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Devil's Island

1940, Movie, NR, 65 mins

Devil's Island: Review

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Karloff (in a typically fine performance) plays a French brain surgeon who treats an injured escapee from Devil's Island. Karloff is arrested and sentenced to serve ten years on the island. The island is run by a brutal commandant, Stephenson, who treats the inmates worse than animals. Angered by the brutality and corruption he witnesses, Karloff leads the inmates in an attempted revolt, but fails. For his insolence, he and his confederates are sentenced to death. Luckily, they are given a reprieve when the daughter of the commandant is injured in an accident and Stephenson's wife, Harrigan, forces her husband to suspend the death sentences if Karloff will operate on the child. The doctor agrees, and the operation is a success, but Stephenson backs out on his agreement and decides to go on with the executions. Outraged, Harrigan arranges for Karloff and his friends to escape but they are easily recaptured. Seeing no other way to ease her conscience, Harrigan petitions the governor for Karloff's release and succeeds, inadvertently causing the arrest of her husband on corruption charges. Originally released in 1939, DEVIL'S ISLAND was seen as a sensational expose of the brutal conditions of the French penal colony. The French government banned the film and all other Warner Bros. releases. Rather than lose the French market, Warners pulled all its prints of the film, cut some sequences, re-shot and added others, and re-released the picture worldwide in 1940. By this time, the controversy had died down, and the French were too busy with Hitler to protest. leave a comment
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