Well, so they are not on an island but stuck in some godawful jungle outpost in British East Africa. The set is a hoot with all that vintage wicker furniture and a grand piano which in that humidity could never have stayed in tune. BACLANOVA,in her second talkie and in her only starring role, was hardly intelligible in English. But no matter as she is fascinating to watch as she gesticulates and undulates during seizures of unbridled passion and JUNGLE MADNESS. Early in the film she is seated at the piano carrying on a conversation during which time she curiously turns to the sheet music to consult her phonetically prepared script. The nitrate print at the UCLA Archives which I viewed many years ago thanks to Robert Gitt seemed to have run 80 minutes. My 16mm print runs 72 minutes. The missing scenes include Olga breaking a phonograph record of the financee of her next male target, her brother-in-law. Shortly after that her husband Clive Brook is moodily pacing with a revolver in his room. The jungle scene in which Olga and Neil Hamilton watch the natives dance permits our star to stage a near orgasmic display. The film is racist and sexist seen in today's sactimonious PC perspective but hardly offensive to anyone when taken into historical context. I won't give away the ending but BACLANOVA did survive in order to appear in Wm. Wellman's THE MAN I LOVE -1929 released by Paramount the same month in which she devoured several men daily during tea time. She was getting in training for FREAKS -1932 !!! Seriously, she was a genuine talent who had been superbly directed in her silent films by Von Sternberg, Stiller,Leni and Schertzinger. Her talkie films were mostly directed by hacks, Do I need to name them ?
Review of A Dangerous Woman
