This cheapie from Sam Katzman has the dubious distinction of taking an exotic locale and turning it into a very dull action picture where the only real action takes place at the end. Dennis O'Keefe is the hero who aids the Tahitian people in their fight with France over losing their independence through joining forces with Great Britain and the aide of the unseen Queen Victoria.
This is a delightful little adventure/romance which could just as easily have fit Bogie and Bacall, though I doubt if they could have done better than O'Keefe and Medina. O'Keefe is great as the tough American merchant in Tahiti who turns out to be a sucker for the underdog, and joins Queen Pomare's attempt to import guns from San Francisco in order to start a revolution against the French.
Another 3-D potboiler from producer Sam Katzman, this one quite good, as B-movie's go, with Dennis O'Keefe involved in smuggling guns into Tahiti to fight the French, and finding romance along the way. Some nice scenery.
Only Sam Katzman, Columbia's king of cheap, could have created a 3D movie as flat, boring and set bound as this one. Overlong at 73 minutes, Drums of Tahiti hardly takes advantage of the 3D process.
Being the sole remaining unwatched costumer in William Castle's filmography (the rest of which is made up of Westerns, Thrillers and Comedies), I decided at this very late stage to include the film under review in my current Easter Epic marathon that is now winding down to a close as the end of the month approaches. While the previous such effort of the director that I had just watched, THE IRON GLOVE (1954), had been included by virtue of its swashbuckling nature and British monarchy background – that complimented other similar stuff that I had watched earlier in the month – DRUMS OF TAHITI belongs to another facet of the genre, i.
