"Lure of the Islands" is supposedly set on some Pacific island. As far as the natives go, most look like they are actually Polynesians...quite unusual for the time when this was made. However, the two female leads look about as Polynesian as a can of Spaghetti-o's! Why? Well, perhaps some of it lazy casting but I think most is that these two women fall for the American heroes (Robert Lowery and Big Boy Williams) and race mixing was something that might not have worked well back in 1942 with some audiences. If this is the reason for the dopey casting, then that's pretty sad....though casting white folks in Asian roles in general was pretty common back in the day. Try to look past this when you see the film and understand it's just a sign of the times in which it was made.
Wally (Lowery) and Jinx (Williams) are sent to investigate a Pacific island because it's suspected there might be Japanese collaborators there. The pair are supposed to be FBI agents, though this doesn't make a lot of sense, as the FBI is used for domestic police work...not things like this. Instead, they should have been described as OSS (a precursor of the CIA) or US Navy operatives. Sloppy writing? Yep.
Once on the island, the first two native women they meet are Tana and Maui (Margie Hart and Gale Storm). They explain that they look and sound the way they do because their father was an American.....but this doesn't explain how they SOUND like they just graduated from charm school!! No local accent whatsoever make this a silly convention.
As for the collaborators, some of the local authorities are Japanese agents....and it's up to the guys to get evidence to that effect as well as get off the island alive. This might be tough, as Jinx is played by Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams, a guy who specialized in playing strong idiots. And, in a first for me, I noticed the film had TWO strong guy idiots....Williams and Warren Hymer ('Albert')...and Hymer, inexplicably, plays some sort of semi-Japanesey/Germany sort of villain!!!
So is it any good? Well, the musical numbers were pretty silly--especially watching Maui (Storm) singing a number that sounded like it should be sung in a nightclub...in the middle of the jungle on this island!! There are a few native dancers and they actually were pretty good and appeared authentic. Why not just stick with these native dancers?? Who knows. The dialog is at times terrible, the acting is just passable (or worse) and the story...well...as you can tell from what I've said above, it's pretty lame. Overall, a very silly film that is watchable...but bad.
