Note: These comments contain SPOILERS!
I could not sleep so I was flipping channels and came across this movie on TCM. Since there was nothing but infomercials on at the time I stuck with this flick. Based on a novel by W.Somerset Maugham, this cinematic version must have put the deceased author into eternal apoplexy. The movie had so much potential but at 70 minutes there is no way for all of the plot scenarios to be adequately developed. That doesn't stop director Alfred E.Green who shoehorns every last one of the events and relationships in even if it results in a laughably underdeveloped storyline.
Yes, there are colorful characters and yes, some are well played. I was also a bit shocked at the liberal and casual approach to sex, drugs and terminal illness for 1933. But no amount of titillation or amusing secondary characters can compensate for the absurd lapses in plot development.
Our hero, an angst-ridden, tortured Fred (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), is running away after killing a man. He hooks up with a crusty captain, played crustily by Arthur Hohl. They end up in the Dutch East Indies where Fairbanks meets the lovely, but extraordinarily vacuous, Louise, (Patricia Ellis), after swimming naked to the island from the storm-damaged boat. Eric (Ralph Bellamy), happens by and the naked Fred, the dopey Eric and the oblivious Louise arrange dinner for that evening. Bellamy and Fairbanks then swim naked back to the boat, navigate through a treacherous channel, and end up at dinner with Louise, her father, her grandfather, an opium-addicted doctor, the Captain and Eric. Fred and Louise are taken with each other which is obvious to everyone, except Eric-the-simple-minded.
Here is where things go haywire. Somehow, in the next 15 minutes or so, Eric reveals he is engaged to Louise, Eric and Fred become extraordinarily intimate friends ("Eric was the best friend that I have ever had!" - Wait a minute, didn't you guys just meet about 12 hours ago?), the sex-obsessed Louise all but forces herself on Fred, Eric discovers a new emotion called jealousy, Louise forgets that she is engaged (if she ever really knew it in the first place), a manuscript is vindictively destroyed (what this has to do with anything is beyond me), there is a murder, a suicide, a resurrection, a boat-theft, a cancer diagnosis and a miraculous discovery of the maritime navigational prowess of the air-headed Louise.
I must read the book to find out what this mess was truly about. I suspect a subtle homo-erotic theme will be introduced that might explain the attraction between Fred and Eric.
This is a must-see film for aficionados of pure film-making debacles. The only thing missing from this movie is about 30-40 additional minutes so that the finished product could have made even a bit of sense.