While watching this film, I couldn't help but marvel that in different parts of his career, Humphrey Bogart starred in what may have been Warner Brothers' best film ever ("Casablanca") and its worst film ever -- this one! I don't know if it's true what another of our reviewers said, but I can believe that Bogart once denied he ever made this film...it's that bad. This almost primitive film was made in 1936...just 3 years before Hollywood's landmark year of 1939, yet it looks like something from the late 1920s or very early 1930s. This isn't even a "B" picture...definitely an "F" picture! And if you don't believe me, just watch the scene where the wonderfully fake looking octopus attacks Bogie; here's looking at you, kid! The trouble is that this film could have been pretty decent. A man with a less than stellar past is on the lam in the South Seas where he has turned over a new leaf (that's Bogart). At the beginning of the flick, he is getting married to Margaret Lindsay. In a storm (some good footage here), a ship wrecks on the reef, and a young man is saved (Donald Woods). That young man is secretly there to arrest Bogart, but he becomes his friend and falls in love with his wife.But the biggest problem here is the acting. Humphrey Bogart is "okay" in some scenes, and very awkward in others. He is not alone! Margaret Lindsay may be the only one in the cast that did a pretty good job, although Donald Woods was not too bad (nor was he too good). E.E. Clive, as the doctor, seemed to have trouble talking. Paul Graetz as the captain...how did he ever get in pictures? No one else impressed, either.There's really only one reason to watch this film...because it is so very bad it's entertaining. Somehow, the next time I see the beginning of a Warner Brothers picture, and they have that logo with "As Time Goes By" in the background, I'm going to think of this film.

One of Humphrey Bogart's worst movies. Bogie plays a man hiding out on a tiny Pacific island. He also sports a silly mustache. Don't feel too bad for him, though. He's married to beautiful Margaret Lindsay. Stranger Donald Woods shows up in a storm and immediately falls for Lindsay. Bogie, playing the stupidest husband ever, is the last person to figure it out. It's a poor movie that seems interminably slow for an hour. Bogart fans will want to see it for his mustache and to see him wrestle an octopus like a boss. But ultimately it's a boring, predictable endeavor that is a remake of an earlier film I haven't seen.

This is a remake of "The Narrow Corner" and I have seen several variations on the film (such as "Tiger Shark" and "Danger Lights"). So, from the onset I found the material very familiar and very predictable. In fact, beginning at the very first scenes featuring the wedding and the shipwreck, I already knew exactly what would be happening later in the movie! The only unusual thing about this B-movie was seeing Humphrey Bogart as the poor husband--and with a very cheesy fake mustache. Why he was given such an uninteresting and thankless role is simply because he was not yet a star. By 1936, he'd been in quite a few films but almost exclusively in bit parts and walk-ons. Though he'd been in Hollywood for about five years, he really hadn't yet made a name for himself.As I said before, the film starts with a wedding on a tiny island in the Pacific. When a boat crashes in the reef, in comes a more handsome and interesting man (Donald Woods) and the new wife is captivated. However, the husband is a sap and he doesn't realize how serious this is and befriends Woods--to his regret.Overall, this is a very simple B-movie with little (other than the novelty of seeing Bogart in a crappy film) to positively distinguish it. And, on the negative side, there is a silly rubber octopus that just needs to be seen to believed. Not horrible but certainly not very good either.

Isle of Fury which starred Humphrey Bogart, Margaret Lindsay and Donald Woods is a remake of a previous Warner Brothers feature, The Narrow Corner based on a novel by the same name by W. Somerset Maugham. The original film came out in 1933 and starred Ralph Bellamy, Patricia Ellis, and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in the roles played by Bogart, Lindsay and Woods respectively. Knowing how things operated at Warner Brothers and also having seen both the original and remake they did of The Dawn Patrol, I'm willing to wager half the next month's rent that whole chunks of the film, all the action sequences are just carried over from the original film. That's just how Jack Warner did things over at his studio.I'm also willing to bet knowing the original source is Somerset Maugham who also wrote that racy epic Rain baed in the South Seas that the original since it was before the Code was a great deal spicier. The new version is 9 minutes longer and probably the spice has been removed. Warner Brothers never got anywhere near the South Seas, probably the film was shot in Catalina. The plot concerns Bogart and Lindsay who are being married as the film opens when news of a foundering sailing ship off their island and hung up on a reef brings a call for rescue. Only two get rescued, the captain Paul Graetz, and a mysterious passenger Donald Woods.Bogart and Woods hit it off and become friends and Lindsay and Woods hit it off even better. Both Bogart and Woods however have something in their respective pasts. The part that Bogey plays is something he might have done later on with bigger budgets. This film was done on the cheap, the special effects are crude by today's standards. Today of course the movie going public would demand location shooting in some place like Fiji or Samoa.It's B picture from Bryan Foy's B picture unit at Warner Brothers so take it for what it's worth.