Monte Blue, a very tall actor but otherwise uninteresting, loses his business in New York when his wife refuses to let him use the apartment as collateral. Moreover, she informs him that she is suing for divorce. This sours Monte Blue on women in general. Broke, he finds himself working as a stoker on a ship to Nicaragua. There, he gets into a fist fight with the renowned bandit, Santini (Beery).
I suppose every one of these picaresque stories about down-and-outers who work as stokers or cow hands must sooner or later be involved in a saloon brawl, but I doubt they happened that often historically. I've visited many saloons and only witnessed one such brawl. It was a gay bar in San Francisco and two lesbians were duking it out near my table. Both the combatants were hefty. The tables and chairs flew. I wound up on the sawdust floor next to a stranger who taught me how to realistically imitate Franklin Delano Roosevelt by doing the impression into an empty beer glass while we lay on the floor. It was very effective too.
Back to the story. As a result of the fight, Monte Blue and his pal, "Eclipse," an African-American whom I can't find listed in the credits, wind up in the calaboose. They are paroled to the service of the owner of a coffee plantation threatened by bandit raids, led by the head honcho, Beery himself. The US Marines are in Managua but they refuse to help the plantation unless it is American property.
So Blue marries the owner's niece (Burgess) and when Santini and his bandidos attack, the Marines arrive just in time to drive them off. Blue has mistaken Burgess' motives in marrying him and this leads to a misunderstanding which is cleared up on their wedding night. A word about Dorothy Burgess. Monte Blue was a fool for avoiding her after she had inexplicably fallen in love with him. She's quite pretty and has a very sassy figure. Her Spanish accent is reduced to calling the hero "Deek" instead of "Dick" but so what? It's what inside a person that counts, and what's inside Burgess' character is money, sex, and a physique to die for.
This is a fast movie, only about an hour long, but it's entertaining and it demonstrates some surprisingly high production values. The sets are convincing, and so are the Nicaraguans, who speak proper Spanish. The ending, of course, with the cavalry coming to the rescue at the last minute, is a cliché, and poor Blue in the lead has the expressiveness of a tree stump. That aside, it's not bad.
I suppose every one of these picaresque stories about down-and-outers who work as stokers or cow hands must sooner or later be involved in a saloon brawl, but I doubt they happened that often historically. I've visited many saloons and only witnessed one such brawl. It was a gay bar in San Francisco and two lesbians were duking it out near my table. Both the combatants were hefty. The tables and chairs flew. I wound up on the sawdust floor next to a stranger who taught me how to realistically imitate Franklin Delano Roosevelt by doing the impression into an empty beer glass while we lay on the floor. It was very effective too.
Back to the story. As a result of the fight, Monte Blue and his pal, "Eclipse," an African-American whom I can't find listed in the credits, wind up in the calaboose. They are paroled to the service of the owner of a coffee plantation threatened by bandit raids, led by the head honcho, Beery himself. The US Marines are in Managua but they refuse to help the plantation unless it is American property.
So Blue marries the owner's niece (Burgess) and when Santini and his bandidos attack, the Marines arrive just in time to drive them off. Blue has mistaken Burgess' motives in marrying him and this leads to a misunderstanding which is cleared up on their wedding night. A word about Dorothy Burgess. Monte Blue was a fool for avoiding her after she had inexplicably fallen in love with him. She's quite pretty and has a very sassy figure. Her Spanish accent is reduced to calling the hero "Deek" instead of "Dick" but so what? It's what inside a person that counts, and what's inside Burgess' character is money, sex, and a physique to die for.
This is a fast movie, only about an hour long, but it's entertaining and it demonstrates some surprisingly high production values. The sets are convincing, and so are the Nicaraguans, who speak proper Spanish. The ending, of course, with the cavalry coming to the rescue at the last minute, is a cliché, and poor Blue in the lead has the expressiveness of a tree stump. That aside, it's not bad.