Isle of Forgotten Sins

This Producers Releasing Corporation distribution straight from poverty row has just about everything you could imagine or want to see and hear in a B picture second biller: barroom brawls, sunken treasure, a treasure map, an underwater grotto, double-crosses, fist fights, hold ups, restless natives, menacing drums, a big storm, and a flashlight-wielding marionette in a diving suit. But wait, there's more: classical music, torch songs, island ballads, synchronized swimming, beautiful girls wearing sarongs, Gale Sondergaard and above all, Sidney Toler naked to the waist and dripping wet in a bathing suit. If you have a taste for B movies, this is truly must see entertainment!

Isle of Forgotten Sins is one of those rarities I discovered at my local library. In this case, this was one of Edgar G. Ulmer's low-budget poverty row pictures he made for PRC. John Carradine and Frank Fenton are rivals for gambling club owner Gale Sondergaard but they put aside their differences for a chance to get sunken treasure. Ms. Sondergarrd and her girls (which includes a crafty Veda Ann Borg) come along but all of them seem to be pawns for Sidney "Charlie Chan" Toler and his partner Rick Vallin. Also briefly appearing is Bill Edmonds-Mr. Martini in It's a Wonderful Life-as the island chief. Enjoyably and breezily fast-paced (whenever possible) B-movie that benefits from Ulmer's expert direction and a suitable underscore by Leo Erdody (who like me was born in Chicago, Ill.) mixed in with some public domain classical music. The composer is billed by his last name here. If there's some quibble, it's how some scenes obviously reveal how some boat scenes use a toy model and the underwater ones reveal the diving suit, which is also a small plaything, being manipulated. Otherwise, great fun with even some singing from one of the girls not marring the storyline too much.

Had I known who the romantic leads are in this film I would have made it a point to see it years ago. How often do you get the opportunity to see Gale Sondergaard and John Carradine play characters better suited to Humprhey Bogart and Lauren Bacall? ISLE OF FORGOTTEN SINS is a thoroughly enjoyable South Seas adventure with Carradine and Sondergaard, cast completely against type, doing terrific work for low budget miracle worker Edgar G. Ulmer. Add Frank Fenton as Carradine's battling buddy, Sidney Toler as their jovial adversary, Rik Vallin as Toler's classical piano-playing second mate and Veda Ann Borg as a treacherous native girl, clever use of a puppet (!) for the deep sea diving scenes and a climactic monsoon -- what more do you need?

NOTE: The running time of this film is usually listed as 82 minutes. The video print I watched (from VCI Video) ran 76 minutes, and did not appear to be missing anything major.

Isle of forgotten sins but called monsoon in roku... the 1943 one. They kind of snuck this one past the censors. It's pretty obvious (but not spoken) what marge's girls do for a living. So taboo at the time. Gale sondergaard was the perfect vamp in so many classics...she was great in wyler's "the letter". In the south seas ( the back lot), the women run a "gambling house" wink, wink..that the officials are trying to shut down. And of course there are two men fighting over marge. In the worst staged fight ever filmed. Then a dead body! And sunken treasure! So much going on. Toler is krogan, who shows an odd smile now and then, for no reason...? John carradine popped up in some pretty huge films, but not usually the lead, never any oscars. Funny.. there's subtitles, but the sound is so rough, it skips and misses a lot. At about twenty five minutes in, the (roku version) captions show "fu** over his gold", but the actor actually says "fork over his gold"! It's okay. One demerit for picture and sound quality. One for frequent use of backdrops and stock footage. Story written and dircted by edgar ulmer. His big hit was black cat, back in 1934. He later resigned rather than make a musical with shirley temple, if the imdb trivia can be believed. He worked for years at producers releasing corp, the lowest of the low budgets. But it's still a wacky, fun adventure.

How to sum up this movie simply? John Carradine and Frank Fenton fight over Gale Sondergaard and over gold that Sidney (Charlie Chan) Toler and Rick Vallin have hidden. Its all set in the tropics and has murder, comedy, musical numbers, explosions, deep sea diving, fist fights, romance, and somewhere in there is the kitchen sink. I think about the only things not in this movie are aliens and tumbleweeds. Its a wild movie, so please don't ask for a clearer explanation since it would take too long.

But the real question is how is it really? Its good, but not great. There's too much going on and at times it's a little too slow, which is kind of odd considering all that happens in the films 80 minutes. This is a classic "watch at 2 am movie" with lots of bad commercials and public service announcements interrupting it.

The cast is good across the board. Carradine seems to be enjoying having the lead in an adventure film. Sidney Toler, forever etched in my mind as Charlie Chan is wonderfully evil as Carruthers, and a joy to see him on the other side of the law.

This movie also has a shoot out used in It Came From Hollywood where two guys shot at each other, back and forth dying as they did so until the guns were empty. I thought it had been altered to seem awkward and badly done. Nope. The gunfight is here, exactly as it was seen in "...Hollywood".

As I said, its good not great. What it needs is commercials to help break up the slow bits.