Taken to the guillotine in William Clemens’ DEVIL’S ISLAND.
end, and doesn’t have much to do beyond seem dazed and suspect.
William Clemens—who made decent Perry
Mason, Nancy Drew and Falcon mysteries— directs DEVIL’s ISLAND (1939, 61m 51s), which harks back in its setting (and sets?) to Warners’ high-prestige Dreyfus case drama THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA (1937) but is actually a remake of a same-titled 1926 melodrama. (Its plot also par- allels John Ford’s THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND surprisingly closely.) Because he has given medical treatment to a neurotic patient convicted of treason, French neurosurgeon Dr. Gaudet (Karloff) is unjustly condemned to a 10- year stretch on the notorious penal colony. Sa- distic commandant Lucien (James Stephenson) has Gaudet doing hard labor cutting timber: the shirtless, gaunt Karloff—who had been doing outdoor work not so many years before—is dis- turbingly credible in the suffering-in-a-field mon- tage. When Lucien’s daughter is injured and the prison doctor (Edward Keane) admits he isn’t skilled enough to operate, Madame Lucien (Nedda Harrigan) persuades her husband not to guillotine Gaudet for an infraction and have him save the little girl. However, there’s a spell
in “the hole,” a swamp-and-seas escape and more brutality in store before a happy-ish end- ing. Playing saintly rather than sinister, Karloff is in the rare position of being the least gro- tesque character on offer between thuggish cons and starched officials. An introductory caption explains that the situation depicted here has changed and that France law enforcement is now less prone to such hideous miscarriages of jus- tice; by the end of 1939, that must have sounded hollow, and Warners would be back on Devil’s Island with the 1944 occupation drama PAS- SAGE TO MARSEILLE. Hurriedly thrown together to close out a contract, DEVIL’s ISLAND feels low-wattage: Stephenson is a thin antagonist for the star, and the race-against-the-blade finish sillier than suspenseful.
Extras on the set are limited to the aforemen- tioned trailer, but the transfers are decent and even cramming all three films on one disc doesn’t do too much harm: these have always been functional- looking pictures. Together, these two collections showcase less familiar titles—it’s likely that even Karloff’s most devoted fans will be unfamiliar with one or two selections—and mostly serve to fill in gaps, but they’re welcome nonetheless.
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