Hell Harbor (DVD)

Lupe Velez, the "Mexican Spitfire," stars in this erotic pre-Code drama from award-winning director Henry King (The Song of Bernadette). Velez is Anita, a free spirit who uses the men of a small Caribbean island as her personal toys. But as her 21rst birthday fast approaches, she is set to be married to a brutal gangster. Salvation arrives in the form of Robert Wade, a trader laid up on the island for five days. Knowing that his next stop is Havana, Anita sets out to seduce the handsome young man before the arranged marriage can take place.

Hell Harbor is Lupe Velez's second sound feature, and her first high-profile one. Her talkie debut, Tiger Rose (1929) was considered a financial risk for Warner Brothers, who feared the actress' Mexican accent would alienate moviegoers. When that film was hit, director Henry King was given the go-ahead to cast Velez in his big-budget adaptation of Rida Johnson Young's novel. During filming, King was so struck by the unusual appearance of a reporter covering the production that he cast him as a barfly. He advised the newswriter, Rondo Hatton, to quit his day job and come to Hollywood. Seven years later, Hatton would take King's advice, and the director cast him in In Old Chicago (1937). Afterwards the actor would achieve legendary status playing "the Creeper" in three Universal horror films, The Pearl of Death (1944), House of Horrors and The Brute Man (both 1946). Jean Hersholt and Gibson Gowland had previously played adversaries in Erich von Stroheim's epic Greed (1924).

• drama