zetes Review of Four Frightened People

Four Frightened People (1934)

Goofy, campy jungle adventure courtesy of Cecil B. DeMille

[7/10 · 29 May 2006]

It is included in Universal's five-disc DeMille set and is the least well known of the films, mostly because it's not an epic, the genre to which DeMille usually contributed. Claudette Colbert stars, and is, as usual, wonderful. She plays a mousy, virginal school teacher who eventually transforms into a jungle princess. Mary Boland, Herbert Marshall and William Gargan round out the cast, along with Leo Carrillo as a native who claims he is accepted as a white man because of his necktie. The film is racist as hell (at one point the men shoot a native because they think he is a chimp who stole their rifle), but I tend to expect that with these kinds of movies. It's about the same as a Tarzan movie. There's some good comedy, and Colbert strips down pretty naked. The film was cut upon re-release because of its sexual content (the version available is missing 17 minutes, at least according to IMDb). Either the missing footage is lost or Universal was too lazy to find and restore it.