A second viewing of this big flop from the team that made King Kong. Despite a best selling source novel and talented people, it's a mess. I love the novel, I love King Kong, I wanted this to be good, but it isn't.
The main problems:
- The character of Holly is pointless. You could remove him from the whole film and it wouldn't matter. As played by Nigel Bruce he's not that interesting. I mean he doesn't have to be like he is in the book - ugly, falling in love with She - but at least he has a point in the book. Here he does nothing. If he was removed Helen Mack's character could do everything he does.
- Leo/Randolph Scott doesn't fall for She. He's tempted by her for a couple of minutes but quickly comes to his senses and dislikes her. He falls in love with Helen Mack too which is dull (Scott's performance is awkward but he does have the right look). At the end he doesn't want to go into the flame because of Ayesha he does it so Mack isn't killed. That's dumb.
- The film has this awful bias towards Helen Mack (as Tanya a combination of a few women who annoyed She) - she's a loving dopey idiot who just wants to hang around Leo. To be fair she was that in the book too but at least in the book she was killed, here she gets the guy.
- The natives look silly. I know this is a problem for many films of this era but the locals of Kor look particularly dopey in their sub-Egyptian outfits.
- Helen Gahagan isn't up to the part. She doesn't have the looks - she's pretty enough but Ayesha needs to be captivating.
- There's this massive production number towards the end, before everyone goes off to the Spirit of Life, which is completely pointless. Lots of dancing and singing and carry on - as if the filmmakers were worried there wasn't enough spectacle. They could cut it out of the film and nothing would have mattered.
- There's not enough action. Just a lot of jumping around. The movie is dull.
What I did like:
- some of the sets
- shifting the action to the Arctic, this worked fine - things like discovering corpses in the
- the make up when Ayesha disintegrated was fine.
It has a sort of King Kong feel - it's about an expedition to an exotic part of the world, there are three key players, one of whom is lusted after by a foreign beast, another one who loves the lustee. But Kong had a genuine sense of wonder. You have the Robert Armstrong character driving a lot of the action - he had something to do. You felt for Kong - he beat up other creatures on the island, and fell in love (they give nothing heroic for She to do). It feels as though the filmmakers didn't like Ayesha
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