The Planter's Wife

Sweet, docile little Claudette Colbert - firing a machine gun? Anything's possible in the movies!

Colbert and her husband live on their rubber plantation in Malaysia (back when it was Malaya) with their small son. Her husband is too absorbed in the plantation to notice her very much, and she decides that when it's time to take their son to school in England, she will go with him and never return. But then she is unable to leave when bandits kill one of their neighbours, then tries to kill Colbert, and the whole plantation is set up in a murderous game of cat and mouse.

You'd like this if you liked Red Dust with Gable and Harlow, the setting is very similar. For an added bonus, some people may remember the cartoon Riki Tiki Tavi, about a mongoose who takes care of a household and keeps the cobras at bay - this is wonderfully reproduced with a real mongoose and cobra in a thrilling scene, very reminiscent of the cartoon, even down to the same room!