The Bad One Reviews

This melodrama gets so heavy that, at times, one thinks it may be a straight-faced comedy. Del Rio dances for a living in a sailor's hang-out in Marseilles. It appears to be a tavern, but closer inspection marks it as a brothel. She meets Lowe and agrees to marry him. An old beau arrives and Lowe gets jealous; there's a fight and the result is a death, a trial, and a sentence for Lowe to an unreasonable facsimile of Devil's Island. Since the only females allowed on the island are the wives of the guards, Del Rio agrees to marry the most brutal guard there just to be near her amour. Soon enough, there's a prison riot. Lowe proves his courage, gets a pardon, and he and Dolores plan to return to his native Brooklyn. Some strange editing in this one. They established that this is an island, a distance from any other landfall and suddenly, near the end, there is a bridge to the mainland that is blown up. Karloff plays a small role as a guard. He was, at the time, 43 years old and a year away from international stardom as the Frankenstein monster.