Island Captives (1937) User Reviews

Simply Structured Film Feigns South Seas Setting.

[rsoonsa · 5/10 · 22 December 2006]

A rather jumbled work cobbled together from a variety of footage, this adventure tale is ostensibly set upon and near Tahiti, although California's Catalina Island fills in for the latter, with stock footage added from Polynesian sources that depict happy locals in their natural setting, framed against basaltic crags and bluffs, collecting breadfruit, splashing about in the Pacific Ocean, and that sort of thing. Some thick ear playing marks the film, while the plot is actually too complex to be properly handled during the brief duration of this piece that provides approximately 45 minutes of narrative, sans the Polynesian scenes of gamboling, one of which unaccountably is spliced within the middle of the story's climactic moments, apparently to stimulate audience alertness, focusing upon netting of fish, capturing a large sea turtle and other prizes, all with an exotic backdrop. A coffee plantation owner on Tahiti, John Carsons (John Beck), whose high grade crops are particularly valuable, rejects a forceful invitation to join a monopolistic coffee distribution combine, and soon after is murdered as price for his independence, by cartel henchmen while in his own plantation office. John's daughter Helen (Joan Barclay), not aware of her father's slaying, has departed upon a sea voyage to visit him, during which she is wooed by the vessel's radio operator Tom Willoughby (Eddie Nugent), and also by the son, Dick Bannister (Henry Brandon), of the murderous cartel chief, Dick having managed thanks to the screenplay to obtain a convenient method of joining the liner's passenger list, with an intention of persuading Helen, the unknowing heiress, to join up with the international coffee marketing syndicate. After the ship founders against a reef, Helen, along with her two admirers, and an officer, escape to safety in a lifeboat, touching down upon "Mystery Island", near Tahiti, upon which resides, in a seeming geographic vacuum, a clump of rapscallions, including Kelley (Charles King), a villainous smuggler who has made of the island his private domain. With no supply craft expected for two months, and with lecherous Kelley making portentous advances toward her, Helen gladly accepts Tom's support in addition to the tolerable but unreliable friendship proffered by a local native woman, Taino, performed with her native Mexican cadence by Carmen Laroux, a former mainstay supporting player in Three Stooges short films, cast here as mistress of Kelley of whom she approves in this manner: "..he only beats me once a week, and sometimes gives me presents". Barclay is a talented, undervalued actress, and since her dialogue is unsweetened by any form of originality, she ad libs some delightfully unexpected and witty lines while aboard ship, contributing additional "business" later, thereby crafting a winning performance. Cinematographer Glenn Kershner, whose dramatic closeups are a primary reason for the artistic success of the 1925 Ben Hur, must here largely compromise his aesthetic bent for his only assignment as director, due to an inordinately small budget, but does manage to construct a startling bit of expressionistic camera-work during the shipwreck scene, providing the best sequence of an awkwardly devised film.

Bad but entertaining.

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 16 October 2012]

"Island Captives" is a terrible film, yet I have given it a 4 because in spite of its MANY shortcomings, it's never dull! It also has one of the most insane plots I've seen in some time! The film is essentially about a war between fruit growers (seriously). One guy refuses to join some fruit company so he is murdered in order to get his Pacific plantation! However, the baddies didn't realize that half the property is owned by the dead man's daughter, so even with a forged bill of sale, they need to do something about her. One of the not so bad guys suggest they make her a fair offer and use finesse. His partner is more pragmatic--they should just kill her, too! In the end, they decide to one of their sociopathic sons to woo her and pump her for information while she's aboard a cruise ship. However, she doesn't fall for him or his sweet lines and instead falls for one of the ship's crew. Here is where it suddenly gets really weird. The ship sinks and only a few survivors make it to nearby island--one that just happens to be run by a black-hearted smuggler who is both a rapist AND works for the evil fruit company!! Can goodness prevail or is the sweet lady destined for a sexual assault and murder? As you can see by reading the plot, the film is chock full of plot--too much for a film that only lasts about one hour. Yet, because so much happens and so much appeals to the lowest common denominator, it IS interesting to watch despite the silliness of it all. Dumb but good in a weird way!

I wasn't quite held captive.

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 25 April 2019]

An interesting film holds you hostage and often you can't look away. This is essentially a murder mystery/adventure that happens to be set on a tropical island, and not convincingly so. It's another tale of a man trying to prove his innocence of murder, and the audience knows from the beginning that he is innocent because he was on the same ship as the victim's daughter (Joan Barclay) when the murder took place. It's only because he ends up with papers that the real murderer took that he becomes a suspect. Cliched tropical island characters, mainly Carmen Laroux, are unbelievable and obnoxious.

Just because you add a Hawaiian theme to musical score to a movie doesn't necessarily make it feel like the setting actually works. Certainly, there is lots of action and attempts at comedy, but there are also extremely slow moments were basically nothing happens. The plot takes forever to get off the ground and that left me uninterested in what was going on. The film never seems to really leave the cheaply-made studio sets which made "Gilligan's Island" look elaborate by comparison.

a "pretty good" island adventure

[ksf-2 · 6/10 · 17 January 2008]

I'm just AMAZED that this made it to DVD... but maybe the exotic locale combined with a simple love story had something to do with it. Island Captives stars Eddie Nugent as Tom Willoughby and Joan Barclay as Helen Carsons. Helen is on a ship that goes down on the way to visit her father, who has a crop growing and export business on Tahiti. Bad things happen, and Helen must confront the local corruption which seems to be everywhere, led by the head honcho, played by Charles King. They are helped and hurt by the honcho''s island girl Taino (although it sounds like they all say "Taio"), played by Carmen LaRoux. She had made Desert Trail with John Wayne in 1935, but died young at 30. Much of the action happens in the bar, which was quite large and well constructed for a south sea island. According to IMDb, this was the only film that Glenn Kershner ever directed, even though he lived to be 100, and had been in the business since 1924. Kershner must have loved Hawaii, since that's where he died, where many of the scenes in Island Captives appear to be from, either live or stock footage. Sound quality, photography, and film condition are just miserable; it's like this was the first talkie ever made, but if you are willing to look past that, the acting, and a pretty loose script, then it's a "pretty good" south sea adventure, which was probably pretty rare for those days. It's SHORT -- only 53 minutes, and about a quarter of THAT is beach shots of Hawaii, and L-O-N-G extended shots of the men standing holding the fishing nets and climbing the palm trees.

Poverty Row strikes again!

[JohnHowardReid · 6/10 · 31 March 2018]

Allegedly copyrighted 1936 by Falcon Film Productions, though not in fact copyrighted at all. U.S. release through Principal Distributors: 29 July 1937. 53 minutes.

COMMENT: A fairly interesting example of grade "Z" film-making. The three photographers give us a clue as to how the film was put together. Ivano undoubtedly photographed the studio scenes, leaving Kershner free to concentrate on the direction (and such direction it is!). Kershner himself photographed the main unit's location episodes, whilst Art Reed contributed the 2nd unit material (which looks like stock footage because it was probably blown up from 16mm).

Film editor Dan Milner has done a creditable job putting all these bits and pieces together, hampered though he was by Kershner's fondness for jumping ("jumping" is the right word) from a two-shot to a tighter two-shot. Milner makes good use of iris and arrow wipes. The ship-wreck scene builds up a fair amount of suspense despite obvious under-cranking, thanks to Milner's very speedy cutting.

The location episodes on the whole are more inventively directed than the Poverty Row studio set-ups. This isn't saying a great deal because the acting ranges from the just competent to the pretty abysmal. A Boys Own Paper plot and laughably inept dialogue don't help, but at least most of the players make a game try to overcome their silly dialogue and juvenile characterizations. An exception is Charles King. To say his performance is merely bad would be a serious understatement. However, Miss Barclay makes a fetching heroine, and Forrest Taylor plays the villain with his usual competence. (Oddly, the actor playing J.P. Bannister is not credited, even though he has a couple of important scenes. Kershner himself?)

And it all comes to a risible free-for-all climax of pulled punches.