Konterr Brilliant and touching

Dotbankey A lot of fun.

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

JohnHowardReid Producer: David O. Selznick. Copyright 20 August 1932 by RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Mayfair: 9 September 1932. Los Angeles opening at the Orpheum: 2 September 1932. London opening at the New Gallery: 10 January 1933. 9 reels. 80 minutes. SYNOPSIS: Comparisons with Tabu (1951) are obvious. Instead of a native in love with a tabu maiden, substitute a white man. However, the comparison is a bit unjust as Tabu has rung the principal change on the 1912 stage play. NOTES: The stage play opened on Broadway at Daly's on 8 January 1912 and although it ran only a moderately successful 112 performances in New York with the legendary Laurette Taylor in the lead (playing opposite Lewis Stone, no less), it became a big hit throughout the USA and Canada in road and stock companies. The film was re-made as Tabu in 1951 by 20th Century-Fox with Debra Paget, Louis Jourdan and Jeff Chandler. COMMENT: Frankly, I prefer Tabu, but there are many people who regard this version of the story as the more entertaining. Certainly it has a lot going for it, including the splendidly exotic Dolores Del Rio as the native girl and my favorite movie philosopher John Halliday as the worldly-wise yachtsman. "Looks like you'll have to run for native prince," he advises deck-hand McCrea. "On the Democratic ticket!" The photography, however (at least in the print under review), leaves a lot to be desired. Some of the location material is far too dark. The much-vaunted Max Steiner music score also falls short by comparison with Tabu.

Rainey Dawn A very beautiful & romantic film. It's about a lovely native woman named Luana (Dolores del Rio) and the man that falls in-love with her, Johnny Baker (Joel McCrea). Luana is chosen by the other island natives to be sacrificed to the volcano. This is a story we've all heard of by now but this might be the first film on the subject matter. I discovered this film via Creighton Chaney. I was looking to watch a film from him that I have yet to see. He's not in this one very much, his character Thornton is more of a supporting role, but he did not have to be in this film for me to enjoy it. I'm glad to discover it because it's a wonderful story. 8/10

classicsoncall Quite honestly, until I started reading some of the other reviews here I never gave it a second thought that Dolores del Rio's early swim scene might have been done in the nude. It just didn't strike me that way. There were other scenes in the picture between Johnny (Joel McCrea) and Luana that seemed much more suggestive and erotic, as when they traded splashes of coconut milk on the beach. The principals were certainly well cast for their athleticism and sex appeal, and I'd be curious to have been a movie goer back in the day to experience a first hand reaction to the events portrayed on screen.One scene that caught my attention occurred between Johnny and the overweight native woman when at one point, Johnny fashions a makeshift slide out of a large palm frond and they both slide down a steep embankment. I thought that was pretty original when I saw Michael Dougas and Kathleen Turner do it in "Romancing the Stone", but here director Vidor came up with it a half century earlier. For me at least, that was a sit up and take notice moment.Storywise, the effort is almost stereotypical; a young virginal maiden is destined to be sacrificed to the island gods until a captivating young hero attempts to whisk her away for a life of tranquility. The concept seems romantic, but then I thought about how I'd spend day after day on a remote island in the Pacific every day for the rest of my life and then it didn't seem so ideal. OK, Dolores del Rio may have been part of the equation, but seriously, the routine would at some point overwhelm one with severe boredom.For 1932 and straight out of the silent era, this one had some fine moments and innovative action sequences like the shark attack, Johnny's battle in the whirlpool and of course, the erupting volcano. The flying fish celebration was certainly something I'd never seen before. It all resolves to poignancy with the closing scene when Luana takes her leave of a dying Johnny to fulfill her destiny as a sacrifice to the gods.

MartinHafer This was an intentionally trashy and salacious film--meant to titillate and appeal to the baser instincts of movie fans. You see, up until the mid-1930s, despite modern opinions to the contrary, many films were quite sexy and risqué--even by today's standards. So many people assume that nudity and adult themes were invented in films in the 1960s, but this is far from true. In the 1920s and 30s, it was not all that uncommon for topics like adultery, fornication and even homosexuality in films...and it was also not uncommon for nudity as well! The best example is the mid-1920s Biblical epic, BEN HUR--which featured several nude scenes and some pretty violent themes (such as when "Golthor" boards the Roman ship with a head impaled on his sword).So with this background in mind, understand that this film is a great example of this genre as it intentionally "pushed the envelope" and in some parts of the country it was edited to suit local tastes (particularly outside the bigger cities). That's because the film is set on a tropical island where Ms. Del Rio plays an uninhibited native who swims naked during one very daring scene. By today's standards, it's not super-explicit, but it shows much more flesh than Jacqueline Bisset's famed swimming scenes from THE DEEP and definitely would have earned BIRD OF PARADISE and R-rating.The bottom line is that Radio Pictures put this scene in the film to attract a larger audience to an essentially dull and clichéd film. The story about Ms. Del Rio being a princess who is to be sacrificed to the volcano god, Pele, is all very silly. Also, no matter how much the alluring Ms. Del Rio and Joel McCrea try, this film just isn't all that interesting--except from a historical standpoint. The film is very skip-able except for film buffs and lovers of Pre-Code films, as the plot is pretty dumb and full of holes.