Karry
Best movie of this year hands down!
Steinesongo
Too many fans seem to be blown away
SpunkySelfTwitter
It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.
MartinHafer
It sure is interesting seeing how times have changed. Throughout the first portion of the film, Martin (Gordon Jones) shamefully sexually harasses a waitress at a warf-side dive. Again and again and again, he asks her out and completely refuses to take NO for an answer...and HE ultimately turns out to be the hero in the story!! Yikes!!Helen (Margot Grahame) is a waitress in a restaurant catering to the local sea men. Despite having a rough crowd, she keeps her distance, as she's on probation and wants to be a good girl. Later, there is a gangland killing in the restaurant and the police immediately single her out because of her past. So, she does what any heroine in a movie does---she goes on the run and Martin helps her sort things out...and finds out that some hidden gold is involved. This is a great illustration of the saying "Don't try this at home!", as I think running from the law and solving the mystery is NOT the best way of handling things!!This movie has B-movie written all over it. It comes in at a hasty 57 minutes (typical of a B) and has a plot that is very familiar to the style of movie. Apart from the sexual harassment, the film is a competent and reasonably enjoyable picture from RKO...a studio that made a lot of Bs.
kidboots
Passable crime movie from RKO featuring two actors who didn't quite make the grade. At least in her home country Margot Grahame was known as Britain's answer to Jean Harlow and dubbed the "Aluminium Blonde" as well as being their highest paid star but Hollywood didn't really want to know, even after her sterling performance in "The Informer". Besides her looks had more in common with Lucille Ball or Barbara Pepper. And Gordon Jones, even though he worked solidly from 1932 until 1963 (the year he died), was destined to have a very familiar face even if you couldn't remember his name.Helen Roberts (Grahame) is back at her waitressing job after a brush with the law and with the full support of Papa Torres (Billy Gilbert) who just wants to see her make good. How anyone could have cast Grahame as a probation girl is amazing - her posh tones seemed more at home in Buckingham Palace than Tony's Fish Palace!!! When not brushing off unwanted suitors she also has to put up with the whispered innuendos about her past which makes her particularly hardened to breezy sea Captain Marty Rhodes (Jones) who wants to get to know her better. He seems to be mixed up with some pretty shady characters who feel he can lead them to a gold shipment but, like Helen, he is really just an innocent bystander who doesn't know what the mysterious shipment he has been hired to deliver, is!!!The most interesting thing about this movie is the number of familiar faces in smaller roles, forget about the two leads. Don "Red" Barry of later "Red Ryder" fame is Rigo who is organising the gold cargo, Marc Lawrence (here billed as Laurence) is Dorne, a thug (what else!!), another thug is played by Anthony Quinn who happened to get a couple of good close-ups. There was also Willie Best as a bystander and the always good Frank Faylen, he of the thousand bit parts and Dobie Gillis's always exasperated father, playing a policeman in the crowd.
David (Handlinghandel)
... But the movie is pure Lew Landers.Margot Graham is exotic as the title character. Her acting, at least here, isn't very interesting. But she has a tough yet intelligent look.Graham is a woman on parole. She is working as -- yes: a waitress. And in a waterfront dive.The rest is stock criminals. We have a stock romance. We have a boat and an Asian helper. None of the actors in these roles made much impression on me.It isn't really bad. (And some Landers films reality ARE bad.) It's just routine. We've seen essentially the same movie many, many times. But Graham makes this one stand out.
krorie
A not bad little programmer directed with flair by Lew Landers about a night waitress, Helen Roberts (Margot Grahame), on probation who is trying to get her life together working in a waterfront dive run by none other than Billy Gilbert, who is virtually wasted in a routine bit part. Seems Helen's new boyfriend, Martin Rhodes (Gordon Jones of "The Green Hornet" fame), is somehow mixed up with gangsters who are after a hidden cargo he has. The result is murder and hot pursuit by both mobsters and police of Helen and Martin. The approximately hour-long second feature moves at a fast pace, filled with excitement and adventure.Keep your eyes open for Anthony Quinn as one of the hoods, Don "Red" Barry as a victim, and Frank Faylen as a policeman, each just beginning his screen career. Gifted comic Willie Best is also seen briefly as a passerby with only one line. The cinematography by Russell Metty captures all the griminess, desolation, and seediness of the San Francisco waterfront. It's fun to hear the seamen sing "The Monkeys Have No Tails in Zamboanga," later popularized by US soldiers in the Pacific in World War II. Many John Wayne fans will recall it being sung by Lee Marvin in John Ford's "Donovan's Reef."
