The Ides of Anna May Wong: Island of Lost Men

Note: This month we examined three Anna May Wong movies to give Perry Mason reviews a little break. I liked the overall look of this B-picture (the IA print is surprisingly nice) though some stock footage of drumming natives seemed out of place.

Island of Lost Men
1939 / 1:03
Tagline: “Madman Emperor of a Savage Jungle World beyond Civilization's Last Outpost”
[internet archive]

This picture is less about jungle melodrama and more about the pathology of power. Prin, the river despot, is a case study in the old maxim that absolute power doesn’t just corrupt – it’s both fuel and exhaust of anger, stupidity, and greed. Lost like Mr. Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, Prin builds his empire on fear and poisonous bathtub gin, and then wonders why the local people want him dead. His tyranny is theatrical, his unpredictability a management style, and his contempt for flowers a neat metaphor for his oily work rag of a soul.

The film’s moral stance is clear: Prin’s corporate org chart is a hierarchy of scoundrels, each ready to sell him out for a handful of coins or a chance at survival. His insistence on precedence and obedience is laughable because the whole system is held together with narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. When your lieutenants are philosophical renegades and gin-peddling thugs, you don’t need to run ads for an enemy - they’re already on the payroll.

J. Carroll Naish plays Prin like a man auditioning for the role of “Worst Dinner Guest Alive.” His performance oscillates between greasy charm and full hambone, and when he tips into the latter, we movie-goers can only hope the director calls “cut” before the scenery collapses under the chewing. Anna May Wong, by contrast, is all watchful restraint - her silences speak louder than Prin’s tirades. Nobody does the slow burn of contempt like Wong, and here she makes it look effortless. And scalding. Wong was great and Hollywood didn’t have a clue what to do with her.

Anthony Quinn, in regrettable yellowface makeup, brings a pulse to the proceedings, and Broderick Crawford swaggers through like a young’un who knows he’s in a B-picture and intends to enjoy it. The set design is a triumph of atmosphere - Karl Struss shoots Prin’s compound with a conviction that the script only intermittently earns. Sadly, this is namby-pamby Post-Code, so when the philo professor delivers the severed head of his colleague Ernest Truex to Prin, the scene is not nearly as grisly as it should have been.

What impresses isn’t the plot but the texture: the sense of a world where gorgeous orchids bloom and little men rot, where tyranny is a performance and loyalty for suckers. It’s a jungle noir with philosophical pretensions, and if it doesn’t quite deliver on its ambitions, it still offers a pungent whiff of moral decay.