Island of Lost Men

Island of Lost Men (1939) does not show much of an improvement over Dangerous To Know (1938). The director (this time, Kurt Neumann) again allows the main player (this time, J. Carroll Naish, complete with a particularly grating, phony accent) to grossly over-act and swamp the rest of the cast, although Brod Crawford and Eric Blore give him a good run for his money. Anna May Wong, alas, is rather subdued. The ridiculously melodramatic script may have been tolerable given a different lead (bring back Akim Tamiroff!), even though its stage origins are never less than glaringly apparent. This movie represents the first of a dozen or so movies in which director Neumann teamed with photographer Karl Struss. As might be expected, the lighting is certainly attractive but, alas, nothing special.