At this point in his long and extraordinary career, director Allan Dwan (who was pushing 70 years old when he made this and would live to almost see 100) had settled into making low-budget B-level westerns, except when he made a South Pacific adventure story like this one. Funny thing is that this is pretty much a western, too, except with palm trees and beaches.
The plot: Some white profiteers are after some rare black pearls. Their journey takes them to a remote island populated by people who look like they’re from Omaha—but they’ve gone through the RKO Radio Pictures make-up chair and now they’re bronzed, spear-wielding savages from exotic lands. Meanwhile, the film still treats them like American Indians. Their accents, pounding tribal music and traditions are identical.
The big difference is that Dwan makes his faux-Islanders sympathetic. We don’t care at all if Virginia Mayo, Dennis Morgan and David Farrar get their stupid black pearls. How they come to respect this other culture, or die in the pursuit of riches, matters more. Dwan’s Cattle Queen of Montana from the previous year took a similar critical eye toward the day’s conventional depictions of race relations in the Old West. Both films see through the bullshit. Also, both films are shot in a similarly rushed style, loaded with simple master shots and broad acting. Nevertheless, they are a step forward for genre films, however down-and-dirty the presentation. Treat these antiques gently.