Torrid Zone

I think this is one of the funniest comedies ever made. This film should be considered a masterpiece. James Cagney, Ann Sheridan, Pat O'Brien, Helen Vinson, Jerome Cowan, Andy Devine, George Tobias and George Reeves star in this fast-paced action comedy. The dialog is very very fast and so funny. Why this film isn't on DVD is a crying shame. The real star of the movie is the legendary movie star and sex goddess Ann Sheridan. She steals every scene she is in. Its not easy to steal a film from James Cagney, but Ann Sheridan does in this one. I remember when the American Film Institute picked the 100 funniest films of all time, this was missing, but it was in their top 500 for the voting category. It should have been in the top 100 as far as I am concerned. If you never saw the film, please look for it on Turner Classic Movies they play it often. Why they don't release this movie as part of an Ann Sheridan box set is beyond me, she is an incredible actress and even a better comedienne. I won't give anything away. Just sit back and enjoy a bunch of pros do it for you.

A minor film but certainly watchable for the two leads, James Cagney and Ann Sheridan. Her ability to take care of herself and easygoing grace, his toughness and that mustache ... hey, they're just a joy, especially with a script full of banter and sharp lines. They're on a banana plantation in a tropical place, and both antagonized by its owner (Pat O'Brien). Despite a good start, the plot gets a little muddled and too crowded with other characters as it plays out, and I began losing interest in the second half.

Early on the film has elements that criticism colonialism and the absolute power the owner of a banana plantation wields over the natives, such as having people he doesn't like locked up and ordering the hapless police to carry out a death sentence prematurely. He also shouts out most of his lines and is generally quite disagreeable (O'Brien seems to have had many such roles). When a rebel (regrettably George Reeves playing a Hispanic man) says "Just because I don't like the fruit company, they say I am a revolutionist. All I want is to take back what belongs to me and my friends," it carries with it the subversive thought of what real justice would be, which was interesting. Unfortunately, this aspect never goes anywhere, and the natives are generally portrayed as childlike. Eventually we see Cagney's character take charge and hunt the rebels down, and while he's less vindictive, clearly the film's sympathies are with the colonialists at this point.

I hadn't really expected something progressive on that front anyway, but it's just unfortunate that the film tosses in another woman who is hot for Cagney (Helen Vinson), her husband (Jerome Cowan), and a mostly annoying sidekick (Andy Devine). Between romance, love triangle, comedy, business rivalry, card sharp, and native rebellion none of its elements are developed in a clean way, which is too bad, because more of Cagney and Sheridan smoldering together would have really made this a torrid zone.

A couple of buddies chasing a buck, and usually a woman, in what we now call the Third World was a staple plot-line of movies from the 1930s on. Such movies were thought to offer a sure-fire recipe for entertainment: a travelogue to sultry and dangerous corners of the globe; romance sauced up with sass; exotic peril; and good ol' man-to-man rivalry.

Torrid Zone, directed by the pedestrian William Keighley, follows the recipe but lacks something in the execution – that elusive something that elevates the routine into the memorable. Down in Central America, Pat O'Brien plays the irascible operative of a banana-exporting concern (read: the infamous United Fruit Company). Besides shipping ripe but not rotten product to New Orleans, he serves as unofficial proconsul in this far-flung province of the American empire, where his word is, literally, law. (This subversive strand of the script, however, never gets explored.)

In addition to sluggish delivery from Plantation #7, O'Brien faces other problems. First, a local `revolutionista' condemned to death has escaped to rejoin rebel forces. Second, an American card-shark and shantoozie (Ann Sheridan) is stirring up trouble (O'Brien flubs his attempt to ship her home like a crate of perishable fruit). Third, his old nemesis James Cagney, former overseer of #7, is back in the country. Cagney takes a shine to Sheridan, who has befriended the revolutionary, who wants back the lands confiscated by O'Brien, who....

Barbed and topical dialogue, most of it mouthed throatily by Sheridan, proves to be Torrid Zone's chief attraction. But the needling rivalry between O'Brien and Cagney wears a little thin (as it does in the contemporaneous Road pictures between Hope and Crosby). And Keighley doggedly follows the script from one damn thing to another, so the movie ends up a fast-paced clutter.

O'Brien, a good actor who never really grew into a star (though he would shine in Crack-Up and Riffraff a few years later), suffers mostly from an unpleasant part. Cagney, in a Latin-lover mustache and the tropical answer to a 10-gallon hat, comes off as a bit of a bantam rooster. But Sheridan (whom Warner's publicists had dubbed the `Oomph' girl) remains a delight, embodying the pluck, warmth and smarts of that generation of game women who survived the Depression and would help to win the coming War.

Life at a banana plantation must have its compensations, judging from the way things turn out in this fast-moving, wise-cracking comedy directed stylishly by William Keighley. PAT O'BRIEN is the hard-nosed manager of a plantation who needs his former overseer's help in keeping some criminal elements from causing too much trouble. So JAMES CAGNEY comes back to help him--but trouble brews when he and O'Brien quarrel over red-headed ANN SHERIDAN, who just about walks off with the film's best lines.

It's strictly a Warner comedy-melodrama with stock players turning up in some good supporting roles, particularly GEORGE TOBIAS, ANDY DEVINE, JEROME COWAN and, in a small role, GEORGE (Superman) REEVES.

The real surprise of the film is ANN SHERIDAN, handling herself in every situation as a gal to be reckoned with. It's fun all the way.

This was probably meant to capitalize on the successful chemistry that Cagney, O'Brien, and Anne Sheridan had in "Angels With Dirty Faces", even though none of them play characters remotely similar to the ones they played in that film.

Steve Case (Pat O'Brien) runs a banana plantation in South America. He runs people out of the nearby town (Ann Sheridan as Lee Donley), even putting them in jail for no reason. He makes them not only leave town but go to destinations he says they should go to, and he orders the local police commandant to execute prisoners on Case's schedule. And this is supposed to be a comedy! So he basically runs roughshod over everybody whether they actually work for him or not. Case has an overblown concept of his own importance. He's farming bananas after all, not rubber during WWII.

He cons Nick Butler (James Cagney), a trusted associate, into not going back to America and instead helping him with one last task. This is made difficult by the fact that the rebel Case tried to have executed one week early has escaped, is understandably peeved, and is retaliating against Case's banana plantation. George Tobias plays the rebel, and is not very authentic as he comes across as a Brooklyn cabbie dressed up as a rebel with a badly done Spanish accent.

This has lots of dialogue that seems almost precode, even though this is 1940, and Cagney and O'Brien were always worth watching together, but the overall production is just not very good. I'd say watch it if you are a Cagney or O'Brien enthusiast. It would probably be a 4/10 or a 5/10 without them.