Hell's Island
| Hell's Island | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Phil Karlson |
| Produced by |
William H. Pine William C. Thomas |
| Screenplay by | William H. Pine Maxwell Shane William C. Thomas |
| Story by |
Martin Goldsmith Jack Leonard |
| Starring | John Payne Mary Murphy |
| Narrated by | John Payne |
| Music by | Miklós Rózsa |
| Cinematography | Lionel Lindon |
| Edited by | Archie Marshe |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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84 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $1 million (US) |
Hell's Island is a 1955 American Technicolor film noir crime film starring John Payne and directed by Phil Karlson. The film was the last teaming of actor Payne and director Karlson. Mary Murphy co-stars. The film was shot in the VistaVision wide-screen format. Hell's Island was re-released in 1962 under the title South Sea Fury. The working titles of this film were Love Is a Weapon and The Ruby Virgin.
The film is told as a flashback with Payne narrating the story.
After being dumped by his fiancée, hard-drinking and depressed Mark Cormack (Payne) loses his job in the Los Angeles district attorney's office and serves as bouncer in a Las Vegas casino.
A wheelchair-bound stranger, Barzland (Francis L. Sullivan), hires him to locate a ruby that disappeared in a Caribbean plane crash. He lures Cormack into doing the job by telling him it may be in the possession of the very woman who jilted him, Janet Martin (Murphy), who is now married to the pilot of the downed plane.
The ex-detective flies to remote Santo Rosario to find the stone and investigate the mystery. When he finds his old flame, her husband is in prison. Cormack, again falling for Janet, is coaxed into helping him break out of jail.
Her husband shocks Mike by revealing Janet sabotaged his plane, causing its crash, out to collect on his life insurance. Janet also double-crosses Mike, who discovers she has killed a man and has the ruby. Barzland returns but plunges to his death, and Mike watches the police take Janet away to jail.
The film comes near the end of the film noir cycle and at a time when Payne's unsmiling and fatigued expression in film had become something of a noir icon.
The New York Times panned the film, "All to the credit of Hell's Island — and we mean all—is an unstartling usage of VistaVision, which merely widens some pretty, crystal-clear and synthetic tropical backgrounds. But what a picture! Produced, for no discernible reason, by Paramount's Pine-Thomas unit, with John Payne and Mary Murphy featured, it arrived yesterday with the Palace's new vaudeville program ... It's all slow-moving and obvious and exasperating to find Mr. Payne led around so willingly by the nose ... Mr. Payne and Miss Murphy remain examples of perfect casting and miscasting."
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Wikipedia