Customer Reviews

Torrid Zone

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Warner Brothers was always a studio which did not hesitate to copy the output of others. This hilarious film, made in 1940, is a cocktail of "The Front Page", "Red Dust", "Only Angels have Wings" and others with a showcase role for the very special Ann Sheridan who had been nicknamed "The Oomph Girl" after a major publicity build up in 1939.

The film is set on a banana plantation run by Pat O'Brien who employs James Cagney to help get the crop out on time. Cagney is playing around with the manager's wife, Helen Vinson, and Sheridan arrives, falls for Cagney and the fur flies as the wife and Sheridan spar. There is a subplot with bandits and George Tobias is very funny as their leader.

Cagney sports an absurd moustache and the rapid dialogue between him and O'Brien is excellent. This must be one of the few times when Cagney had a film stolen from him for Sheridan wears one immaculate outfit, tosses off wisecracks particularly towards Vinson and never loses her cool in the heat. This is a first rate comedy performance, even if the circumstances are cliched. She sings a song too in a bar in her usual irresistable flirty style - not a great contralto voice but great delivery. This woman was seriously attractive. It is obvious that no-one was taking the film seriously and the leads were having a ball. Outtakes on a blooper reel from another Warners' DVD verify this.

The print of the film is excellent preserving the crisp black and white photography. The film was produced by Hall Wallis so the production values are very good. The DVD includes "Warner's Night at the Movies" with short film, cartoon etc which add considerable enjoyment to the package. Don't miss this forgotten treasure.

Torrid Zone, starring James Cagney, Ann Sheridan and Pat O'Brien, is a movie from 1940, that is full of humor, adventure, action and great characters. Everybody in the movie is perfect for their parts, the timing of the jokes and lines are right on target and the ending makes you feel good. This is the eighth movie that Cagney and O'Brien teamed up for and it shows. They really know how to work together.
Cagney plays a banana plantation foreman who wants to get out of the business but is offered a large amount of cash if he will stay just a little loner. The plantation is having troubles and Steve Case, played by O'Brien, needs help fast. Add Lee Donley, played by Sheridan, who is both singer and card shark and you have a hot, funny, film just begging to be watched again and again.
The DVD is also great. It has, as extras, a vintage newsreel, a musical short, a historical short about the Pony Express Days, the first Bugs Bunny cartoon and some trailers. You can play them all, giving you the feeling of being in a movie theater in the 1940s. Just dim the lights and get some pop corn. Enjoy!

This is one of my favorite Cagney movies. Then again, Cagney was my favorite actor of all-time, so there are quite a number of "favorites". I won't go into describing the movie because someone else has already done an excellent job of that. Cagney and Sheridan were paired up in several movies, most notably, Torrid Zone, Angels With Dirty Faces (my favorite Cagney film) and City For Conquest (another favorite). He was paired up with Pat O'Brien even more. O'Brien was also in Angels...
Of course, it helps that Cagney and O'Brien were real life best friends. They sort of had a kind of fraternity among Irish actors, which also included Spencer Tracy and Frank McHugh (who was in a ton of Cagney movies).
At any rate, this is a first rate movie which old movie buffs will love. It's Cagney at his best, Sheridan at her sexiest and good supporting acting from O'Brien and George Tobias.

I enjoyed the heck out of this wonderful classic! I laughed till I cried at some of the lines in this beautiful movie! 4 out of 5 stars!!!

Arguably one of James Cagney's most unusual assignments at Warner Bros., TORRID ZONE (1940) gave the actor the chance to break away from his gangster personality, and also reunited him with close friend Pat O'Brien, and frequent leading lady Ann Sheridan. The end result is one of the most enjoyable films in Cagney's Warner catalogue; a fun, screwbally variation on "Red Dust", that earlier MGM romantic melodrama with Gable, Harlow and Astor duking it out on an exotic rubber plantation.

In TORRID ZONE, James Cagney (sporting a pencil moustache) plays Nick Butler, the former overseer of an embattled Mexican banana plantation, now on his way to Chicago and greener pastures. But Banana Company exec Steve Case (Pat O'Brien) knows that Nick is the plantation's secret weapon in keeping everything running smoothly. He convinces Nicky to remain for an additional two weeks. The only trouble is the arrival of Lee Donley (Ann Sheridan), a nightclub singer and cardshark sick of "starving" in the United States, and wanting to test her luck south of the border. Steve tries to keep the pair apart but Lee delights in remaining two steps ahead. Toss in a group of renegade Mexican bandits and the spurned wife of the plantation's manager, and you have the recipe for a fantastic night of entertainment.

James Cagney and Ann Sheridan pair here as memorably as they did in their first film together ("Angels With Dirty Faces"); and would be reunited again in 1940 for the gangster drama "City for Conquest". TORRID ZONE is a particularly delightful vehicle for the pair, as they toss around the sparkling screenplay written by Richard Macaulay and Jerry Wald. Andy Devine, Helen Vinson, Jerome Cowan, George Tobias, Victor Kilian and George Reeves co-star.

The DVD comes equipped with another Warner Night at the Movies programme, which includes the Technicolor short "Pony Express Days" (with George Reeves), "Ozzie Nelson and His Orchestra", the Oscar-nominated Merrie Melodies cartoon "A Wild Hare"; and the trailers for both TORRID ZONE and "Santa Fe Trail".

Torrid Zone pretty much IS The Front Page with a smattering of Red Dust for added flavor, with Pat O'Brien (who played Walter Burns in the original Broadway production and Hildy Johnson in the 1931 film of the newspaper classic) the unscrupulous banana exporter trying to trick Jimmy Cagney's plantation manager back into his old job in a corrupt South American hellhole, with Ann Sheridan's singer-cum-card-sharp providing the romantic sparks and George Tobias' loveable revolutionary making things difficult at the workplace. Familiarity rather than originality is on the menu, but it's served up with panache and pace and the best production values Warner Bros. can offer. Helen Vinson doesn't exactly offer much competition for Sheridan, Andy Devine provides the comic relief, Jerome Cowan, Bogart's ill-fated partner in The Maltese Falcon, is still having wife troubles as Cagney's intended replacement and TV's original ill-fated Superman, George Reeves, turns up as a treacherous plantation worker. The biggest surprise is the year of production - despite having a classic mid-Thirties look, it was actually made in 1940, although that's probably more of a plus than a minus.

George Reeves also turns up in the color two-reeler 'Pony Express Days' as Buffalo Bill, part of another goodselection of Warner Bros. Night at the Movies short subjects that also includes Bugs Bunny cartoon 'A Wild Hare,' and trailers for Santa Fe Trail and Torrid Zone itself. Warners' DVD also boasts an excellent transfer.

I actually watched this movie based on the positive reviews on this site, so feel compelled to provide some balance. In my humble opinion, its value is reflected in the price it's going for - $4.50 new. If it were truly bad, people would buy it to make fun of it. It's just...off. Unlike other reviewers, I found only one line -- the last one of the movie -- briefly memorable and funny. (Now you'll have to watch it too, in its entirety.) Otherwise, I wish I'd made better use of my time. If you want to see a hilarious movie about a female card sharp, it's obvious "The Lady Eve" is your choice. If you want to see better Cagney and O'Brien byplay (with better dialogue), there are probably a dozen other movies you can try. If you like George Tobias, as I do, you'll like him here, even if he's used to portray a stereotype, as is everyone else who portrays a "native" in this movie. I'm no bleeding heart, but in this regard, this lighthearted farce is egregious without being funny about it. Plot, set, characters and dialogue are all contrived; maybe what's missing is the light touch of the right director to pull it off. Ann Sheridan is alluring, yes, but even she can't put in enough "oomph" to sustain this movie.