Hell's Half Acre

The only film noir set in Hawaii, John H. Auer’s Hell’s Half Acre replaces the beauty of the islands with a seedy, grimy subculture where gangsters, prostitutes (“taxi dancers”), and shakedown artists congregate at night in the titular neighborhood, a crowded, elevated tenement area like a miniature Casbah teeming with crime. After two separate murders in the first ten minutes, the film shifts to Donna Williams (Evelyn Keyes) who, upon hearing a Polynesian song she believes only could have been recorded by her long-ago presumed dead husband, travels to Hawaii to track him down. After first going to the police, she soon finds herself involved with a crime syndicate in competition with Chet Chester (Wendell Corey), a man with an uncanny resemblance to her former husband. Elsa Lanchester plays a somewhat goofy taxi driver who quickly becomes Donna’s friend and protector, while the feisty Marie Windsor is on hand as the adulterous Rose, who’s married to an alcoholic slob and whose primary function seems to be cranking up the music volume whenever crime boss Roger Kong (Victor Ahn in an underwhelming performance) beats up a victim. The film’s not visually spectacular, but Auer incorporates extensive shadows (almost every scene takes place at night), low angles, high angles, and dark alleys where police give chase.