Hell's Island

“Once he’s free, I’ll do anything you want.” This pledge from the breathy, sultry, fire-haired Janet Martin (Mary Murphy) sets up the main conflict in Phil Karlson’s Hell’s Island as she seduces her old flame Mike Cormack (John Payne) into breaking her husband out of a penal colony. After losing his job as an assistant district attorney and working as a casino bouncer, Cormack has re-entered Janet’s life by accepting an offer from a wheelchair-bound stranger named Barzland (Francis L. Sullivan) to find a ruby that disappeared in a small plane crash near a Caribbean island where Janet is now married to the pilot. Turns out the missing ruby is connected to at least three more murders that Cormack will stumble on, including one that takes place when the lights go out during a cock fight, definitely a noir first. Structured as a flashback by a hospitalized Cormack, the low-budget Pine-Thomas production often feels like an old-fashioned 40’s noir updated to vivid Technicolor, Payne’s typically gruff performance (“I was a pretty sick pigeon”) an excellent foil for Murphy’s truly awful femme fatale (even the mariachis won’t play for “a woman like that”). While his role is brief, noir standby Paul Picerni steals the show as the charming, matter-of-fact husband whose response to Cormack’s escape attempt (“such a clever girl”) is unexpected to an almost comic degree.