The director and de facto producer also made the highly regarded Spanish version of Dracula the same year (and this film also features the female star of that film in a supporting role). Like that film, this has a lot going for it pictorially. Particularly impressive is the integration of the jungle animals with the lead characters; so often films of this era simply cut back and forth between the characters and stock footage (which does occur occasionally here, too). Possibly a good theatrical print would show some optical join-lines, but it is all quite imaginatively done. A sense of the menace of the jungle is artfully created by a long scene in which a huge snake hovers at the doorway of Rose Hobart's tent, and then slithers over a terrified native carrier on its way to the water. It's a slow, leisurely scene, with no music, and all the more creepy for having no one shout in terror or attack the snake as it goes about its business. Another scene filled with mood and menace occurs when the boat finally arrives at its upstream destination. Long stone stairs rise up from the river (not unlike Kurtz's compound in APOCALYPSE NOW), and bands of natives push live crocodiles from the steps with sticks to make it possible for the visitors to land. Later, when a man is chased and devoured by crocodiles, the man really seems to be in the water with the crocs; quite sensational. Unfortunately, the story is a somewhat tired melodrama along the lines of THE GREEN GODDESS or, a few years later, WHITE WOMAN. A woman travels into the jungle to find her alcoholic doctor husband. She finds him in the subservient thrall of a rajah-style prince who lords it over the natives in an Inca-styled compound. Unfortunately, the actor playing the villain here is no George Arliss or Charles Laughton. Nor does the script have the sophisticated flashes of WHITE WOMAN. Hobart makes a fine leading lady, but without a nuanced script she is limited in what she can do. This is an interesting curio that is worth seeing and gets good marks for trying, but isn't quite in the same league with pre-Code jungle classics like THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME and ISLAND OF LOST SOULS.
Review of East of Borneo
