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A six-day schedule and an evocative title, more than enough for Edgar G. Ulmer's inspired remembrance of Murnau's Tabu. A subjective camera tracks from side to side as sarong-wrapped "hostesses" are roused one by one, the madam (Gale Sondergaard) throws open wicker doors to reveal South Seas stock footage—what else could a tropical paradise be in the director's cosmos but a counterfeit projection, a mirage? Drums at night, "a bit of hocus-pocus to summon all sinners" to the drab nightclub-bordello, itself exposed as a rickety set during a brawl between the tale's thrift-store Flagg and Quirt (John Carradine, Frank Fenton). Sunken gold is the McGuffin, the plantation owner with the banshee laugh (Sidney Toler) manipulates the hunters and watches from the sidelines, waiting to pounce. Double-crosses and impromptu partnerships, an independent operation: "Wait a minute—this is piracy!" Elemental lyricism in studio penury, the Ulmer erudition finds a way. The scrawniest of all seafaring roughnecks, Carradine slouches in striped shirt and cap and smoking pipe and suddenly he's a Cézanne figure amid Gauguin maidens. An undulating tank receives the marionette in the diving bell, the underwater tinniness of the score evokes nothing less than Wagner's Das Rheingold, why not. Sternberg's Shanghai Gesture ashore, Corman's She Gods of Shark Reef on the horizon. "Big wind, big wave" sort things out, as the native chief points to the mirrored Rorschach clouds churning in the distance. "Don't look so disappointed, you'll see murder and mayhem any moment now." Characters try to maneuver each other's destines, though Nature has the annihilating last word. With Veda Ann Borg, Rick Vallin, and Rita Quigley. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |