Ilha dos Homens Perdidos

That's the first and frankly the best thing I can say about this movie. In more than fifty years of watching movies from Monogram, mostly on TV, this is the best print I've ever seen of a movie from the MGM of the South. It's sharp, bright and undimmed by wear.

What that usually means with very old movies is that the original elements have not been bothered for a long time. No pulling off 16 mm. prints for the TV market. In other words, an absolute bomb.

And, despite the beauty of the photography, that's what we have here. Writer-director Oswald started out in Germany in the 1910s and did a lot of work with the Expressionist movement in Germany, so this movie about how John Howard brings an assortment of Types to the prison colony he runs is full of great symbolic meaning that might have appealed to the audiences in the big cities, but not to the markets that Monogram sold into: small towns and Saturday matinées. It's also shot on underdecorated sets that remind me of many cheap off-off-off Broadway plays that I saw in the days when I looked at such things.

He has assembled a decent cast. John Howard was one of those leading men who never got a decent vehicle; Alan Mowbray and Gilbert Roland always gave worthwhile performances with twinkles in their eyes and Helen Gilbert plays a classically trained pianist with an attitude and unlimited peroxide on a tramp steamer.

Oswald's direction is stolidly Teutonic as everyone yearns for a better world, one in which Japanese bombers do not attack and prison colonies on tropical islands are where lovers can meet. It's the stolidity that is paramount, however.