I'm not going to say very much about this late work of Victor Halperin (of White Zombie fame and Revolt of the Zombies annoyance), since the print on my trusty Mill Creek box set is missing at least a reel at the beginning and some scenes from the middle of the picture. Does the rest of the film even still exist?
As far as I can make out, Dr. Herbert Stander (Irving Pichel), somehow gets hold of a bunch of criminals, some obviously insane, some not, and imprisons them on a ship. He plans to "cure" their minds from the effect of the gland secretions (good, I already started to miss those in the new-fangled films I watched in the past week) which cause criminality (don't you just hear a bunch of sociologists and psychologists rotate in their graves?). He even experiments on his non-criminal nephew Bob (Lyle Talbot) to achieve his coveted goal.
In spite of exemplary security measures like providing a serial killer called Harry the Carver (Russell Hopton) with a shaving knife, the prisoners somehow, to everyone's utter surprise, take control of the ship and his crew. It's a real stroke of luck that Bob turns out to be the spiritual father of John McClane.
It's hard to talk about a film this mutilated, but even this cut shows that the film is far away from the artistry of Halperin's White Zombie, though at least just as far away from the hell of boredom and wasted talent mortals know as Revolt of the Zombies.
It seems to be a relatively snappily edited piece of Poverty Row film making with a few gorgeous looking moments and solid acting, no more, no less.
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