Hell's Half Acre (1954)

Hell's Half Acre is directed by John H. Auer and written by Steve Fisher. It stars Wendell Corey, Evelyn Keyes, Elsa Lanchester, Marie Windsor, Nancy Gates and Leonard Strong. Music is by R. Dale Butts and cinematography by John L. Russell.Filmed and set in Hawaii, one could be forgiven for thinking this couldn't possibly work as a piece of film noir. In fact, the opening credit sequences lends one to think this could well be a frothy Elvis Presley type of movie - but it most assuredly isn't.Cash or Cave in?Story has Corey up to his neck in femme fatales, shifty criminal acquaintances and coppers. Which is not bad for a guy who was apparently killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor! The Hell's Half Acre of the tile is what is termed in the film as a shabby tenement district, this is the seedy underbelly of what we know as the paradise island. The location makes for some excellent atmospheric noir touches, with the production line abodes and the ream of wooden stairs and banisters making for a moody backdrop. At night the shadows come in to play, hanging nicely off of the alleyways and tawdry bars.Dirty Rat!Though a little too contrived for its own good, the many characterisations on show make the annoying itches easily scratched. From two-timing dames and thugs in need of anger management - to alcoholic slobs and batty taxi drivers, this has a roll call of colourful people drifting in and out of Hell's Half Acre. There's even some censor baiting going on, though the whiff of violent misogyny could have been less pungent.Some serious noir credentials are found with the makers, Auer (City That Never Sleeps), Fisher (I Wake Up Screaming), Corey (The Big Knife), Keyes (The Prowler), Windsor (The Narrow Margin), Gates (Suddenly), Lanchester (The Big Clock) and Russell (Moonrise), and that's only really scratching the surface. With its distinctive setting and well controlled unfurling of noir conventions, this is well worth a look by the noir faithful. 7/10

There's something to be said for putting Wendell Corey in Hawaiian shirts; It makes him seem alive rather than the boring suits he wore in films such as "The File on Thelma Jordan" and "Harriet Craig". Here, he's a victim of blackmail whose girlfriend kills the blackmailer and ends up being killed herself with Corey blamed for the first murder. When his ex-wife Evelyn Keyes learns about this, she heads to Hawaii just three days after getting re-married to help him and tell him about his son which he seems never to have known about. Along with a rather chatty taxi driver (Elsa Lancaster, cast in a thankless role even in spite of being given third billing above the titles), Keyes ends up in Hell's Half Acre, a hiding spot for criminals and even works as a taxi dancer briefly to make contacts. Corey's business partner (Philip Ahn) is obviously involved in something shady, while Keyes must deal with a ton of creepy characters, including Jesse White who drunkenly attempts to rape her.This is a film that is sometimes a bit hard to take, too sleazy to be believable yet not sleazy enough to not be. The characters are mostly one-note, and the original murder (done by Nancy Bates, quickly dispatched soon afterwards) is never set up to give us a potent reason behind the blackmail. Marie Windsor, as White's floozy wife, at times looks exactly like Bates did before getting bumped, so that's another detail that can't help but go unnoticed. Charlie Chan's "number one son", Keye Luke, is the only element of nobility in the film as the police detective determined to help Corey prove his innocence if only he'll stay put. Ahn's seemingly classy villain is given an obvious evil temper, yet somehow, the motivations, even if sinister, are never convincing. As far as film noirs go, this is one of the weaker ones, and you may long for a classic episode of "Hawaii Five-O" after this to get the bad taste out of your head.The finale is so unconvincing that I spent a few minutes shaking my head with its unbelievability and supposedly honorable ridiculousness. Even though Corey has sprung to life a bit in this and Keyes is a lovely heroine, the enormous number of improbabilities here make this one for definite warning.

This flat-footed, full-of-holes feature is nonetheless fascinating because of its Honolulu locale and exotic characters. Marie Windsor as Jesse White's wife and Philip Ahn's mistress? Film noir nirvana! And the Production Code vision of a hellish den of iniquity? A crisply clean framework of lumber and whitewash enclosing gambling parlors and taxi-dancehalls!

This little gem of a film noir B movie is about a woman trying to track down her long lost husband in Hawaii after the War (WWII) where he was supposed to have died. In the process she finds herself in the middle of an underworld power struggle. Beautifully filmed in Hawaii with Ms. Keyes really working those facial expressions, as she tended to do. The film is tight, cynical and at times redeeming. Just a good little film.