watch here. The island setting will remind one of THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME and the prison stuff is certainly ripe for something we'd have seen the decade earlier in various Warner films. Wilcox makes for a good, strong supporting player and we also have Don Beddoe and George E. Stone delivering good performances. Barton is best known for his future Abbott and Costello films but he does some nice work here and keeps the film moving at a very good pace. There are many good scenes here but one of the best has to be the scene where we learn Lorre's character is terrified of a little monkey owned by the cook.

Peter Lorre is perfect in this role, a calm, controlling madman with a terrifying temper bubbling underneath. Flashes of his temper are the highlights of the movie. Whomever played his wife could've probably been out-acted by a beanbag, but she's pretty, so it's ok. The other main man was okay, and I was rooting for him like I was supposed to. I guess the underlying question is: Could an island of slavery actually exist? Just kidding. The movie is not that deep, or worthy of further thought. The underlying question actually is: What does Peter Lorre have against monkeys?

Okay so this is NOT "Island of Lost Souls" or "The Big House" but I do think that fans of Peter Lorre would enjoy it. No need to hash out the plot here, and yes of course this is nothing more than a 1940s B-Movie. Nonetheless, if you grew up decades ago and have fond memories of staying up late and watching the old horror movies and science fiction monster movies on TV over the weekends, then watching this movie might be an enjoyable way to spend a late Friday or Saturday night, even though it's more of a "semi-noir" movie instead of a horror film.

G-Man Robert Wilcox goes "undercover" as "Mr. Smith" to expose brutal conditions on an island -- somewhere in the Pacific Ocean? -- where paroled men perform slave-labor in a mine owned by Peter Lorre. In the process, Wilcox falls in love with Lorre's wife, Rochelle Hudson, who's just as much a prisoner on Dead Man's Island as he is. Timed to run just over an hour, this tightly-constructed B-movie is a fine example of its genre -- brisk, efficient, and always entertaining, though it does take awhile to actually reach the island in question. As expected, Lorre dominates the proceedings with one of his trademark performances in which he manages to be both creepy and cultured, smooth and sadistic. He even adds a homoerotic undertone to his scenes with Robert Wilcox, particularly the one in which he watches a shirtless Wilcox being bound to a post in preparation for a late-night flogging. "Don't overdo it, Captain," Lorre warns the man with the whip. "There's a lot Mr. Smith ought to tell me and he may want to tell me before you finish. Oh, and be sure that he's able to work tomorrow." Curiously, Lorre departs the scene before the whip starts cutting into Wilcox's back, but you can be sure he'll derive a great deal of pleasure in thinking over the young man's pain and suffering. Incidentally, this is one of the few movies, (along with "Damn the Defiant!"), in which two men are given separate floggings during the course of the story. Earlier in the movie, Lorre oversees the flogging of a prisoner played by Stanley Brown. It's Wilcox's flogging, however, that is of real interest. Along with Alan Ladd's meeting with a cat-o'-nine-tails in "Two Years Before the Mast," this scene qualifies as one of Hollywood's most memorable floggings of the 1940s and it ranks 16th in the book, "Lash! The Hundred Great Scenes of Men Being Whipped in the Movies." Wilcox, of course, looks much too strong, determined, and virile to faint dead away after just fourteen blows with a whip, but his loss of consciousness provides a convenient way for the scene to come to an end.

This delicious low camp kinkfest proves that studio-era censorship wasn't nearly as thorough as it's purported to have been. In what seems almost like a rehearsal for the tormented lustmurderer Dr. Rothe in "Der Verlorene," Lorre gives unexpected depth and nuance to the melodramatic villain Stephen Danel, with just a dash of his patented quirky humor. Though the film itself is crude and pulpy, with an extreme BDSM quotient (Danel's prisoners are kept in line with cat o' nine tails, as, it's strongly implied, is Mrs. Danel) Lorre's deft performance lifts "Island of Dommed Men" from the realm of the ridiculous into sublimity.