Search - RKO Adventure Classics Double Feature: Appointment in Honduras/Escape to Burma on DVD

In one, a great bandito. In the other, rubies, whipping, a c

C. O. DeRiemer | San Antonio, Texas, USA | 08/22/2008

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Appointment in Honduras:
For a Glenn Ford junkie, which is easy for me to be with the films he made in the late Forties and early Fifties, Appointment in Honduras is a temptation hard to resist. Ford hadn't become a superstar yet. Most of his movies during this period had decent budgets and solid co-stars. A lot of them were adventures and westerns. Appointment in Honduras, however, has a lot of clichés to overcome before you can decide if Ford makes it worthwhile. In fact, next to Ford, the best thing about the movie is Rodolfo Acosta who plays Reyes, a murdering bandito who has charm and ruthlessness. Compared to Ford's stalwart integrity and firm-jawed decisiveness, Acosta's cheerful lack of conscience makes the movie interesting.

Ford co-stars with Ann Sheridan and Zachary Scott. They re passengers on a tramp freighter carrying five prisoners to Nicaragua. Jim Corbett (Ford), a tough guy with more grease on his hair than your car needs for an oil change, frees the prisoners, takes over the ship and then lands on the coast. They'll head inland. They take fellow passengers Harry and Sylvia Sheppard (Scott and Sheridan) with them as hostages. Corbett is carrying a money belt stuffed with currency. As they start to hack their way through the jungle toward Guatemala, we learn Corbett is bringing the money to help overthrow a ruthless dictator. What he hasn't counted on is Reyes' determination to come out ahead, or that Harry Sheppard, weak, sleazy and sniveling, is rich enough to tempt the criminals. It doesn't help that Sylvia Sheppard didn't have time to pack when they left the ship. For most of the movie Ann Sheridan has only a nightgown, cut low, to wear. Corbett may avert his eyes, but Reyes enjoys the view.

The jungle is strictly back-lot make believe. One can almost see the potted banana plants being shifted around for each new scene. Every menace that every jungle movie ever had shows up...piranhas, pumas, crocodiles, an anaconda, biting ants, bats, malaria, and a cloud of what were either locusts or really sturdy mosquitoes. Ford's grim determination and Scott's sneering become tiresome. The emerging romance between Corbett and Sylvia is intriguing but unlikely, since after two days of sweating in the fetid jungle neither probably wants to stand downwind from the other, much less embrace.

But the movie has enough of Ford's underplaying to justify staying with it. Ann Sheridan, in my book one of the best of the Forties movie stars, doesn't have much to do except look worried. Sheridan's film career was just about over, but she still was a star who was sexy, good-humored, intelligent and warm-hearted. For those who also like this period in Ford's career, even if the movies weren't always very good, try Lust for Gold (1949), The White Tower (1950), The Secret of Convict Lake (1951), Affair in Trinidad (1952), The Green Glove (1954) and Plunder of the Sun (Special Collector's Edition) (1953.

Escape to Burma:
"He's made love to you, hasn't he?" snarls policeman Cardigan to teak plantation owner Gwen Martin. "Women always think they're sure of a man who makes love to them...but they never are."

We're in Burma, and the object of Cardigan's anger and Gwen's love is Robert Brecan (Robert Ryan), accused of murdering the son of the Sawbwa. Brecan is on the run and meets Gwen (Barbara Stanwyck) by chance at her isolated plantation. The two fall almost instantly in love. But the Sawbwa wants the killer of his son so he can deal out justice the old-fashioned way...death by a thousand lashes. Cardigan (David Farrar) wants him to stand trial in Rangoon. Brecan, taciturn and tough, says he didn't kill the prince but won't say anything more. Justice finally is done, but only after we deal with a bag of rubies, happy natives, cute baby elephants, amusing chimps, murderous bandits and the plague. The movie has some of the most awful dialogue Stanwyck and Ryan ever had to deal with. "Why would a woman like you want to spend her life in a teak forest?" asks Ryan of Stanwyck. She thinks for a moment. "I like it...I've grown up with the elephants." "Just the same," he tells her, "it's a tough job for a woman."

Stanwyck and Ryan had starred together three years earlier in Fritz Lang's Clash by Night. Perhaps they thought they'd get lucky again. Ryan sometimes looks as if he can't wait for the movie to end. Stanwyck, now 48, is an actress you pay attention to, but now she requires careful makeup and lighting. For David Farrar, a fine actor, this was just one of several ridiculous movies he made in Hollywood after he left England in 1951. There, he'd starred in Black Narcissus - Criterion Collection, The Small Back Room, Gone to Earth and other fine or interesting films. In Hollywood, he was stuck with things like The Black Shield of Falworth, The Sea Chase and Solomon and Sheba, usually in third billing. He called it quits when he was 54 and took up farming in South Africa.

If you like jungle adventures, try the novels of Mark Derby, an English author long forgotten. He wrote during the Fifties and most of his stories take place in Southeast Asia. His books are all out of print, but can be found with persistence. Two of my favorites are Sun in the Hunter's Eyes and The Sunlit Ambush."