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No one can say that Republic has exercised caution or restraint in making a motion picture of Garland Roark's popular "Wake of the Red Witch." Everything in this wild screen version of Mr. Roark's lusty sea-adventure tale bespeaks the audacity of a studio that has been grinding out thrillers for years. And likewise, everything in it, now visible on the Mayfair's screen, bespeaks a magnificent indifference to the demands of illusion or good sense.

Right from the start of this fable of a four- or five-year-long feud between a fabulous South Pacific tyrant and a headstrong captain of sailing ships, the ballast of reason and continuity is casually tossed overboard. A gold-carrying ship is grounded, a captain is hauled into court, an expedition embarks for a pearl island—and then we flash back for several years. A castaway sailor is picked up from a shark-infested sea, a romance is hotly enkindled, a daring hero locks grips with a giant squid. There are witchcraft and tribal orgies, intrigues for gold and for pearls—and, in the end, there's a submarine shipwreck of a ship that is already sunk!

This unusual, dreamlike John Wayne vehicle is set in the East Indies. The focus of the film is the deadly rivalry between two men of the sea. Ship's captain Rails (John Wayne) nurses a long-standing grudge against shipping magnate Van Schreeven (Luther Adler). The reason for the animosity: Van Schreeven stole away Rails' love, Angelique (Gail Russell). Revenge has warped Rails to point that sometimes he seems to be the heavy of the picture. Complications involving valuable pearls ensue before the offbeat climax, which finds Rails scuttling his own vessel, the Red Witch, as means of getting even. The film's resolution is one of the strangest ever concocted for a Wayne picture. Wake of the Red Witch represented the second screen teaming of John Wayne and Gail Russell; the film must also have held some special significance for Wayne, since he named his own production company, Batjac, after the shipping firm depicted in the picture.

Gary Tooze

April 19th, 2013