The plot represents a variation on the cattle baron vs. small herders theme, or the oil baron vs. small producers theme("In Old Oklahoma"), Here, it's a banana baron((John Wengraf, as Lukats) on this small Caribbean Island populated almost exclusively by Hispanics, with the exception of most of the main characters. Flanders White(Rhonda Fleming)runs the second largest plantation here, and identifies with the smaller growers, because they are all dependent on Lukats to export their bananas. Sometimes, Lukats claims his ship doesn't have room for other people's bananas. Hence, one goal is to contract with a much bigger company to save space in their ships for the produce of the small growers. This will be realized near the end. On the other hand, Lukats wants to force the small growers to sell their plantations to him.Dan McCloud(Ronald Reagan), an American soldier of fortune and past banana plantation foreman, shows up at Flanders' house unexpectedly, as a refuge from a political revolution on the mainland. He criticizes some of the details of how the bananas are being gown on her plantation. Soon, she replaces her drunkard foreman(Nelson) with Dan, and they start some methods corrections. Nelson is hired by Lukats as his foreman. Now we have the bad boys running one plantation and the good guys(and gal) running the other main plantation. Nelson wants to get even with Flanders and Dan, so he leads a raid on Flanders' worker's village, burning their houses and wrecking other things. Dan and Flanders arrive and combat Nelson's goons. There is a fierce fight between Dan and the bigger Nelson. Lukats now wants Dan to turn off the water for Flanders' irrigation and the worker's houses, to imperil the banana crop and cause the workers to riot. He holds Dan to this action because he threatens to have Dan arrested as an undesirable illegal alien if he doesn't. Meanwhile, Dan's friend Sam has flown his plane to the mainland to obtain a contract from Tropical Fruit to export the bananas of the smaller plantations. Also, he learned that the revolutionaries Dan was fighting for have taken control of the government, hence he is not currently considered a fugitive from justice, removing the hold of Lukats over him. So, he turns the water back on. The Flanders and other small growers need to deliver 8000 banana bunches to the dock by noon the next day. They work through the night, and transport the bunches by every conceivable means to the dock, just in time.The screenplay begins languidly, with dances or singing by lithesome Elena Estebar, and the various principle characters getting acquainted. Reagan has 2 beauties interested in him in Rhonda and Elena. However, he mostly acts non-interested in the seductive Elena, who has a crush on him. Probably, he considers her too young and poor. He's more interested in Rhonda, who mostly maintains her business personality around Ronnie. She lacks the romantic fire of Elena. Nonetheless, Ronnie and Rhonda finally do a little romancing near the end. Elena dances or sings maybe 5 times, mostly in the first half. I understand that Paramount spent a bundle recreating a banana worker's village in their facility, and staffing it with Latinos, although probably most should have been African Americans.See it in color at You Tube

At the hysterically campy conclusion of this Technicolor romp, you half expect Carmen Miranda to pop out among the thousands of bananas being marched down to the docks in a procession which seems to have influenced Cecil B. DeMille's method of having the Hebrews leaving Egypt in "The Ten Commandments". Ronald Reagan believes himself to be wanted on the mainland for a crime he didn't commit and is hiding out on this Caribbean Island where all of the natives are Hispanic, not one black among them. He becomes the foreman for Rhonda Fleming's banana plantation, making an enemy out of her drunken former foreman (Grant Withers, aka the final Charlie Chan) and the ruthless buyer (John Wengraf) out to take over all of the island's plantations. Then, there's Estelita Rodriguez, the pint-sized Mexican spitfire in love with Reagan who has an initially polite rivalry with Fleming over her desire to monopolize Reagan's time and Noah Beery Jr. as the very cheery side-kick in love with Rodriguez himself. Rodriguez gets to sing a few sultry numbers and devours each of her lines as if it was the biggest banana split she could get her claws on.A delightful adventure in the Jon Hall/Maria Montez vein, you might confuse this as an unofficial remake of Warner Brothers' "Torrid Zone" which dealt with the same subject. However, other than bananas and villains, the two share nothing in common, but are both tremendously entertaining. Fleming, a beauty who could pass as Maureen O'Hara's twin, isn't as feisty as her look-alike, but don't underestimate this red-head. She's a worthy match for any man and a fantastic business woman here to boot, showing that women business owners can do more than run beauty companies. Reagan is light-hearted and charming, even if his character at first seems a bit amoral. If you're lucky enough to land a copy of this, you might want to consider keeping it, because you'll want to re-visit it over and over as a forgotten treasure of camp where the characters are as bananas as the fruit they pick.

According to the Citadel Film series book The Films Of Ronald Reagan, the Gipper signed with Pine-Thomas productions to do this film because of the fact they gave him his first starring western. Reagan was a fine horseman and would love to have made a few westerns when he was in his salad days at Warner Brothers. But Jack Warner other than in Santa Fe Trail wouldn't put him in them. Pine-Thomas who did the B pictures at Paramount put Reagan in The Last Outpost and it became a favorite film of his. And there wasn't too much out there available when the studios started letting go of their contract players.The book characterizes Tropic Zone as a western with a tropic setting. Reagan plays a two fisted adventurer who got on the wrong side of a revolution in one Central American country and had to flee to another without passport. A fact that villain John Weingraf holds over him. Rhonda Fleming who owns a banana plantation needs a strong foreman to replace the drunken Grant Withers and Reagan fills the bill and in other ways as well even though Estelita Rodriguez has her eye on him.Watching the film I suddenly remembered where I had seen this plot before and it was in a John Wayne western War Of The Wildcats. There instead of bananas it was oil as Wayne led a caravan just like Reagan does here to meet a deadline and get a contract for Fleming and not incidentally to get Fleming.Estelita Rodriguez sings both a Spanish and English version of the Jay Livingston-Ray Evans song I'll Always Love You that Dean Martin introduced in My Friend Irma Goes West. I kind of prefer what Dino did with the song.As Reagan and Fleming had similar politics the two must have gotten along fabulously. In fact she was his leading lady in several films of the Fifties.Tropic Zone began his career as an independent player. His films after this were competent enough, but mostly routine and this is no exception.

This is the umpteenth version of the gorgeous damsel in distress(Fleming) whose valuable banana plantation is coveted by a villain .But fortunately a raider (Reagan)comes to her rescue. This is conventional to a fault,a weak adventure story padded out with a lot of exotic dances ,all performed by a brunette who's "crazy about" the hero and thus is jealous of Fleming.