PANAMA FLO (1932)

A convoluted and generally unpleasant tropics melodrama. The story reminded me a bit of the 1931 film SAFE IN HELL, with its tarnished heroine having to undergo a lot of undeserved misery without much redemption, though this one has an absurdly sudden happy ending (albeit one that plays out off screen). Helen Twelvetrees is Flo, a chorus girl who has been working at a nightclub in Panama. Her boss (Maude Eburne, who is unfortunately made up to look a bit like a drag queen) needs to cut expenses and fires all the girls, most of whom are then stranded in Panama without the money to get back to New York. Twelvetrees hangs around the bar getting men to buy drinks, waiting for her boyfriend, aerial photographer Robert Armstrong, to come and take her away, but she gets caught trying to steal a big chunk of money from drunken rough and tumble engineer Charles Bickford. When her roomie runs off with the cash, Bickford demands that she accompany him back to his isolated home in the jungle where he's working on some new method for getting oil out of the jungle. He sets her up as his housekeeper to work off her debt, but one night, he drunkenly approaches her with rape in his eyes, and he's interrupted only by the arrival of Armstrong, who asks to spend the night so he can fix his disabled plane in the morning. It turns out that Armstrong has come searching for Twelvetrees and together they plot an escape, but not everything is as it seems: Armstrong has a hidden agenda and Bickford isn't quite as evil as we think he is. The happy ending is wildly unbelievable, and is hurt by the fact that none of the main characters is in the least likeable: Twelvetrees is a dispirited lump for the entire film, Bickford is a colorless thug (until the last five minutes), and Armstrong, who gives the best performance in the film, is a cipher. Eburne might have been fun, but she's not given much to do. There is some interesting cinematography now and then, but I can't really recommend this one. [TCM]