Isle of Fury (1936)
3/10
Not bad but certainly not very good either due to its extreme predictability.
10 January 2010
This is a remake of "The Narrow Corner" and I have seen several variations on the film (such as "Tiger Shark" and "Danger Lights"). So, from the onset I found the material very familiar and very predictable. In fact, beginning at the very first scenes featuring the wedding and the shipwreck, I already knew exactly what would be happening later in the movie! The only unusual thing about this B-movie was seeing Humphrey Bogart as the poor husband--and with a very cheesy fake mustache. Why he was given such an uninteresting and thankless role is simply because he was not yet a star. By 1936, he'd been in quite a few films but almost exclusively in bit parts and walk-ons. Though he'd been in Hollywood for about five years, he really hadn't yet made a name for himself.

As I said before, the film starts with a wedding on a tiny island in the Pacific. When a boat crashes in the reef, in comes a more handsome and interesting man (Donald Woods) and the new wife is captivated. However, the husband is a sap and he doesn't realize how serious this is and befriends Woods--to his regret.

Overall, this is a very simple B-movie with little (other than the novelty of seeing Bogart in a crappy film) to positively distinguish it. And, on the negative side, there is a silly rubber octopus that just needs to be seen to believed. Not horrible but certainly not very good either.
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