At the hysterically campy conclusion of this Technicolor romp, you half expect Carmen Miranda to pop out among the thousands of bananas being marched down to the docks in a procession which seems to have influenced Cecil B. DeMille's method of having the Hebrews leaving Egypt in "The Ten Commandments". Ronald Reagan believes himself to be wanted on the mainland for a crime he didn't commit and is hiding out on this Caribbean Island where all of the natives are Hispanic, not one black among them. He becomes the foreman for Rhonda Fleming's banana plantation, making an enemy out of her drunken former foreman (Grant Withers, aka the final Charlie Chan) and the ruthless buyer (John Wengraf) out to take over all of the island's plantations. Then, there's Estelita Rodriguez, the pint-sized Mexican spitfire in love with Reagan who has an initially polite rivalry with Fleming over her desire to monopolize Reagan's time and Noah Beery Jr. as the very cheery side-kick in love with Rodriguez himself. Rodriguez gets to sing a few sultry numbers and devours each of her lines as if it was the biggest banana split she could get her claws on.
A delightful adventure in the Jon Hall/Maria Montez vein, you might confuse this as an unofficial remake of Warner Brothers' "Torrid Zone" which dealt with the same subject. However, other than bananas and villains, the two share nothing in common, but are both tremendously entertaining. Fleming, a beauty who could pass as Maureen O'Hara's twin, isn't as feisty as her look-alike, but don't underestimate this red-head. She's a worthy match for any man and a fantastic business woman here to boot, showing that women business owners can do more than run beauty companies. Reagan is light-hearted and charming, even if his character at first seems a bit amoral. If you're lucky enough to land a copy of this, you might want to consider keeping it, because you'll want to re-visit it over and over as a forgotten treasure of camp where the characters are as bananas as the fruit they pick.
A delightful adventure in the Jon Hall/Maria Montez vein, you might confuse this as an unofficial remake of Warner Brothers' "Torrid Zone" which dealt with the same subject. However, other than bananas and villains, the two share nothing in common, but are both tremendously entertaining. Fleming, a beauty who could pass as Maureen O'Hara's twin, isn't as feisty as her look-alike, but don't underestimate this red-head. She's a worthy match for any man and a fantastic business woman here to boot, showing that women business owners can do more than run beauty companies. Reagan is light-hearted and charming, even if his character at first seems a bit amoral. If you're lucky enough to land a copy of this, you might want to consider keeping it, because you'll want to re-visit it over and over as a forgotten treasure of camp where the characters are as bananas as the fruit they pick.