Wake of the Red Witch *** (1948, John Wayne, Gail Russell, Gig Young, Luther Adler, Adele Mara, Eduard Franz, Grant Withers, Henry Daniell, Paul Fix, Dennis Hoey, Jeff Corey, Erskine Sanford) – Classic Movie Review 7171

Macho rivalries in the 1860s South Seas between John Wayne’s Red Witch skipper Captain Ralls and Luther Adler’s unscrupulous Dutch ship owning tycoon Mayrant Ruysdaal Sidneye are fought out against the backdrop of gorgeous Polynesian scenery in director Edward Ludwig’s daft, escapist 1948 adventure tale Wake of the Red Witch, which finds room for an amusing giant octopus that guards a chest of pearls. Soon Ralls is battling Sidneye for both Angelique Desaix (Gail Russell) and for the gold on the Red Witch.

Ludwig’s sprawling, good-looking Republic Pictures studios adventure film is based on the 1946 novel by Garland Roark, and is told on screen with gusto and zestily interpreted by a fine cast.

The on-form manly turns from Wayne and Adler are perhaps its biggest assets, though heroine Gail Russell seems all at sea.

Also in that sterling cast are Gig Young, Adele Mara, Eduard Franz, Grant Withers, Henry Daniell, Paul Fix, Dennis Hoey, Jeff Corey, Erskine Sanford and Duke Kahanamoku.

Wake of the Red Witch is directed by Edward Ludwig, runs 108 minutes, is released by Republic Pictures, is written by Harry Brown and Kenneth Gamet, is based on a novel by Garland Roark, is shot in black and white by Reginald Lanning, is produced by Edmund Grainger and is scored by Nathan Scott.

Wayne and Russell previously teamed for Angel and the Badman (1947).

John Wayne in the trailer for Wake of the Red Witch (1948).

Wayne named his production company Batjac after the film’s shipping firm Batjak, probably a mix of Batavia and Jayakarta, old names of the capital of the Dutch East Indies, now Jakarta, Indonesia.

The island scenes were filmed at Rancho Santa Anita, in Los Angeles County, with sea footage shot at the Isthmus on Santa Catalina Island, off the coast of California.

Republic Pictures paid $100,000 for the screen rights to Texan adman Roark’s novel, the most it had ever paid. It was to be a deluxe production, and was given one of the highest budgets in Republic’s history, but that shrank from $1.8 million to $1.5 million, and then to $1 million. That was shrewd because it earned $2.1 million at the box office.

There are similarities to an earlier Wayne sea movie, Cecil B DeMille’s Reap the Wild Wind.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7171

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