Fri 22 Jan 2016
Movie Review: APPOINTMENT IN HONDURAS (1953).
Posted by Steve under Action Adventure movies , Reviews[5] Comments
APPOINTMENT IN HONDURAS. RKO, 1953. Glenn Ford, Ann Sheridan, Zachary Scott, Rodolfo Acosta, Jack Elam, Ric Roman, Rico Alaniz. Director: Jacques Tourneur.
Mostly a mediocre film, I regret to report. Perhaps I was expecting more, which sometimes happens. Glenn Ford plays a passenger on a ship making its way along the eastern coast of Central America. He’s a man on a mission, a mission that needs his presence (an whatever is in his money belt) in Honduras, where a revolution has just taken place. When the captain of the boat refuses to make landfall, Ford releases a gang of prisoners on board, and in return they take a married couple on the ship along as hostages.
The couple (Ann Sheridan and Zachary Scott) are married but not happily so. He is a weak man but also a wealthy one. As we discover as the movie goes along, we gradually realize that she was aware of his first quality when she married him, but the second one compensated for that flaw considerably.
Until she meets Glenn Ford. As this group of very disparate strangers makes their way through the jungle, complete with pythons, pumas and tiger fish, more than a fight for survival is going on. You’d think that a steamy romance would ensue, but as a romance, it’s not all that steamy. Glenn Ford was a master at portraying a man with something simmering inside, and so it is here, and we get the feeling that his mission is more important to him than whatever Ann Sheridan would like to have develop between the two of them.
Do you know, I don’t think I knew that Ann Sheridan had red hair before. Why, when she was younger, did they always seem to cast her in black-and-white movies? One of the great unsolved mysteries of the film world.
I am also not a big fan of Jacques Tourneur. I’m sure that this is not one of the films that made his reputation, but even in his best-known films, while I find the stories extremely well filmed and choreographed, I find the movies themselves do not often make a coherent whole. So it is here. There’s a lot of mystery going on, and there isn’t. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but it does to me.
January 23rd, 2016 at 7:13 pm
For some reason they didn’t used Sheridan in that many color films even when Warner’s made them. She was the model however for Tex Avery’s Red Hot Riding Hood over at the MGM cartoon factory.
This one is an okay jungle drama, but never quite jells. It’s one of those films where Ford seems more mean than driven which happened sometimes in his films.
If you look very quickly you will spot Stuart Whitman as the telegrapher in one scene.
January 23rd, 2016 at 7:49 pm
She was in dramatic films, and color was not used in those by any studio. It was a big deal to shoot in, costly on its own terms and time consuming. And she really was, not as big a star, as hindsight serves. To put this in big star perspective, Grant’s only color film was Night and Day, prior to the early fifties, and Gable’s, Gone With The Wind.
January 23rd, 2016 at 10:28 pm
Further thought: While many A level westerns were shot in color, those that dealt seriously with their subject were usually not. The Ox Bow Incident. My Darling Clementine. Fort Apache. The Gunfighter. Winchester ’73. etc.
January 23rd, 2016 at 11:18 pm
Thanks, Barry. A little perspective goes a long way. and I found your comments right on target. But after seeing her read hair in all its glory in this one, I still think the studios (in her case, mostly Warner Brothers) could have made better use of what they had when they had her under contract.
January 24th, 2016 at 6:21 pm
Warner’s seemed to reserve color for Errol Flynn during Sheridan’s time there. As Barry said most of her roles were in comedy and drama and they just didn’t waste color on those considering how much it cost.