Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

ShangLuda Admirable film.

Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

utgard14 A prostitute (Dorothy Mackaill) accidentally kills a man. With help from her sailor boyfriend, she escapes to a Caribbean island with no extradition. He leaves her but promises to return for her later. Because there's no place safer to leave the woman you love than an island full of criminals. Anyway, she vows to stay chaste for him and not fool around with any of the men. Oh, brother. Here's where the movie gets really weird and leads to an ending that defies belief.Seamy Pre-Coder from William Wellman is certainly interesting, I'll give it that. Even though it's nowhere near as graphic as movies today, you still might feel the need to bathe after watching it. The performances are all good and the bleak script is solid. Possibly the coolest opening title shot of any early '30s movie I've seen. If you enjoy Pre-Code films you'll definitely want to check this one out.

ajsosah440 Basically "Safe in Hell" is a movie about a woman whose life has gone wrong and keeps going from bad to worse. Dorothy Mackaill plays a prostitute who kills the man responsible for her troubles. With the help of her boyfriend she flees to an island where there are no extradition treaties but does have a a sadistic constable and a group of lecherous men. Perhaps it seems "silly" but you have to put yourself in the mind set of that time. Let me clarify the nuances, first of all she didn't go into the business because she wanted to. It seems it was her only recourse. Keep in mind how limited choices were for women at that time.Then her boyfriend isn't even aware of her trade and when he finds out he threatens to leave her. Later on the island she tries to protect what remains of her "virtue" from the band of sex starved men. These three points show the mind set of the time when women were chastised for having premarital sex and punished emotionally and socially for their loose morals.That's why this precode film depicts how Dorothy Mackaill's character is stuck between a hard rock and a sword as she tries to keep a low profile while she waits for her sailor and hopes for a better future. It was a jaw dropping film. I highly recommend it, I should know, I am a die hard movie classics fan.

GManfred "Safe In Hell" is a very strange picture, a whimsical story fashioned out of whole cloth by a long-forgotten playwright with a fertile imagination. A round-heeled tart kills a john and flees with her boyfriend to a Caribbean island with no extradition law. There she rents a room at a hotel populated by several gargoyle-type fugitives who are horny as toads. Everyone is in heat in the heat, especially the local constable. The story gets stranger and stranger leading up to a completely unexpected Hollywood ending.The cast is good. Dorothy Mackaill is the 'tomato' in question and she is excellent. Donald Cook is OK as her boyfriend and Ralf Harolde is appropriately sleazy as an old flame. The plot is actually kind of flimsy but Director Wellman brings it off well, aided by some fine acting performances. Black actress Nina Mae McKinney has a plum role for a black actress in an era when there were precious few to be had.This is a Pre-Code curiosity which is somewhat tame by today's standards but still worth a watch, since it is a one-of-a-kind sort of tabloid story, surreal and sensational. It was on TCM the other morning and is not available, so wait for it to come on again.

moonspinner55 Director William Wellman moved from silent pictures to talkies with considerable skill, and he handles the sordid goings-on here with aplomb, aided no doubt by saucy Dorothy Mackaill as his leading lady. The plot, taken from Houston Branch's play, is an odd one: pretty call-girl, under the belief she has killed one of her johns, hides out in the tropics with a group of resident criminals. Eyebrow-raiser from MGM predictably has dated and clunky trappings when viewed today, but Mackaill is stunning; sultry, funny, dreamy-eyed, she lays on the fruit-loop melodrama with verve. Enjoyable feature for Hollywood buffs, the script might have been ripe material for Crawford or Davis eight or nine years later. **1/2 from ****