Thursday, March 7, 2019

Picture Brides (1934)

Picture Brides is a pre-code tale of mail-order brides and miners in Brazil, and also a tough tale of brutality, sleaze and rape but it is so over the top it simply can't be taken that seriously.

A group of miners have sent for white women (including Dorothy Mackaill and Mae Busch) to marry, also along with them Mary (Dorothy Libaire) who has been tricked into thinking she has a job waiting for her...

Instead she is to be married to Dave Hart (Regis Toomey) who is somewhat indifferent to her and has a dark secret, he is wanted by the US police. Von Luden (Alan Hale) the brutal foreman wants Mary for himself... and unfortunately for her and Hart he knows the Hart's secret.

Its sleazy but sharp with some good dialogue. Von Luden is a real villain, almost to pantomime levels. In one scene he uses a seventeenth century tapestry as a ruse before he gets Mary near naked and tries to rape her. He also likes to shoot native workers who have the nerve to ask to be paid after months of hard labour! However he carries out one evil deed too many...