Enjoyable pre Code melodrama about a New Orleans hooker (Dorothy Mackaill) who kills a man and flees with the help of her boyfriend to a Carribean Island. She’s lusted after by the population and the guy who she thinks she killed – who turns up there. Hard core finale where Mackaill agrees to be executed rather than have sex with someone (it would mean breaking a vow to her husband). And they said pre-Code films have no honour! It’s a grim, full on story – Mackaill clearly doesn’t deserve to die but she does. Black actors Nina Mae McKinney and Noble Johnson play the most normal, nice people in the film. Directed by William Wellman, this would be better remembered if Dorothy Mackaill was better known today.
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