A disillusioned waterfront reporter attempts to hook a fisherman accused of smuggling Chinese immigrants into the harbor. I can’t help but think the studio missed an opportunity to promote this film, relying on such a boorish and forgettable title: now, if the original one-sheet splashed CHINESE MAN IN SHARK as the headline I think this would be one of the best remembered “WTF!” Pre-Code films!
H. Joseph Miller (Ben Lyon) is a grumpy dead-ended journalist tired of his friends, job and environment, his novel as unfinished as his love life. He knows Eli Kirk (Ernest Torrence) is smuggling Chinese immigrants into San Diego aboard his fishing boat but can’t prove it. Under protest, he takes an assignment to cover a sordid skinny-dipping story, but the naked waif turns out to be Julie Kirk (Claudette Colbert): you guessed it, Eli’s daughter. So, Joe uses her as bait to catch his prey. The plot itself is forgettable but the story elements merit special consideration. First let me say this: Robert Shaw’s performance in JAWS is fantastic but pales in comparison to Torrence’s genuinely salty portrayal of Capt. Kirk (ha!). In other words, Quint is like a post-code version of this uncensored and morally flexible seaman. I’m also convinced Steven Spielberg must have screened this prior to shooting his own little shark tale. So, on to the details.
We get Joe on a rocky beach spying on a naked woman emerging from the surf. The print I saw was rather dark, but it sure looked like a naked woman (except for the swimming cap) in long-shot walking across the beach. She encounters our faithless reporter who holds her bathing suit on the end of a stick, like a flag of conquest...or surrender? Cruze shoots this scene with Julie hidden behind rocks and Joe foregrounded. His banter is playfully condescending towards her. This fortuitous encounter sets up the rest of the story as he learns her identity. But this relationship only gets better as their next date is a tour of an 18th century Spanish Galleon anchored in harbor. There’s nothing like finding love in the torture chamber and locking your crush into the wrack and forcing your tongue down her throat. Oh, those silly days of youth. Julie dost protest but handles her indecent assault with the proper humility before consenting. Fuck, I think Joe committed at least two felonies!
But Cruze (and/or his screenwriter) makes sure to introduce us to her father so we next get a scene of Eli and his first mate on their Tuna boat smuggling a young Chinese man. The frightened man is tied up and hidden among the deck ropes. Eli gloats about how much he was paid, and the gift of an oriental gown offered for his service. We also see that the recently caught tuna scattered on the deck have a surprise: illegal bottles of booze smuggled inside! Suddenly, a Coast Guard siren wails and Eli orders his mates to tie a chain around the man and drop him overboard. Which they do. Holy shit, this film just became interesting. But now he has an idea (which you’ve guessed from my already announced alternate title): why not catch sharks and hide the Chinese immigrants inside? It worked for smuggling booze, what could go wrong? Our reporter pal discovers the drowned corpse complete with chain around the legs and he matches said links to one found on Eli’s boat! He’s not been dead long as he’s uneaten by crabs which is gruesome yet important enough to mention in dialogue, placing the time of death to the previous night. I suppose matching chains is forensically possible and we have the time of death correct but still not enough for his Editor. This is being discussed while the water-logged corpse of this poor man is plopped on a desk, carried to the newspaper office wrapped in a tarp by our “protagonist”. He and his editor drop five-letter racial slurs without embarrassment: damn, who is the bad guy again?
So, then we get a violent and rather exciting hunt on the open see as Eli and his crew try to harpoon three sharks (one for each immigrant now on board). The first Great White is seen dangling from the tackle and it’s immense about the size of fucking Jaws. Then Eli and his mate harpoon the second, but it dashes towards the bottom of the sea dragging their dinghy to Davey Jones’ locker. The mate is catapulted into the foaming sea and attacked by the beast which rips his leg off. These few moments of exciting and dashing camerawork from DP Ray June make the rest of the film static and pale in comparison! He dies in the following scene and when he asks for a holy picture and candle, Eli first looks at a centerfold of a naked woman tacked to his wall before delivering Jesus and Mary. I’d rather die staring at the naked girl! Oh, and we get to see the stump as they apply a tourniquet. When the Coast Guard search the ship later at Joe’s behest, Joe’s drunken cohort finds a bottle of beer gagging a Tuna. Joe has an epiphany: cut open the shark! We see them cutting open the shark and a bound man purged from its slimy bowels. Holy. Fucking. Shit. This suggests that the other two poor souls were again expunged from his boat by chain since only one shark was available!
The film resolves with Eli rescuing his nemesis before crossing over his own final boundary. Joe believes Julie is gone with the stinking sea breeze as he was responsible for her father’s absconding arrest and eventual slow death but no, she has taken residence in Joe’s apartment while he was mending in the hospital. It’s a happy reunion for them. And the past? Just water under the bridge.
Final Grade: (C)