RIALTO AND REGENT, EPSOM

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 122, 13 August 1927, Page 16

RIALTO AND REGENT, EPSOM

“ISLAND OF DESPAIR” Although action is the keynote of "Island of Despair,” now being shown at the Rialto and Regent Theatres, pathos is also present. A strong cast is headed by the well-known actor Matheson Lang, as the traders’ sea captain, while Marjorie Hume plays the opposite lead. The scenes move with the utmost rapidity right from the rather abrupt beginning to low-down dance halls and tropical islands, and finally back to civilisation at San Francisco. The plot is the old eternal triangle of two men and one woman, but taken in different surroundings from the usual. The acting is good, though not up to the standard of the other picture on the programme, but the photography and the continuity of the story are good. The story opens in one of the small islands of the Pacific, where the four main characters are together. A chance meeting of Lang, as the seacaptain, and the heroine, Christine Vereker, ripened into warm friendship under the occult influence of the tropical moon. A drunken brawl arising over a card quarrel in one of the lowdown haunts of the seafaring class led to a murder, and the unjust accusation of Colin Vereker. His hurried flight from the justice of the place aboard the palatial yacht owned by Don Felipo, the villain of the story, ended in disaster through shipwreck. This scene is one of the best pieces of photography in the whole film. Thrown by chance on the same small tropical island as the hero, who believes himself to be suffering from an infectious disease, events move rapidly to the final denouement and the unmasking of the villain. The happy couple, once more reunited, fade out to the sound of marriage bells.