Carole Lombard is singing Cole Porter-style songs in a native bar. She's an outcast because she went off with a man and her husband killed himself. In comes "King of the River" Charles Laughton. He marries her and takes her upriver, where all the White men have something in their background that would get them jailed -- at best.
The movie looks like a badly aged mash-up of other, better remembered stories from the era: RAIN, of course, and RED RIVER with Charles Bickford as the he-man, and SANDERS OF THE RIVER. Although Lombard is the protagonist for the most of the movie, and Bickford looks like he's going to take it over when he enters for the third act, it's Laughton, playing one of his grotesques who dominates the film, from his entrance until the very end, when he is the only White standing, shouting defiance. Just like in other movies of the era, he's so good at playing a fascinating villain who despises everyone else... until he throws it all away in an act of mad bravado, to impress Lombard.
The movie looks like a badly aged mash-up of other, better remembered stories from the era: RAIN, of course, and RED RIVER with Charles Bickford as the he-man, and SANDERS OF THE RIVER. Although Lombard is the protagonist for the most of the movie, and Bickford looks like he's going to take it over when he enters for the third act, it's Laughton, playing one of his grotesques who dominates the film, from his entrance until the very end, when he is the only White standing, shouting defiance. Just like in other movies of the era, he's so good at playing a fascinating villain who despises everyone else... until he throws it all away in an act of mad bravado, to impress Lombard.