STRANGE CARGO

Director: Frank Borzage
Stars: Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Ian Hunter, Peter Lorre, Paul Lukas, Albert Dekker
Year: 1940
Rating: N/R

This is one strange movie (no pun intended), that at first had me wondering where things were going ... and, ultimately, had me liking the journey indeed. Clark Gable (at his most testosterone-filled) stars as Verne, a convict in a French penal colony in the Canary Islands. Verne's caused a lot of trouble and has tried escaping through the jungles surrounding the prison often enough that he can often be found in either the hospital or solitary confinement. While outside the prison walls working, a chance encounter with saloon gal Julie (Joan Crawford) - who, later, turns him in as an escapee when she finds herself in potential trouble for harboring him - leads Verne to being thrown back into the prison ... where he gets wind of a huge, multi-inmate escape plan that's being planned (and led by) a crazy-eyed inmate named Moll (well-played by Albert Dekker). Verne wants in - and thanks to a spiritually-inclined inmate named Cambreau (Ian Hunter) - when Verne is double-crossed and left behind by Moll, he's able to get out and make his way through the jungle to find them.

The bulk of the rest of the film takes place in the boat the inmates use to escape the island - a five-day trip with little water, no food, and the suns' blistering heat wearing them down. But through it all, there's Cambreau - the quiet, soft-spoken man with a Bible, who seems to know what's going to happen before it happens ... and who, inmate by inmate, brings a peace to his fellow escapees, as they see the light of what life and living are about in the end.

Ian Hunter is just amazing as the messiah-like Cambreau, and Gable & Crawford (in their last film together) ignite their usual high-voltage chemistry on-screen. This film was made a year after Crawford played her first bad girl role in The Women, and she's really perfected the flawed female here in Julie. The film is also populated with some of Hollywood's best character actors (Lorre, Lukas, Dekker, and even Eduardo Ciannelli), who lend as much atmosphere to the film as the fantastic sets and lighting. A weird movie - part love story, part adventure movie, part spiritual allegory, all melodrama - but it still sent a message to me about life and spiritually that I felt hit home. Worth a look, definitely. *** - Reel Cool