1939's "Devil's Island" started out as a typical Warners expose about the brutal mistreatment of prisoners on the French penal colony, but along the way a number of things whittled it down to an all too familiar 'B' picture with little meat left on its creaky bones. George Raft was intended to star but predictably bailed, as producer Hal Wallis hilariously put it: "he hasn't made a picture at this studio since I was a kid!" In his place was contractee Boris Karloff, preferring to do whatever assignment required rather than be paid off during Hollywood's horror ban of 1937-38, "The Walking Dead" a promising start, "West of Shanghai" and "The Invisible Menace" a bit of a comedown ("British Intelligence" finally allowed Jack L. Warner to wash his hands of the actor's services). It looks for all the world like a small scale (though impressively mounted) retread of John Ford's "The Prisoner of Shark Island," Karloff as eminent brain surgeon Dr. Charles Gaudet, summoned to treat the injury of a trusted friend wrongfully convicted of treason (his medical condition showed he had a brain tumor), shot while trying to escape. Gaudet remains behind to continue his treatment and is arrested and convicted for the same crime, sentenced to 10 years hard labor at Devil's Island, where corrupt commandant Colonel Lucien (James Stephenson) keeps an account of all the graft he accepts to increase slave labor. When a tubercular patient drops dead a riot breaks out, one guard killed by a blow to the head, and only an accident to Lucien's young daughter offering a sliver of hope if Gaudet can save her life. Madame Lucien (Nedda Harrigan) despises her husband's failure to offer clemency to Gaudet for his selfless efforts and provides for a series of bribes to help him and his small group escape by boat across the channel, but all seems lost once they encounter a slave ship bound for Devil's Island. Despite the French government being off the hook for corruption (Colonel Lucien in need of no assistance), the European nation still protested the picture's release, finally held back until the summer of 1940 though it was completed in Aug. 1938, just before Karloff traveled to Poverty Row Monogram to begin "Mr. Wong, Detective." On its own the story has been done better both before and after, the low key, one note James Stephenson no match for the fiery John Carradine's Sgt. Rankin so far as dynamism goes, leaving only Boris Karloff's sympathetic change of pace as the main reason for viewing. Like Janos Rukh in "The Invisible Ray" he sports curly hair, and again proves versatile in changing his appearance in every starring vehicle of the 30s, with or without heavy makeup, though he might have escaped such harsh punishment had he curbed his temperament. Columbia issued a similar film the following year, "Island of Doomed Men" offering Peter Lorre top billing as the chief villain, Rochelle Hudson the disloyal wife who helps bring about his downfall.
