Big Jim McLain Reviews

Wayne and Arness go to Hawaii to investigate the inner workings of a terrorist group headquartered there. They are both special agents assigned to rooting out commie rats. Wayne falls in love with Olson, who works for Whitman, a suspect psychiatrist. Wayne and Arness learn the name of the contact man for the terrorists, get into his house, speak to his landlady, and get the names of several of the head honchos, a number of whom are highly placed people. After a wild goose chase that fills up the middle of the film (bathhouse, religious institution, way-out sections of Oahu), Wayne tells a group of prominent people at a party that he knows who is involved in the organization and arrests are imminent. This isn't the truth, but Wayne knows the rats will be smoked out by the ploy. And they are. Arness is captured and killed when Whitman gives him too much of a truth serum. Now Wayne is really annoyed! Arness was the only man in the movie that Wayne could look straight in the eye. He enlists the local police and they beat the terrorists in a smashing conclusion. Olson, by the way, was totally innocent, so she and Wayne walk off into the Hawaiian sunset to listen to ukuleles forever. At one time, Wayne was considered for the role of Dillon on the TV series "Gunsmoke." He turned it down but recommended a young fella he'd worked with a short time before, Arness, brother of Peter Graves (born Aurness.) The rest is TV history. Alan Napier, tall and elegant Sturak in this film, achieved worldwide popularity as Alfred, the butler, in the "Batman" TV series.