Heyst, a hermit on his own tropical island, plays unwilling host to red-headed stowaway Alma. Danger looms...
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Title: Dangerous Paradise (1930)
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Edit
Cast
| Complete credited cast: | |||
| Nancy Carroll | ... | Alma | |
| Richard Arlen | ... | Heyst | |
| Warner Oland | ... | Schomberg | |
| Gustav von Seyffertitz | ... | Mr. Jones | |
| Francis McDonald | ... | Ricardo | |
 |
George Kotsonaros | ... | Pedro |
| Dorothea Wolbert | ... | Mrs. Schomberg | |
| Clarence Wilson | ... | Zangiacomo (as Clarence H. Wilson) | |
| Evelyn Selbie | ... | Mrs. Zangiacomo | |
| Willie Fung | ... | Wang | |
|
|
Mrs. Wong Wing | ... | Mrs. Wang |
Edit
Plot Summary
|
Add Synopsis
Storyline
A young man named Heyst, soured on civilization, lives alone on a remote island "somewhere east of Suez". On one of his periodic visits to Sourabaya, he meets Alma, red-haired entertainer at Schomberg's bistro. To escape the sexual harassment of her bosses, Alma stows away on Heyst's boat and becomes his guest. Will she take the next steamer out... or become mistress of the island? Before this question is resolved, three cutthroats arrive seeking a mythical treasure... Written by Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu>
Taglines:
A tropical romance teeming with action and glowing with young ardor. (original ad) See more »Certificate:
PassedParents Guide:
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See full technical specs »
Details
Country:
USALanguage:
EnglishRelease Date:
13 February 1930 (USA) See more »Also Known As:
Two Against Death See more »Company Credits
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IMDbPro »
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Sound Mix:
Mono (MovieTone)Color:
Black and WhiteAspect Ratio:
1.20 : 1
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Did You Know?
Trivia
One of over 700 Paramount Productions, filmed between 1929 and 1949, which were sold to MCA/Universal in 1958 for television distribution, and have been owned and controlled by Universal ever since. See more »Frequently Asked Questions
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Nancy Carroll is a violinist in an all-girl band on Surabaya, where she is the object of lust for sexually predatory Clarence Wilson and Warner Oland. That's actually taken from Joseph Conrad's VICTORY, although I doubt he had Wilson and Oland in mind when it became his first commercially successful book in 1915. She stows away on Arlen's boat to get away from them, where Nancy gets predatory about him, while he doesn't seem to be interested, possibly because his voice hasn't yet broken.
Director William Wellman puts in a lot of tricks, with a long tracking shot of the goings-on of Oland's tawdry 'casino', and an adventurously noisy first half of the movie, where the sounds of the orchestra, crowds, some woman laughing and other people singing threaten the dialogue. 1930 heard the talkies come of age, with some noisy movies (like the battle sequences of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT) like this one. Clearly sound was no longer a novelty, but part of the design of telling a story; the noise of 'civilization' on Surabaya is in contrast to to the quiet on Arlen's island. Wellman was one of the directors of the era who thought that motion pictures should move, and sound pictures should have sound.
Paramount produced versions of this movie in six languages. While alternate-language versions were a common phenomenon of the time, before dubbing was perfected, to maintain foreign markets, clearly this was seen as an important movie. Its release at less than an hour indicates that something had gone wrong. While it appears a bit too brisk, that's the limit of it so far as I can see, and that briskness is due to its short length. Perhaps preview audiences didn't care for it, so the Paramount brass had it cut down.