I was hoping for even better, given that the screenplay was written by (forgetting Jerome Cady) the formidable Dalton Trumbo (Lonely are The Brave, Papillon, etc.) and truly great Nathanael West. In fact, this movie came out the same year, 1939, as West's masterpiece, "The Day of the Locust," so he must have worked on them simultaneously to some extent.
No wonder it's a good screenplay, especially for a B movie. Although the plot is formulaic, there's no shortage of surprises, or terse observations, and director John Farrow keeps it clipping along, at least until the rather abrupt ending. We're short-changed on John Carradine, who's hardly in it, but that's compensated for by plenty of C. Aubrey Smith (as the Professor), Wendy Barrie (Mary Ann), Patrick Knowles (young Thurston Howell), Lucille Ball (Ginger), and particularly by a key character named Vasquez, played by a Maltese actor named Joseph Calleia, whom I'd never heard of though he was in almost 60 films.
It's a must for any fan of Nathanael West, who ultimately contributed to only about a dozen movies before his death in 1940.
No wonder it's a good screenplay, especially for a B movie. Although the plot is formulaic, there's no shortage of surprises, or terse observations, and director John Farrow keeps it clipping along, at least until the rather abrupt ending. We're short-changed on John Carradine, who's hardly in it, but that's compensated for by plenty of C. Aubrey Smith (as the Professor), Wendy Barrie (Mary Ann), Patrick Knowles (young Thurston Howell), Lucille Ball (Ginger), and particularly by a key character named Vasquez, played by a Maltese actor named Joseph Calleia, whom I'd never heard of though he was in almost 60 films.
It's a must for any fan of Nathanael West, who ultimately contributed to only about a dozen movies before his death in 1940.