List Price: $14.99Now Price: $7.49Studio: Timeless MultimediaRunning time: 93Release date: 1994-09-06Theatrical Release date: 1938-12-25Formats: Black & White, NTSC
"That man is a peril to women."
2005-09-04
"The Beachcomber" is a charming 1938 film based on the Somerset Maugham novel "Vessel of Wrath." On an island in the Dutch East Indies, Ginger Ted Wilson (Charles Laughton) sports with the natives and is the scourge of the British community. Missionary Dr. Owen Jones (Tyrone Guthrie) and his prudish sister Martha (Elsa Lanchester) seek retribution after a scandal between Ginger and a native girl escalates into a riot in the local marketplace.
Ginger Ted is a glorious character. He's a drunken scoundrel who unashamedly corrupts the local girls, and runs up unpaid bills. Martha is intrepid, fearless, and a terrible nag. According to Martha, Ginger Ted is a public scandal whose presence reflects badly on the British community. At first, Dr. Jones advocates Ginger's deportation. But then by force of circumstance, Ginger Ted accompanies Martha on a mission to vaccinate the natives who live in a remote typhoid-infected swamp.
If you enjoy Somerset Maugham stories, then you will enjoy this near-perfect, delightful film adaptation. The characters catch the essence of Maugham, and both Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester (husband and wife team) breath life into two very opposite sorts of people who discover--through adversity--that they have more in common than they dreamed possible--displacedhuman
A BRITISH GEM FROM 1938.
2001-11-16
Erich Pommer, the most brilliant producer in Germany until he left it to the Nazis, joined with Charles Laughton to form Mayflower, a British production company which made three pictures with Paramount's participation and American release. The first, THE BEACHCOMBER was by far the most entertaining, and remarkable for having being directed by Pommer himself for once; also for giving Laughton and his wife, Elsa Lanchester roles of equal importance. They attacked them with histrionic relish wonderful to behold. Laughton's an alcoholic derelict lazing through life in the Dutch East Indies, Lanchester is a missionary's spinster's sister determined to reform him. Reacting variously to their clash of wills and eventual happiness together were Robert Newton, Tyrone Guthrie and Fred Groves. Bartlett Cormack adapted the W. Somerset Maugham story, which was re-made sixteen years later by Muriel and Sydney Box under the same title with Robert Newton and Glynis Johns in the leads; THE AFRICAN QUEEN, however, was not a remake but a coincidence.
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