Sinners in Paradise (1938)
A transpacific plane goes down near a remote island occupied only by a solitary American and his housekeeper. The stranded passengers — among them a munitions dealer, a nurse, a wanted man, and a fugitive heiress — are forced to take stock of their lives while their reluctant host decides whether to help them get off the island.
One of the last pictures James Whale directed for Universal before the studio eased him out, Sinners in Paradise is a quickly made 65-minute ensemble castaway drama adapted from a Harold Buckley story. It has always sat in the shadow of the horror films of Whale’s early-1930s peak, and only recently drawn attention from critics reassessing his full career.
Background
Sinners in Paradise is a 1938 Universal drama directed by James Whale, released May 19, 1938, with a 65-minute running time and a cast including Madge Evans, John Boles, Bruce Cabot, Marion Martin, and Gene Lockhart. Adapted from a Harold Buckley story, it follows the survivors of a transpacific plane crash who wash up on a remote island inhabited only by an American recluse and his housekeeper, forcing a munitions dealer, a nurse, a fugitive heiress, and other strangers to confront their pasts while their reluctant host decides whether to help them leave.
What to watch for
Whale made this film to fulfill the last obligations of his Universal contract, and he reportedly referred to it and a companion picture as his “punishment pictures,” a sign of how far his standing at the studio had fallen since directing Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein earlier in the decade. It has little of the visual ambition of that earlier work, and for decades was treated as a minor footnote; more recent critical reassessments of Whale’s full career have looked at it again as evidence of how a major studio director could be quickly sidelined.
